Contemporary research on intertextuality in video games

What does the epic look like in the twenty-first century, and what are the implications of its contemporary forms?This chapter will briefly outline a genre theory of the epic that is as

Contemporary Research

on Intertextuality in Video Games

Christophe Duret

Université de Sherbrooke, Canada

Christian-Marie Pons

Université de Sherbrooke, Canada

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Title: Contemporary research on intertextuality in video games / Christophe

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Editorial Advisory Board

InesitaAraujo,Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil

LukeArnott,The University of Western Ontario, Canada

NolanBazinet,Université de Sherbrooke, Canada

OferBerenstein,University of Calgary, Canada

KristinM.S.Bezio,University of Richmond, USA

AidenBuckland,University of Calgary, Canada

EmmanuelBuzay,University of Connecticut, USA

AngieChiang,University of Calgary, Canada

EstelleDalleu,Université de Strasbourg, France

MarceloDeVasconcellos,Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil

HernánD.Espinosa-Medina,Universidad de La Sabana, Colombia

ClaraFernandez-Vara,New York University, USA

MichaelFuchs,University of Graz, Austria

ChristianJimenez,Rider University, USA

YoweiKang,Kainan University, Taiwan

AnaNarciso,University of Algarve, Center for Research in Communication Sciences and Arts, Portugal ChrisRichardson,Young Harris College, USA

LynnThomas,Université de Sherbrooke, Canada

ChristopherTotten,American University, USA

EnriqueUribe-Jongbloed,Universidad del Norte, Colombia

KennethC.C.Yang,University of Texas at El Paso, USA

Table of Contents



Preface xv Acknowledgment xxiv

Section 1 Transmediality/Intermediality Chapter 1

Chapter 4

IntermedialityandVideoGames:Analysisof Silent Hill 2 54 Mehdi Debbabi Zourgani, Paris 5 Descartes, France

Julien Lalu, UFR SHA Poitiers, France

Matthieu Weisser, UFR SHA Poitiers, France

Section 2 Intertextuality Chapter 5

Chris Richardson, Young Harris College, USA

Mike Elrod, Young Harris College, USA

Chapter 7

ExploringComplexIntertextualInteractionsinVideoGames:ConnectingInformalandFormalEducationforYouth 108

Kathy Sanford, University of Victoria, Canada

Timothy Frank Hopper, University of Victoria, Canada

Jamie Burren, University of Victoria, Canada

Chapter 8

“YouCan’tMesswiththeProgram,Ralph”:IntertextualityofPlayer-AgencyinFilmicVirtualWorlds 129

Theo Plothe, Walsh University, USA

Chapter 9

CulturalTransductionandIntertextualityinVideoGames:AnAnalysisofThreeInternationalCaseStudies 143

Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed, Universidad del Norte, Colombia

Hernán David Espinosa-Medina, Universidad de La Sabana, Colombia

James Biddle, University of Georgia, USA

Chapter 10

MovingForwardbyLookingBack:UsingArtandArchitecturalHistorytoMakeandUnderstandGames 162

Christopher Totten, American University, USA

Section 3 Hypertextuality Chapter 11

ArtifactsofEmpire:OrientalismandInner-TextsinTomb Raider(2013) 189 Kristin M S Bezio, University of Richmond, USA

Chapter 12

WeavingNature Mage:CollectiveIntertextualityintheDesignofaBook-to-GameAdaptation 209 Claudio Pires Franco, University of Bedfordshire, UK

Section 4 Architextuality Chapter 13

Interprocedurality:ProceduralIntertextualityinDigitalGames 235

Marcelo Simão de Vasconcellos, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Brazil

Flávia Garcia de Carvalho, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Brazil

Inesita Soares de Araujo, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Brazil

Chapter 14

ArchitextualityandVideoGames:ASemioticApproach 253

Maria Katsaridou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Mattia Thibault, University of Turin, Italy

Section 5 Paratextuality Chapter 15

Detailed Table of Contents



Preface xv Acknowledgment xxiv

Section 1 Transmediality/Intermediality Chapter 1

ArkhamEpic:BatmanVideoGamesasTotalizingTexts 1

Luke Arnott, The University of Western Ontario, Canada

Thischapterpresentsamodelthatexplainshowtheepicisanarrativegenrethathasbecomepopularacrossavarietyofnewmedia.ItdemonstrateshowtheArkhamseriesofBatmanvideogames–Batman:ArkhamAsylum(RocksteadyStudios,2009),Batman:ArkhamCity(RocksteadyStudios,2011),Batman:ArkhamOrigins(WarnerBros.GamesMontreal,2013),andBatman:ArkhamKnight(RocksteadyStudios,2015)–isconstructedasanepicnarrativewithinthelargerBatmanmediafranchise.TheArkhamseriesaspirestoepicstatusbyeclipsingcompetingBatmantextsorbyassimilatingthosetextsintoitscontinuity.Theseriesisanexampleofhowvideogamesnowinfluencetheevolutionandcross-adaptationofderivativeandparallelworkssuchascomics,movies,andotherparatexts.ThechapterconcludesbyobservinghowgamesliketheArkhamseriesrelatetorepresentationandtheoriesofpostmodernism

Chapter 3

ADifferentKindofMonster:UncannyMediaandAlan Wake’sTextualMonstrosity 39 Michael Fuchs, University of Graz, Austria

Julien Lalu, UFR SHA Poitiers, France

Matthieu Weisser, UFR SHA Poitiers, France

Thischapterproposestostudyintermedialityinvideogamesinordertohighlightmediainteractions.Thepurposeistoanalyzesomeintermediaprocessestoillustratehowintermedialitycancreatesignification.

ThechapterisfocusedonthesurvivalhorrorgameSilent Hill 2 (Konami,2001).Morespecifically,it

isabout,butnotonly,twoprotagonists:JamesSunderlandandEddieDombrowski.Analysesfollowthreedifferentintermedialitylevelsthatcanbeappliedinvideogamestogetabettercomprehensionofit.Theco-presenceshowswhatisplayedbetweenthemediaincludedinthegame.Thetransferhasaninteresttothelinksbetweenvideogamesandotherobjectsinordertofindhowitslanguageiscreated.

Silent Hill 2,asaJapaneseproduction,includesmanyJapanesesymbols.Theemergencerevealswhat

createsthespecificidentityofthevideogameasamediumbyobservingtheinteractionsbetweenthedifferentmediacomposingit

Section 2 Intertextuality Chapter 5

Gamers(Don’t)FeartheReaper:MusicalIntertextualityandInterferenceinVideoGames 71

Andréane Morin-Simard, Université de Montréal, Canada

Giventhepervasivenessofpopularmusicinthecontemporarymedialandscape,itisnotunusualtofindthesamesonginmultiplesoundtracks.Basedontheoriesofintertextualityandcommunication,thischapterseekstodefinetherelationshipwhichdevelopsbetweentwoormorenarrativeand/orinteractiveworksthatsharethesamesong,andtounderstandtheeffectsofsuchrecontextualizationsonthegamer’sexperience.ThemediatrajectoryofBlueÖysterCult’s“Don’tFeartheReaper”ismappedasanetworktocategorizethemanycomplexintersectionsbetweenvideogames,filmsandtelevisionserieswhichfeaturethesong.Threevideogamesareanalyzedtoproposethatthesong’spreviousassociationswithotherworksmaypositivelyornegativelyinterferewiththemusic’snarrativeandludicfunctionswithinthegame

