Transmedia Narration-The Narrative Analysis Of Video Game

The term "video game" first appeared in collections of Reader's Guide to Periodicals from March 1973 to February 1974.Nowadays,video games,"the ninth art" is the dominant art in the Internet age and the most popular academic field.Though there are already many achievements on video games based on current theories,like semiotics,narratology,and aesthetics,research about video games is still a new field.Early game theorists often discussed games in combination with other medium and analyzed common elements between them."Narration" occupied a special position in video games.Narration in video games based on the interaction of computers developed a new model of interactive narration and a new method for composition,in which the participation model of a user(reader)and the form of the text were changed through the application of database and the establishment of a narrative framework.Transmedia narration aims at telling a story with the integration of features in various medium.As a narrative technique,transmedia narration breaks the linear rules of traditional narration and media becomes narrative language rather than a communicative channel.For transmedia narration,media is regarded as a carrier of narration and the focus is not what story is narrated but how narration is presented in this special media.This paper,dependent on the unique media properties of video games,explores how the technical media in this electric age becomes a special narrative structure generated by narrative language and its outcomes transmedia narration.There are common elements between games and narration,including characters,apparatus and events.However,different from traditional media,video games change the way how narration is presented and how readers perceive,which not only provides possibility of different rhetoric but also shows the possibility that readers could participate in and interact with the narration text.