The Age of Video Games: Language and Narrative

Abstract

The language of video games has acquired importance throughout the years, from its birth to its development, and has changed and modified its vocabulary, following the trend and the will of the gaming community, namely the creators and users of this language. Furthermore, the narrative medium of videogames has broadened the definition of ‘narrative’ giving to the term new significance and providing to its users a new type of experience, that of participated narration. However, the participatory narrative found in videogames has not revolutionized or created something entirely new. Following the previous studies on the two subjects, the scope of the dissertation is to analyse the main characteristics of the Internet Language, with a particular focus on the Language of Video-games and to discuss the elements which construct the narrative of a video game (i.e. how the narrative is constructed, what narrative elements are used). Moreover, the thesis will also provide new examples of new video-game terms coinages and will discuss, in connection to the narrative, the issue of the moral in videogames.