Chapter 6

BioShockandtheGhostofAynRand:UniversalLearningandTacitKnowledgeinContemporary

VideoGames 92

Chris Richardson, Young Harris College, USA

Mike Elrod, Young Harris College, USA

Thischapterexaminesthepopular2007videogameBioShock anditsrelationtotheworkofObjectivist

authorAynRand.UsingJacquesRancière’smodelofemancipatorylearningandPolanyi’sconceptoftacitknowledge,theauthorsexplorehowvideogamescaninstilltransferableskillsandknowledgeby

formingintertextualconnectionstoothermedia.IncludinganinterviewwithBioShockcreatorKen Levine,theauthorsdiscusshowplayersmaylearnaboutworkssuchasRand’sAtlas Shrugged,forming

opinions,criticisms,andapplicationsofherphilosophy,withouteverreceivingexplanationsofitinthegame.Theyconcludethechapterbydemonstratingthepotentialforsuchformsoflearningtobecomemoreprominentinvideogames,whilealsoacknowledgingtheinherentlimitationsofthemedium

Chapter 7

ExploringComplexIntertextualInteractionsinVideoGames:ConnectingInformalandFormalEducationforYouth 108

Kathy Sanford, University of Victoria, Canada

Timothy Frank Hopper, University of Victoria, Canada

Jamie Burren, University of Victoria, Canada

Thischapterexplorestheintertextualnatureofvideogames.Videogamesareinherentlyintertextualandhaveutilizedintertextualityinprofoundwaystoengageplayersandmakemeaning.Youthwhoplayvideogamesdemonstratecomplexintertextualliteraciesthatenablethemtoconstructandshareunderstandingsacrossgamegenres.However,videogameliteracyisnoticeablyabsentfromformaleducation.Thischapterdrawsfrombi-monthlymeetingswithagroupofyouthvideogamers.Videogamesessionsfocusedonexploringaspectofvideogameplaysuchaslearningandcivicengagements.EachsessionwasvideorecordedandcodedusingYouTubeannotationtools.Focusingonintertextualityasanorganizingconstruct,thechapterreportsonfivethemesthatemergedthatwerethenusedtohelpexploretheuseofvideogamesasteachingtoolinagrade11LanguageArtsclass.Acriticalconceptthatemergedwastheideaofcomplexintertextualliteracythatframesandenablesadolescents’engagementwithvideogames

Chapter 9

CulturalTransductionandIntertextualityinVideoGames:AnAnalysisofThreeInternational

CaseStudies 143

Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed, Universidad del Norte, Colombia

Hernán David Espinosa-Medina, Universidad de La Sabana, Colombia

James Biddle, University of Georgia, USA

Thischapteraddressestherelationshipthatexistsbetweenintertextualityandculturaltransductioninvideogamelocalization.Whereastheformerreferstothedualrelationshipestablishedbetweentextsandprevioustextsavailabletothepotentialreadersandthebridgesthatareconsciouslyorunconsciouslyestablishedbetweenthem,culturaltransductionreferstotheconsciousprocessoftransformingaudiovisualcontenttosuittheinterestsofagivenculturalmarket.Threecasestudiesarepresentedtoexploretherelationshipthatexistsbetweentheplaceofproduction,theinternalculturalreferencestoothertextswithinthegamesandtheintendedmarketwherethevideogameisdistributed:Finally,theimportanceofintertextualityaspartoftheculturaltransductionprocessishighlighted

Chapter 10

MovingForwardbyLookingBack:UsingArtandArchitecturalHistorytoMakeandUnderstandGames 162

Christopher Totten, American University, USA

Thischapterexploresarthistorytoestablishparallelsbetweenthecurrentstateofthegameartfieldandhistoricalartandarchitecturalperiods.Indoingso,itproposesmethodsforbothmakingandstudyinggamesthatsubvertthepopularanalysistrendsofgameartthataretypicallybasedonthehistoryofgamegraphicsandtechnology.ThechapterwillthendemonstratetheuseofartanddesignhistoryingamedevelopmentbydiscussingtheAtelierGamesproject,whichutilizesthestylesandtechniquesofestablishedartistsandartmovementstoexploretheviabilityofclassicmethodsfortheproductionofgameartandgamemechanics

Section 3 Hypertextuality Chapter 11

ArtifactsofEmpire:OrientalismandInner-TextsinTomb Raider(2013) 189 Kristin M S Bezio, University of Richmond, USA

ThischapterexaminesCrystalDynamics’2013Tomb Raiderreboot,arguingthatthegamemakesuseof intertextualreferencestotheoriginalCoreDesignTomb Raider(1996)andpopularculturearchaeology

inanefforttorevisetheoriginalfranchise’sexploitativedepictionofbothLaraCroftandarchaeologicalpractice.FramedbyatheoreticalunderstandingofOrientalismandtheconstraintsofsymbolicorderandtherecognitionthatvideogamesingeneralandtheTombRaiderfranchiseinspecificare“games

ofempire,”itbecomesclearthatthe2013Tomb Raiderultimatelyfailstoescapetheconstraintsof

imperialproceduralsemiotics

Chapter 12

WeavingNature Mage:CollectiveIntertextualityintheDesignofaBook-to-GameAdaptation 209 Claudio Pires Franco, University of Bedfordshire, UK

Thischapterisbasedontheanalysisofpreviouscross-mediagameadaptations,onempiricalresearch,andonreflectiononpracticewiththedesignofagameconceptforafantasybook.Book-to-gameadaptationsareparticularlyinterestingexamplesofcross-mediaadaptation.Theynotonlyweavetheliterarysourcetextwithintertextsfromthegamemedium,butalsorequireamodaltranspositionfromtherealmofwordstoavisual,interactive,multimodalmediumwherenarrativeandludiclogicsintersect.Thisstudyproposestolookatdifferentlayersofcross-mediaintertextualityintheprocessofadaptation-atthelevelofspecifictexts,atthelevelofmediumconventions,andatthelevelofgenreconventions.Itdrawsoncrowd-sourcingresearchwithreaderstodemonstratethatcollaborationoperatesthroughmulti-layeredprocessesofcollectiveintertextualitythroughwhichtheintertextualrepertoiresofindividualsmeettoweaveafinaltext

Section 4 Architextuality Chapter 13

Interprocedurality:ProceduralIntertextualityinDigitalGames 235

Marcelo Simão de Vasconcellos, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Brazil

Flávia Garcia de Carvalho, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Brazil

Inesita Soares de Araujo, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Brazil

Intertextualityispresentinmostdigitalgamessincetheirbeginnings.However,despiteitsimportanceforunderstandinggames,researchaboutthethemetendstobedisproportionallyrareandlimitedtorepresentationalaspects(text,images,audio,etc.),leavingoutgames’mostdistinctivecharacteristics,namely,theirrulesandmechanics.Sincetheclassicconceptofintertextualitydoesnotaccountforthisdimension,theauthorsproposeaconceptthatistogameswhatintertextualityisfortexts,combiningprinciplesofintertextualitywiththetheoryofproceduralrhetoric,whichdealswiththeconstructionofmeaningindigitalgames.Thisconcept,interprocedurality,describestheexplicitorimplicitinclusionofothergames’rulesandmechanicsinagivengame.Asawaytoexemplifyitspresenceinaspecificgame,thischapterpresentsabriefanalysisoftheinterproceduralityoccurringinthedigitalgameDeusEx:HumanRevolutionandthefindingsitgenerated

Chapter 14

ArchitextualityandVideoGames:ASemioticApproach 253

Maria Katsaridou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Mattia Thibault, University of Turin, Italy

Eventhoughliterarygenresareinstrumentalforthestudyandanalysisofvideogames,weshouldalsotakeintoconsiderationthat,nowadays,theboundariesofliteraturehavebeencrossedandwehavetodealwithabroadertransmediareality.Approachingitcanbequitechallengingand,inadditiontothealreadyexistinggenretheory,itrequirestheimplementationofappropriateanalytictools,bothadaptabletodifferentlanguagesandmediaandabletoreconstructandmotivatetheisotopieswovenintothenet.

Intheauthors’opinion,semioticsisparticularlysuitableforthistask,formanyreasons.Theaimofthischapter,then,istoproposeasemioticmethodology,orientedtowardtheanalysisofthearchitextualaspectsofvideogames.Twocasestudieswillbetakenintoconsideration,inordertoshedsomelightontheinnerworkingofarchitextsfeaturingvideogames,asoneoftheirmostrelevantcomponents:thehorrorgenreandthehighfantasygenre

Section 5 Paratextuality Chapter 15

Paratext:TheIn-BetweenofStructureandPlay 274

Daniel Dunne, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Thischapterexaminesparatextasanactiveelementwithinvideogames.Paratext,astakenfromGérardGenette’sworkshasoftenbeencitedwithinthecontextofvideogames,butnotexaminedindetail.Currentscholarshipfocusesonepitext,butnotperitext,whichisGenette’sprimaryfocus.MiaConsalvoandPeterLunenfeld’sworkdiscusstheepitextualimportanceofparatextwithinvideogames,withonlyahinttowardstheimportanceofperitext.Throughabriefexplorationofparatext’shistoryinbothliteratureandgames,thischapterwillrevealaneedfordeeperanalysiswithinvideogamestudies.Focusingonin-game,in-systemandin-worldtypesofparatextsthispaperwillattempttoformalisetheunaddressedissueofparatextinvideogames

Compilation of References 316 About the Contributors 355 Index 360

Preface



Intertextualityispresentinalltypesofmedia,fromserialliteraturetotelevisionseries,fromcomicstocinema.Itaccountsforasignificantproportionoftheenjoymentexperiencedbythereader/viewerintheconsumptionofthesemedia,butalsofortherichnessoftextualproductionsofthelatter,whichextendsintoavastnetworkofquotations,openorcovertreferences,influencesandparodies

Thenotionofintertextualityhaschangedconsiderablythroughits80-yearhistory.Aspartofaprocessofsocio-historicaldefinitionofthepoeticsofthenovelthroughdialogism(Bakhtin,1978),orasemanalysisapproach(Kristeva,1969,1970)and,morebroadly,poststructuralism(Barthes,1974;Sollers,1968),pointingalternatelytohermeneutical(Riffaterre,1979,1982)(Barthes,1973),poetic(Genette,1979,1982),genetic(LeCalvez,1997;Pickering,1997;Rastier,1997),sociodiscursive(An-genot,1989),andsociocritical(Duchet&Maurus,2011)phenomenaor,morerecently,toadaptation(Hutcheon2013),transmediality(Jenkins2006),andtransfictionalization(Saint-Gelais2011),thisnotionissomewhatpolysemicandpolemic.Avastcollectiveassemblyofspecificationanddeconstructionoftheterms“intertextuality”and“intertext”hastakenplaceduringthislonghistory,andtoday,theyrefertoaconstellationoftextualrelationsandvarioustextsknownasco-texts(Duchet&Maurus,2011),metafictions(Hutcheon,1984),transfictions(Saint-Gelais,2011),transmediastorytelling(Jenkins,2006),adaptations(Hutcheon,2013)autotextuality(Dällenbach,1976)intertextualirony(Eco,2003),generalorlimitedintertextuality(Ricardou,1986/1974),externalorinternalintertextuality(Ricardou,1971),allusion, plagiarism, pastiche, charge, forgery and parody (Genette, 1982), quotation (Compagnon,1979),interimage(Duffy,1997),prescriptiveintertextuality(Vetters,2011)anddoctrinalintertextuality(Suleiman,1983),metatextualityandhypertextuality(Genette,1982),architextuality(Genette,1979),paratextuality(Genette,1987),andsoon.Inpractice,intertextualityhasbecomefunctional,savedfromthedangerthatawaiteditofbecomingacatch-allconceptthatcouldfiteverythinganditsopposite.Despite the pervasiveness of the concept of intertextuality in digital games and a longstandingtraditionassociatedtoit,onlyahandfulofgamescholarshaveuseditoroneofitsderivativetermsintheirresearch(seeBonk,2014;Consalvo,2003;Dormans,2006;Duret,2015;Egliston,2015;Jones,2008;Krzywinska,2006,2008;Krzywinska,MacCallum-Stewart&Parsler,2011;Love,2010;Poor,2012;Schrader,Lawless&McCreery,2009,Scodari,1993;Weise,2009)andthisbookisthefirsttobeentirelydedicatedtoit

Whatmightexplaintheabsenceofthisconceptinthegamestudiesfield?Sincetheearly2000s,therehasbeenashiftfromintertextuality(or,morebroadly,oftranstextuality,anear-synonymofthetermforsomeauthors)totransfictionalityandtransmedialityinthestudyoffictionalworks(novels,comics,digitalgames,films,graphicnovels,etc.),withtheresearchesofJensBonk(2014),KristyDena(2009),HenryJenkins(2003;2006),MarshaKinder(1991),LisbethKlastrupandSusanaTosca(2013),

xv

Marie-LaureRyan(2008;2013),RichardSaint-Gelais(2000;2011),CarlosAlbertoScolari(2009),andJan-NoëlThon(2009),amongothers.Thisshiftimpliesachangeinobjectofstudyand,consequently,thelevelofanalysis:afterthetext,theattentionofresearchersfocusesmorereadilyonthespatiotemporaluniversesoftheworks(knownasthecosmos,diegesis,fictionalworld,storyworld,heterocosm,trans-fictionalworld,andsoforth),theplotsthatoccurwithintheseuniversesandthecharactersinhabitingthem.Inotherwords,thefocusisonthefictionratherthanthetextsthatconveyit

Indigitalgames,transfictionalityisawidespreadphenomenonandjustifiesthegrowingnumberofresearchersinterestedinit.Butthisinterestfortransfictionalityshouldnotbeallowedtoobscuretheintertextual/transtextualnatureofthedigitalgames,thecontributionofexogenoustexts(pastiches,parodies,quotations,allusions,metatexts,hypertexts,paratexts,andsoforth)stronglycontributingtotheirdepth.Inotherwords,theconceptsoftransfictionalityandtransmedialitydonotcallintoquestiontherelevanceofintertextuality.Onthecontrary,someofthecollaborationsinthisbookillustratetherelevanceofaddressingthedigitalgameobjectbycombiningthetwoperspectives,especiallywhenitcomestoanalyzingitsproceduraldimension

Morebroadly,therichnessandscopeofthecontributionspresentedhereattesttothetopicalityofintertextualityanditsusefulnesswithregardtothefieldofgamestudies.Thisresearchwillallowustobettermapthevasttextualecosystemsthatfeeddigitalgamesandwhicharefedbackfromthem

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK

Thisbookisorganizedaroundfivetopics:transmedialityandintermediality(chapters1to4);intertextual-itystricto sensu(chapters5to10),withthefirstthreechaptersfocusingontheroleplayedbygamersin

theintertextualprocess;hypertextualityintheGenettiansense,inreferencetorebootsandadaptations(chapters11&12);architextuality(chapters13&14);andfinally,paratextuality(chapters15&16).Abriefdescriptionofeachchapterfollows

Transmediality/Intermediality

Chapter 1

In“ArkhamEpic:BatmanVideoGamesasTotalizingTexts”,LukeArnottdescribestheArkhamseries

tual/intertextual,symbolic,andsocio-historicallevels,respectively)inordertoillustratehowtheseriescanbecritiquedasacohesiveepicwithintheBatmanfranchise,withwhichitsharesarelationshipofbothcontinuityandcompetition.Thechapterconcludesbydemonstratinghow,astotalizingtexts,the

ofBatmanvideogamesasanepicnarrative.Fourlevelsofanalysisareproposed(thetextual,paratex-Arkhamgamesarearepresentationofthepostmodernspace.

Chapter 2

In“TheInescapableIntertextualityofBlade Runner - The Video Game”,ClaraFernández-Varaexamines howBlade Runner - The Video Gameispartofalargertransmedialnarrative,includingPhilipK.Dick’s novelDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?andRidleyScott’sfilm,Blade Runner,asitutilizesthe

propertiesofinteractiveenvironmentsinordertocreateaninteractiveworldthattheplayerisinvitedxvi

toexplore.Blade Runner - The Video Gameretainsthethemesandthefictionalworldofthenovel,as wellastheconventionsofnoirdetectivestories,whichareadaptedinaccordancewiththeprocedural,

participatory,spatial,andencyclopediccharacteristicsofthedigitalgamemedium.Bydoingso,thegamepresentsitselfas“inescapablyintertextual.”

MichaelFuchsargues,however,thatthisallegedweaknesswithregardtogameplay,aswellastheconfu-betweenvideogamesandothermedia.TheauthorsuggeststhattheuncannyeffectsproducedbyAlan Wake’sGothicnarrativearemorelikelyattributabletotheelementsofintermedialityandremediation thatarefoundinthegameratherthanthemonstersthattheplayersarepittedagainst.Alan Wakeisthus

Intertextuality

Chapter 5

dréaneMorin-Simardexaminestheintertextualrelationshipthatlinksvideogamestogetherwhenthey

In“Gamers(Don’t)FeartheReaper:MusicalIntertextualityandInterferenceinVideoGames”,An-sharethesamesong.ThemediatrajectoryofthesongDon’t Fear the Reaperisthenmappedinorder tounderstandhowitsrecontextualizationintheRipper,RoadkillandPreyvideogamesimpactsthe

gamer’sexperience.Indoingso,theauthorshowshowtheassociationoftheBlueÖysterCult’ssongwithpreviousworksinterfereswithitsfunctionsregardingthegameplayandthenarrativeofthegames.Chapter 6

In“BioShockandtheGhostofAynRand:UniversalLearningandTacitKnowledgeinContemporary VideoGames”,ChrisRichardsonandMikeElrodexaminetheBioShockvideogameanditsrelationto

theworkoftheRussian-bornAmericanphilosopherAynRand.Morespecifically,theauthorsputJacquesRancière’smodelofemancipatorylearningandMichaelPolanyi’sconceptoftacitknowledgeindialoguewiththeconceptofintertextualityinordertoshowhowtheplayersbenefitfromtransferableskillsandknowledgebyformingconnectionstoothermediawithoutreceivingexplanationsfromwithinthegame

xvii

Chapter 7

In“ExploringComplexIntertextualInteractionsinVideoGames:ConnectingInformalandFormalEducationforYouth”,KathySanford,TimothyFrankHopper,andJamieBurrenuseacomplexitytheoryframeworkandproposetheconceptofcomplexintertextualliteracyinordertoexplainhowadolescents

areprovidedincentivesthroughvideogameslikeBioShock Infinite,Gone Home, L.A Noire,andThe Stanley Parabletomakeconnectionstoawidearrayoftexts.Theauthorsconsiderthepotentialofthese

gamestoformacriticalspacetoengagestudentsinmeaning-making

Chapter 8

In“‘Youcan’tmesswiththeprogram,Ralph’:IntertextualityofPlayer-AgencyinFilmicVirtualWorlds”,TheoPlotheexaminestherepresentationofplayer-agencycontrolinfilmsthatfocusonactionwithindigitalgames.Thisrepresentationreliesonthreeessentialelements:aseparationbetweenthevirtualandthereal;awrittencodeunderlyingthevirtualworldthattheplayercanmanipulate,butnoteffectivelychange;arelationshipbasedonsubservienceorconflictbetweentheplayerandtheplayer-agent.The

filmsanalyzedinthischapterareTron,Tron: Legacy,The Matrix,The Matrix Reloaded,The Matrix Revolutions,The Lawnmower Man,eXistenZ,Avalon,Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over,andWreck-it Ralph.

Chapter 9

In “Cultural Transduction and Intertextuality in Video Games: An Analysis of Three InternationalCaseStudies”,EnriqueUribe-Jongbloed,HernánDavidEspinosa-Medina,andJamesBiddleaddressthequestionofvideogamelocalizationthroughtheconvergenceoftheconceptsofintertextualityand

culturaltransduction.Tothisend,threecasestudiesarepresented,namelyEl Chavo Kart,South Park: The Stick of Truth,andtheKingdom Rushseries.

Chapter 10

In“MovingForwardbyLookingBack:UsingArtandArchitecturalHistorytoMakeandUnderstandGames”,ChristopherTottendemonstrateshowthefieldofgameartcouldbenefitfromthehistoryofartandarchitectureandfindsnewopportunitiesforgameproduction.Asanalternativetothemostpopularwaysofanalyzinggameart,whicharebasedonthehistoryofgamegraphicsandtechnology,artisticintertextualityandarchitextualityareusefultoolsforresearchersanddeveloperstounderstandandmake

Raider(2013)”,KristinM.S.Bezioexam-xviii

1996.ShedrawsonEdwardSaid’sconceptofOrientalism,JuliaKristeva’sconstraintsofthesymbolicorder,aswellasNickDyer-WithefordandGreigdePeuter’sconceptionofvideogamesas“gamesof

Architextuality

Chapter 13

In“Interprocedurality:ProceduralIntertextualityinDigitalGames”,MarceloSimãodeVasconcellos,FláviaGarciadeCarvalho,andInesitaSoaresdeAraujoprefertheproceduraldimensionofintertextual-ity(i.e.rules,mechanics)totherepresentationalone(e.g.:text,images,audio).WhenusedjointlywithIanBogost’sproceduralrhetoric,theconceptofintertextualitybecomes“interprocedurality,”whichisdefinedas“theexplicitorimplicitinclusionofothergames’rulesandmechanicsinagivengame.”The

authorsillustratetheirconceptbyanalyzingtheDeus Ex: Human Revolutionvideogame.

Chapter 14

In“ArchitextualityandVideoGames,aSemioticApproach”,drawingonAlgirdasGreimas’schemaofactantialandthematicrolesandYuriLotman’stheoryofthesemiosphere,MattiaThibaultandMariaKatsaridoustudythehorrorandhighfantasygenresbymakinguseofasemioticmethodologyorientedtowardtheanalysisofthearchitextualaspectsofvideogames.Theauthorsuseabroaddefinitionofarchitextualitythatimpliesintertextualityandhypertextualityinordertotakeintoaccountthenotionofgenreincomplexphenomenasuchastransmediastorytelling.Theydefendtheirargumentbyanalyzing

thetabletoprole-playinggameDungeons & DragonsandtheWarcraft,Silent Hill,andResident Evil

videogameseries

Paratextuality

Chapter 15

ingtheGenettianconceptofperitextinthegamestudiesfield,whencomparedwiththatofepitext.

In“Paratext:TheIn-BetweenofStructureandPlay”,DanielDunnenotesthelackofattentionconcern-xix

AfterdiscussingpriorworksonthetopicbygamescholarssuchasMiaConsalvo,PeterLunenfeld,andDavidJara,heremediesthesituationbyofferinganewdefinitionofparatextthatfocusesonperitextualanalysiswiththehelpofamodelconsideringthreelevelsofvideogameswhereparatextcanbefound:in-game,in-system,andin-world

Chapter 16

In“‘FootageNotRepresentative’:RedefiningParatextualityfortheAnalysisofOfficialCommunicationofVideoGames”,JanŠvelchdrawsonAlexanderR.Galloway’sworkoninterfacesinordertoputfor-wardareviseddefinitionofparatextuality.Thisredefinitiontakesintoaccounttherelationshipbetweenatextanditssocio-historicalrealityanditslinkstowidertextualecologies.Theauthorthenexaminesparatextualityinfoursamplegenresofofficialvideogamecommunication:trailers,infographics,of-ficialwebsites,andpatchnotes

Angenot,M.(1989).1889, un état du discours social.Longueuil,Canada:LePréambule.

Bakhtine,M.(1970).La poétique de Dostọevski.Paris,France:Seuil.

Bakhtine,M.(1978).Esthétique et théorie du roman.Paris,France:Gallimard.

Barthes,R.(1973).Le plaisir du texte.Paris,France:Seuil.

Barthes,R.(1974).Texte(théoriedu).Encyclopỉdia

Universalis.Retrievedfromhttp://www.universalis-edu.com/encyclopedie/theorie-du-texte

Bonk,J.(2014).Finishingthefight,onestepatatime:SerialityinBungie’sHalo.Eludamos gen),8(1),65–81.Retrievedfromhttp://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/view/vol8no1-5 Compagnon,A.(1979).La seconde main ou le travail de la citation.Paris,France:Seuil.

(Gưttin-Consalvo,M.(2003).Zelda rative.Television & New Media,4(3),321–334.

64andvideogamefans:Awalkthroughofgames,intertextuality,andnar-Dällenbach,L.(1976).Intertexteetautotexte.Poétique,(27),282-296.

Dena,C.(2009).Transmedia fictions: Theorizing the practice of expressing a fictional world across distinct media and environments(Unpublisheddoctoraldissertation).UniversityofSydney,Sydney,Australia.

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Dormans,J.(2006).Theworldisyours:IntertextualironyandsecondlevelreadingstrategiesinGrand theft auto Game Research,[Enligne]http://game-research.com/index.php/articles/the-world-is-yours-

intertextual-irony-and-second-level-reading-strategies-in-grand-theft-auto (Page consultée le 20 tembre2011)

sep-Duchet,C.,&Maurus,P.(2011).Un cheminement vagabond: Nouveaux entretiens sur la sociocritique.

Hutcheon,L.(2013).A theory of adaptation.London,UK;NewYork,NY:Routledge.

Jenkins,H.(2003).Transmedia storytelling: Moving characters from books to films to video games can make.RetrievedJune3,2015,fromhttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/401760/transmedia-

Klastrup,L.,&Tosca,S.(2013).Transmedial worlds: Rethinking cyberworld design.RetrievedMay

17,2015,fromhttp://www.itu.dk/people/klastrup/klastruptosca_transworlds.pdf

Kristeva,J.(1969).Sēmeiōtikē: Recherches pour une sémanalyse.Paris,France:Seuil.

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M.-C.Canova-Green(Eds.),Texte(s) et intertexte(s)(pp.219–232).Amsterdam,Netherland;Atlanta,

GA:Rodopi

Poor,N.(2012).Digitalelvesasaracialotherinvideogames:Acknowledgmentandavoidance.Games and Culture,7(5),375–396.

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Ricardou,J.(1971).Pour une théorie du nouveau roman.Paris,France:Seuil.

Ricardou,J.(1974).“ClaudeSimon”,textuellement.InJ.Ricardou(Ed.),Lire Claude Simon(pp.7–38).

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Riffaterre,M.(1979).La production du texte.Paris,France:Seuil.

Riffaterre,M.(1982).L’illusionréférentielle,InLittératureetréalité(pp.91-118).Paris,France:Seuil.Ryan,M.-L.(2008).Transfictionalityacrossmedia.InJ.Pier&J.A.Garcia(Eds.),Theorizingnarrativ-ity(pp.385-417).Berlin,Germany:deGruyter

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Acknowledgment



cifically,totheauthorsandreviewersthattookpartinthereviewprocess.Withouttheirsupport,thisbookwouldnothavebecomeareality

Theeditorswouldliketoacknowledgethehelpofallthepeopleinvolvedinthisprojectand,morespe-First,theeditorswouldliketothankeachoneoftheauthorsfortheircontributions.Oursinceregratitudegoestothechapter’sauthorswhocontributedtheirtimeandexpertisetothisbook

provementofquality,coherence,andcontentpresentationofchapters.Mostoftheauthorsalsoservedasreferees;wehighlyappreciatetheirdoubletask

Second,theeditorswishtoacknowledgethevaluablecontributionsofthereviewersregardingtheim-AdditionalthanksareduetoNolanBazinet(UniversitédeSherbrooke)forhisassistanceduringthelinguisticrevisionprocess

Section 1

Transmediality/Intermediality

as Dan Sinker’s The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel, which is a print collection of a

Arkham Epic

two-thousand-post Twitter feed that periodicals such as Wired and The Economist have mooted as “the

first real work of digital literature” (A T., 2011) On the other hand, the term “epic” has been slapped

on other works, such as the video games Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Disney’s Epic Mickey, which are perhaps

epic only in the popular sense lamented by the curators of Dictionary.com

Despite this renewed popular awareness, the epic as it has been conventionally understood has often been considered a dead, or hopelessly antiquated, genre This has been a tradition in literary scholarship

going back as far as the Poetics, in which Aristotle (1951) argued that the seriousness of Homer’s poetry

had already, by the fifth century BC, been supplanted in Greek culture by tragic drama But, here too, the epic refuses to be banished Not only have there been notable revivals of the classical epic poem in the hands of such geniuses as Virgil or Milton, but other literary forms, such as the novel, and even other media, such as film, have vied to be the inheritors of epic storytelling (Harrigan & Wardrip-Fruin, 2009; Bates, 2010; Phillips, 2012; Elliott, 2014) What makes all of these disparate works somehow, almost intuitively, “epic”? Is there some critical need that narratives of great scope fulfill across cultures? What does the epic look like in the twenty-first century, and what are the implications of its contemporary forms?This chapter will briefly outline a genre theory of the epic that is as applicable to the traditional epic

as it is to narrative works in new media, ranging from film and television to comic books and video games This theory will enable a definition of epic that allows critics to consider it on four separate levels of analysis, from the textual to the socio-historical The chapter will then deploy this definition

to show how a particular video game series, Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady Studios, 2009) and its sequels, can be critiqued as a cohesive epic The Arkham series reveals processes of intertextuality

and paratextuality that are particular to video games, and the complexities of adapting narrative material both to and from video games and films, novels, and comics Furthermore, the chapter will argue that

the Arkham games reveal the role of video games within contemporary, transnational capital, and that

they are a compelling way of modeling postmodern notions of space

BACKGROUND

A Theory of Genre across Media

Genres are not stable Pierre Bourdieu (1993) has noted how they are in a constant state of flux within what he calls the “field of cultural production”; the status of particular works or authors, according to Bourdieu, is determined partly by their “position-takings” within that field in relation to the other works and authors, and these positions influence the positions taken by works and authors that will follow More recently, critics have noted similar shifts in video game genres (Arsenault, 2009), and even entire media forms jockey for cultural supremacy within a dialectical logic of remediation (Bolter & Grusin, 1999) Therefore, before dealing specifically with the epic, a few general observations about genre are in order: how genres can evolve over time, and how a genre that develops within a particular socio-historical context can be extrapolated into other, sometimes vastly different, cultural contexts This can also help account for how generic categories are transferred across different media

Norman Fairclough’s (2003) critical discourse analysis offers a model for understanding genre along these trans-media lines Fairclough considers genres as types of discourse within social contexts, and this definition accords well with more traditional approaches from literary criticism that see genre as a

Arkham Epic

type of speech act (Nagy, 1999) Fairclough divides genres into three levels of increasing abstraction: first, the situated genre; second, the disembedded genre; and third, the pre-genre

Figure 1 illustrates these levels using the concept of “epic” as an example According to Fairclough,

a situated genre is specific to a discoursal context, and this is often where a particular genre finds its origin This is, in the case of the epic, the long, heroic poem that arises from an oral culture, with the

paradigmatic example being the Iliad or the Odyssey Although the literary tradition looks back to the works of Homer, it is easy to see this arising independently in similar contexts, as in the earlier Epic

of Gilgamesh or the later Beowulf In any event, this very specific type of epic can then become

“dis-embedded” from its origin to encompass a different type of practice An example would be an “epic narrative,” which would still be discoursal, but would include, in addition to heroic poetry, prose works such as novels, and even new media such as films, comic books, and video games This process of dis- and re-embedding accounts for the fact that, for instance, nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels were felt by many critics to have taken up the work of the classical epic (Bakhtin, 1981; Lukács, 1971) Finally, at the level of the pre-genre, the concept can be considered as an abstract idea that includes even predominantly non-discoursal activities and events This explains the current popular use of the term “epic” as anything that is generally big, important, or otherwise impressive: the epic battle, the epic football game, the “epic fail.”

A Theory of Epic and Its Symbolic Content

If this is how genres move from one culture and one medium, from being situated in one context to coming re-embedded in a new one, what features of the epic, in its original social context, have moved from ancient oral cultures into globalized, postmodern digital media? Although literary critics since

be-Figure 1 Illustration of Norman Fairclough’s three levels of genre, using “epic” as an example Source: The Author.

Arkham Epic

Aristotle have disagreed about the forms and uses of the epic, a number of similar ideas about what makes up the epic have recurred whenever the matter is debated (Arnott, in press-b, 2015): for instance, the epic is often noted for its “seriousness,” high formal quality, and broad range of action (Aristotle, 1951); it has greater meaning for a certain community (Lukács, 1971); it struggles for dominance over other, competing works (Bakhtin, 1981; Bourdieu, 1993; Moretti, 1996); and it concerns itself with the deeds of exceptional, but still mortal actors (Frye, 2000) A synthesis of these commonalities can provide a working definition of the epic: the epic is a disembedded, totalizing genre of narrative text;

it aspires to a qualitatively elevated style, and in its themes it looks beyond individual concerns to the concerns of a community Although commonly fictive, an epic narrative must draw upon and allude to

a greater body of symbolic material, which might be variously mythic, fictive, or historical (Arnott, in press-b, 2015) The epic strives to include as much of this material as possible – but, inevitably, it never quite can This explains the encyclopedic tendency of epic, as noted by various critics (Havelock, 1963; Moretti, 1996; Frye, 2000) Epics aspire to be the definitive expression of their subject, and therefore they necessarily attempt to represent or to create a totality, to encapsulate an entire culture or subculture within their narrative scope

Because of the epic’s ambitious range, it is useful to examine it at four distinct levels of analysis, from the narrowest to the broadest: these might be called the epos, the mythos, the ethos, and the cos-mos (Arnott, in press-b, 2015) Figure 2 outlines these levels, using groups of Batman texts and their relationships to each other as examples

First, there is the epos, namely the epic work itself as it is generally understood It is a narrative text,

of whatever medium, and it is constructed so that it fulfills certain formal criteria It is highly complex and cohesive when compared to similar works in the same medium It is regarded to be “high quality,” and the formal criteria determining that quality are specific to the affordances of the work’s particular medium and production context The “bigger” and “better” a work is, relative to its peers, the more “epic”

it generally is For example, the Dark Knight film trilogy – consisting of Batman Begins (Thomas et al., 2005), The Dark Knight (Roven et al., 2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (Thomas et al., 2012) – is far

longer than previous Batman films, and its story continues across its installments more so than the 1990s

Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher films Likewise, the Arkham video games are far more narratively ambitious and technically accomplished than earlier Batman games Even Batman: The Movie (Dozier,

1966) aspires to a higher technical and budgetary standard than the campy TV series it was spun off from, even if it is geared toward a much different audience

Next, the mythos: this includes the other narrative works from which the epos draws, or with which

it must otherwise contend Where the epos is primarily formal and textual, the level of the mythos is historical and paratextual; paratexts can be of especial importance for video games (Consalvo, 2007), and this is also the level at which intertextuality can most easily be seen to operate Crucially, once an epos is published or otherwise circulates, it then becomes part of the mythos for all works that follow:

if it is successful, it becomes a definitive version with which subsequent works must come to terms

For example, Tim Burton’s Batman (Peters & Guber, 1989) successfully redefined the character away

from the previous campy versions; it then became part of the mythos that the Nolan films either had to

incorporate or reject Similarly, the Dark Knight trilogy in turn was both influential upon, but also ferentiated from, the Arkham games.

dif-The third level of symbolic content is the ethos This is the range of possible representations, both within the world of narrative fiction(s) and within the given society of the epos As the level that lies

Arkham Epic

between the literalism of media texts and external reality, the ethos also plots the gap between the world and our understanding of it, and is as such ideological (Althusser, 2001) The ethos is therefore the space within which the very definition of what constitutes a “legitimate” narrative or medium within

a particular social context is contested For instance, the ethos of Batman includes certain notions of justice (e.g., Batman does not kill) that are shared amongst all versions, but not every version can en-

compass all possible types of representation Compare the camp sensibilities of the 1960s Batman or Schumacher’s Batman and Robin (MacGregor-Scott, 1997) with the earnest, hyper-masculine Batman

of the Dark Knight films or Arkham games.

Finally, the broadest level of analysis is the cosmos This is the “totality” which the epos represents (or is believed to represent); it is the level of culture as that term is broadly understood An epic can be

an epic of an entire civilization, or of a small subset of a particular society The former is, for obvious reasons, much harder to create successfully, especially considering the much greater scope and larger population of the contemporary world when compared to ancient societies It is therefore possible to conceive of various different scales of totality as required, defined by a particular time and place; the

greater this totality, the more “epic” the work is In the case of the Dark Knight trilogy or the Arkham

series, the cosmos is early-twenty-first century America, with Gotham City as a fictionalized stand-in for the contemporary urban environment Although the fan base for Batman films and games is neces-

Figure 2 Four levels of analyzing the epic, showing the relationship between selected Batman texts Source: The Author.

Arkham Epic

sarily less than the population as a whole, sales figures for tickets and discs of each entry number in the

tens of millions When one considers that it is possible that more people went to see The Dark Knight Rises in movie theatres than the entire population of the Roman Empire at its height, it is clear that even

today’s “niche” audiences can be significantly large.1

THE ARKHAM VIDEO GAMES AS AN EPIC OF THE BATMAN MEGATEXT

The challenges raised by studying large-scale, long-running popular media franchises have been well noted by scholars in recent years As the cultural dominance of narrative media such as film, comics, and video games over traditional literature has increased, there has been an ever-greater expansion of what counts as a “text,” and, therefore, a concurrent expansion in the scope of “intertextuality” within those new-media texts This has not, on the whole, been conceptually problematic; as Allen (2011) argues, frameworks such as Bolter and Grusin’s (1999) “remediation” theory can be considered to be a kind of intertextuality by another name Furthermore, intertextuality can illuminate processes of adaptation of particular narratives from one medium to another (Hutcheon, 2006), and, as Brooker (2012, p 50) has noted, theories of adaptation can be particularly useful to show how the Batman films have drawn from many earlier sources for their plots Yet these analyses have neglected to consider video games, which only recently have achieved a narrative complexity comparable with older media, and which are increas-ingly seen as equal to those media in artistic legitimacy More importantly, though, adaptation theory becomes less useful for considering the narrative texts within the Batman franchise as a whole; when large numbers of Batman texts in all media are being produced simultaneously, exchanging narrative elements within a recognizable but often contradictory fictional “universe,” there no longer appears to

be a linear process of adaptation from an original to derivative works

In a discussion of the various Star Trek series, Daniel Bernardi has described that franchise as a

“mega-text,” namely, “a relatively coherent and seemingly unending enterprise of televisual, filmic, auditory, and written texts.” (1998, p 7) This concept of the megatext, originally mooted in rather dif-ferent form as the shared assumptions of science fiction literature (Le Guin & Attebery, 1993), is quite similar to the concept of mythos as defined in the sections above, and is perhaps a useful middle ground between individual texts in a particular narrative universe and texts from the broader culture that may nevertheless have an intertextual relation to them The curation of such a megatext is an example of what Henry Jenkins would later call “transmedia storytelling,” the process of telling related narratives across diverse media, ideally without redundancies and with each medium playing to its supposed strengths (2006, pp 95-96) However, the longevity and sheer number of Batman comics alone – other media notwithstanding – have long since made this process of complex storytelling cumbersome, even when it is planned and executed well The recent spate of remakes, reboots, and resets of entire fictional universes in many media franchises speaks to the challenges of constantly producing more and more new stories However, this narrative turnover also provides more opportunities for new epics to appear and to challenge the definitive status of earlier works For this reason, the remainder of this chapter will

focus on the Arkham video game series as only the latest attempt to corral the Batman “megatext” into a

cohesive shape, showing how it achieves a kind of epic status, according the model outlined above, and what some of the implications that has for issues of representation and industry practice

Arkham Epic

The Arkham Series as a Video Game Epos

The Arkham series consists of four main games: Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City (Rocksteady Studios, 2011), Batman: Arkham Origins (Warner Bros Games Montreal, 2013), and Batman: Arkham Knight (Rocksteady Studios, 2015), each released for PC and most major video game consoles In the Arkham games, players control Batman across his career, from his first clash with his arch-nemesis the Joker in Arkham Origins, to the Joker’s apparent death and its aftermath in Arkham City and Arkham Knight The history of Arkham Asylum, which houses many of Batman’s criminally

insane adversaries, plays an important role throughout the series: it is the setting for the first eponymous game, and the theme of the madhouse as a metonym for Gotham City runs throughout the series The

idea is even made literal in Arkham City, in which part of Gotham is walled off to become a super-prison

of that name run by private security Each game in the series progressively has greater ambitions in its

depiction of the storyworld and space of Gotham: Arkham Asylum is limited to the Asylum itself and its surrounding grounds, but Origins and Knight allow players to roam freely over an open-world version

of much of Gotham City proper This stands in marked contrast from previous Batman video games, which were mostly platformer adaptations of Batman movies and TV series, beginning with the 1989 Tim Burton film

In terms of gameplay and interface, the Arkham series also vastly outclasses its predecessors Play

is balanced between various modes: a complex hand-to-hand combat system that is easy to progress along but difficult to master, stealth encounters in which Batman stalks and evades his enemies, and free-roaming that requires spatial exploration and puzzle-solving In all these gameplay modes, players are encouraged to use the full range of Batman’s trademark gadgetry, from Batarangs to grappling guns;

Arkham Knight adds combat with the Batmobile as well Only the video game adaptation of Batman Begins, released concurrently with the film in 2005, comes close to the Arkham series’ range of activ- ity Moreover, the Arkham games, like contemporary series such as Mass Effect or Assassin’s Creed,

deploy a blend of cinematics, gameplay, and pseudo-historical codices to tell its story fully (as well as

to provide some redundancies or references for more casual players) In this way it represents an tive attempt at merging what Lev Manovich considers the “natural enemies” of narrative and database

effec-in one medium, the video game (2001, p 225) Indeed, the Arkham games fulfill some of the specific

conditions under which Marie-Laure Ryan has argued that database and narrative can be reconciled; these include revisiting familiar storylines, using modular narratives, foregrounding the setting of the

story, and employing transparent design (2006, p 149) Thus the Arkham series, in encompassing not

only the largest story of any Batman game to date, but doing so with the greatest technical ambitions, can be considered an epos of the Batman megatext

The Arkham games have, on the whole, been recognized as succeeding at these ambitions of scope and quality Arkham Asylum was highly praised, and many in the gaming press called it the greatest Bat- man game and even the best game based on any comic book (Reiner, 2009; Miller, 2010); Arkham City

was lauded even more, with many reviewers ranking it not only among the best games of the year, but

of all time (Whishnov, 2011) Arkham Origins, made by a different developer, received mixed reviews

on account of some technical issues and the fact that some felt it was more of a re-tread of the previous entries (Kollar, 2013) However, despite being “an incremental installment, not a transformative one,”

(Narcisse, 2013) it was still considered a worthy entry in the series, with sales comparable to Arkham Asylum, but less than Arkham City (Martin, 2013) Initial reactions2 to Arkham Knight, meanwhile, de-

scribed the final game in the series as a return to form in both scale and technical achievement, “an epic

Arkham Epic

and satisfying conclusion to a groundbreaking series that proved a pop-culture icon could be thrillingly brought to life in a virtual world” (Lang, 2015); nevertheless, critics expressed some reservations about the storyline and the militarization of the Batmobile (Maiberg, 2015) or the relative emptiness of Gotham when compared to the environments of other open-world games (Walker, 2015)

The Complex Mythos of the Arkham Games

The Arkham games could not hope to encompass all the preceding Batman stories in comics and other

media, but what they do include, and how successful they are in doing so, speaks to the series’ epic status

The first game expands on the premise of Grant Morrison and David McKean’s graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (1989) In that story, the Joker takes over Arkham Asylum

(on April Fool’s Day, no less), forcing Batman to traverse the grounds and interact with many of his classic adversaries Via a wealth of literary allusions and postmodern psychology, Batman’s journey is presented as an extended metaphor of his own psychological problems Although Morrison and McKean

do not get an in-game credit, Batman: Arkham Asylum’s writer, Paul Dini, has acknowledged that their

work, along with that of other seminal Batman artists Neal Adams and Frank Miller, was an influence

on the game (LeTendre, 2009) More generally, the Arkham series also includes much narrative material

from current DC Comics continuity, such as characters, like Bane, who have been introduced relatively recently, or revamped versions of long-established villains, like the Penguin

Paul Dini’s work scripting the first two Arkham games is also significant because Dini first made his name as one of the main writers on Batman: The Animated Series (Radomski et al., 1992), the 1990s

TV show which itself was a landmark in the Batman franchise and set a new standard for superhero

car-toons But it is not just Dini’s presence that lends added credibility to the Arkham games: actors Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill reprised their Animated Series roles as Batman and the Joker, respectively3;

even though they were replaced by younger-sounding voice actors in Arkham Origins, their now-iconic interpretations were closely imitated Conroy returned for Arkham Knight, and so did Hamill, in a sur- prise reprise despite the Joker’s apparent death in Arkham City.

Other elements of the Arkham games aim to incorporate a wide range of material into a new,

defini-tive synthesis The series’ music, for example, recalls previous Batman film scores and other incidental pieces to good effect Nick Arundel and Ron Fish’s music for the first two games blends stylistic features from both the Nolan and Burton films: the use of rhythmic, string-based ostinatos recalls Hans Zimmer’s music, while the motifs are reminiscent of the alternatingly brooding and triumphant choral melodies of

Danny Elfman’s music Arundel’s title theme for Arkham City is perhaps the clearest example of this: it begins with a brass phrase expanded from the two-note motif for Batman from the Dark Knight trilogy,

and crescendos with a phrase similar to the ascending major chord which begins Batman’s theme in

(and finishes the finale of) the 1989 film Christopher Drake’s music for Arkham Origins, which Rolling Stone praised as an “epic score” that “rivals anything from the films” (Brukman, 2013), continued in

that tradition; it also expanded the Batman soundscape with allusions to classics like “The Carol of the

Bells” and “The Thieving Magpie” (in a fight scene recalling Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange).

So the Arkham series clearly takes from a wide variety of previous Batman films, comics, and other

media But another measure of its success as an epos of Batman is how much of an influence it has already had on the mythos of later works The character of Harley Quinn, the Joker’s sidekick/abused girlfriend, is a cogent example of this Quinn is unusual in that she first appeared not in the comics, but in

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Batman: The Animated Series – another measure of the influence of that series She appeared in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, voiced again by Arleen Sorkin, the actress who had originated the character

But instead of the traditional harlequin’s costume that Quinn had worn on television and in subsequent

comic-book appearances through the 2000s, in the Arkham series her look was radically redesigned

Quinn sported dyed pigtails and a punk aesthetic, and this became her new look across multiple media,

from the regular DC Comics continuity to her appearance in the spin-off film Suicide Squad (Johns et

al., 2016) This new version revived interest in the character, although it also alienated some longtime fans with what some considered pandering to the tastes of teenage boys (Riesman, 2015) Yet regard-less of whether her video game appearance is simply “edgier” or is symptomatic of a double standard

of female representation in AAA video games, it is clear that the Arkham series has already left a mark

on the Batman texts that have come in its wake

The games have also spawned tie-in comics and spin-off games that flesh out the backstory

surround-ing the main installments of the Arkham series, in a textbook example of Jenkins’ transmedia storytellsurround-ing

theory The motivations in this case are primarily promotional and commercial Each game has had at

least one comic book prequel story published in the lead-up to its release; Arkham City, in particular, has had three separate miniseries, and there has even been a direct-to-video animated film, Batman: Assault on Arkham (Melniker et al., 2014), which was set between the events of Arkham Origins and Arkham Asylum A number of Arkham-branded mobile games have been released, as well as Arkham Origins Blackgate (Armature Studio, 2013), which was made for handheld consoles like the Nintendo

DS and Playstation Portable What is interesting here is how all these new texts support the “main”

Arkham games: they are supplementary works not only because they are meant to stoke interest in the

AAA releases, but because they do not aspire to the scope or qualitative standard of epics in their own right, regardless of what their medium of origin is The comics are mostly digital-only releases, by less

well-known writers and artists, while the games are not as technically advanced as the main Arkham

games, featuring simplified gameplay and more rudimentary storylines

The Arkham Ethos and Its Limits

The corpus of narrative texts that inform the Arkham series, and which are in turn generated by it, still has its limits This is the ethos of the Arkham games, or the range of their representational possibilities

The concept is useful for anticipating innovations and original content that might appear outside of the established mythos, as well as explaining why certain older material is either left out or actively suppressed.Many stories about superheroes have a similar ethos, and lend themselves easily to works of epic scale, because of how the relationship between the hero and his or her world must be represented Northrop Frye’s theory of modes defines this relationship rather well, and it can help explain why modern comic-book superheroes have supplanted the figures of ancient mythology in terms of their cultural relevance Frye outlines how fictions can be classified by “the hero’s power of action,” and this is the third of his five classifications of that power:

If superior in degree to other men but not to his natural environment, the hero is a leader He has thority, passions, and powers of expression far greater than ours, but what he does is subject both to social criticism and to the order of nature This is the hero of the high mimetic mode, of most epic and tragedy, and is primarily the kind of hero that Aristotle had in mind [in the Poetics] (2000, pp 33-34)

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Clearly, Batman himself fits this description, and his pre-eminence as a superhero without any

“superpowers” as such makes him perhaps the most famous example of this paradigm in mainstream comics and film Moreover, in the medium of the video game, this relationship is easily replicated, and even mirrored by the player-avatar’s parallel relationship to the algorithmic logic of the game In

action-adventure games like the Arkham series, the player’s skill increases with each challenge that is

overcome and the possibility of more complex and virtuosic play increases as more bat-gadgets and combat moves are unlocked Ideally, this occurs in a smooth progression, maintaining a state of “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), as the avatar never outclasses his on-screen enemies to a degree that would make the game too easy The player only exerts total control over the avatar’s environment (if at all) once all tasks and side-missions are exhausted, once every villain is defeated The end of the game’s narrative thereby coincides with the player’s complete freedom to maneuver throughout the designed gamespace This is in marked contrast with games that facilitate a contest between players or teams of

players, as in Super Smash Bros or League of Legends, or with simulation games that give the player godlike powers over the gamespace, such as The Sims The player’s range of action within the world of

a narrative-based video game makes the medium particularly fertile ground for the telling of large-scale stories with heroic protagonists, and why even popularizing critics at some level recognize the “epic” potential of video games (McGonigal, 2011, p 98)

In a more narrow sense, the ethos of the Arkham games overlaps in many ways with the Dark Knight film trilogy For instance, in the Arkham games there is a heavy emphasis on technology, which, though

not always “realistic” as such, is at least plausible or logically extrapolated from currently available technology Forensic DNA analysis, computer hacking, and infrared tracking are all parts of the series’ gameplay, and the storyworlds of both the games and the films highlight issues of wealth inequality in the distribution of transnational capital and the prosecution and incarceration of domestic terrorists On

the other hand, the Arkham series – in keeping with its comic-book progenitors – includes within its

representational possibilities elements of Gothic revival architecture, something more in keeping with the look of the Burton films than the more recent Nolan interpretations Because of this, side-missions such

as solving the “murder” of Cyrus Pinkney, the nineteenth-century architectural wunderkind responsible

for the look of the Arkham series’ Gotham, do not feel out of place, despite being an original

contribu-tion to the overall Batman mythos

And yet Arkham’s ethos rejects other representations Will Brooker has noted that Batman texts have

for decades fluctuated between the “dark,” gritty representations of the character and the “rainbow,”

camp versions (2012, pp 215-216), and Arkham falls squarely into the former category This is evident

throughout the games, but it is particularly notable when the available character “skins” are considered For the first playthrough of each game, the Batsuit hews closely to the look of the “darker” comics and

films, with some variations – for instance, in Origins and Knight Batman more closely resembles the armored version of the Dark Knight trilogy, while in Arkham Asylum, his suit has longer “ears” in keep-

ing with the more Gothic-inflected comics However, in each game, various alternate Batsuits from a variety of eras and media can be unlocked, either as in-game rewards or purchase incentives, and these

are therefore presented as “good” objects within the Arkham ethos Thus players can dress their avatar

in such “classic” outfits as the 1970s Neal Adams Batman or the 1980s Frank Miller Batman; even

cartoon skins, such as those mimicking the look of Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond,

are available, as they still seem, despite their vastly different graphic style, to be in keeping with the

representational possibilities of the Arkham world Missing, however, are the “camp” Batsuits: there is

no opportunity to play as Batman from the Joel Schumacher films, wearing the sculpted-rubber Batsuits

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notorious for their conspicuous nipples and codpieces But, as Brooker notes (2012, p 216), the repressed elements of the broader Batman megatext still resurface, and that is the case even here: relegated only

to a Playstation-exclusive add-on pack, the 1960s Adam West Batsuit was recently made available as

a skin for Arkham Origins and Arkham Knight But it is important to note that Batman still appears as

much more “realistic” and muscular than West ever did, and that the skin’s face does not use the actor’s

likeness Thus even at the representational fringes of the Arkham series, its ethos cannot quite break

free of certain limitations

Arkham and Mapping the Postmodern Cosmos

There is of course much else that exists beyond the representational world of the Arkham series, but

like any epic, the games provide resonance within their social context and reflect broader hermeneutic

trends In particular, the Arkham games exhibit many features common to postmodern texts, both in

ways particular to the games themselves and also in ways that are shared by other video games that aim

to represent the totality of contemporary, global life

Postmodernism as a concept has had a long and contradictory history, meaning different things in various academic and artistic contexts Most useful for the present purpose is the work of those critics who view postmodernism as a particular “condition” (Harvey, 1990) or dominant cultural logic (Jameson, 1991); according to this view, postmodernism describes the tendency among cultural productions across

a wide range of media, starting around the 1960s and 1970s, to model a new experience of space and time as the result of the spread of transnational capital Postmodern texts tend, among other things, to create pastiches of historical material, to encourage endless plays of signification, and to appeal to frag-mented, dispersed, and hybrid audiences More broadly, there is a greater emphasis in such works on

conceptual space to the detriment of coherent, historical time The Arkham series serves as an exemplary

model of how this construction of space works; one example is the quintessentially postmodern re-use,

by developer Warner Bros Games Montreal, of real Montreal graffiti to create mashed-up intertexts on

the buildings of Gotham in Arkham Origins (Sinervo, 2015) But, more significantly, the Arkham series

also serves as a model for players to interpret the world outside the game As such, it becomes one way

of cognitively mapping postmodernity for its players

The “cognitive map” was originally a psychological concept (Tolman, 1948), but it has been adapted by other disciplines over the last several decades It appears to have come into particular vogue in the 1980s,

most notably in Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, Or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), but also, for example, in Robert Jackall’s classic study of corporate management, Moral Mazes (2010);

not coincidentally, cognitive mapping has even been deployed in various forms specifically to critique Batman texts over the past twenty-five years (e.g., Collins, 1991; Taylor, 2010) Thus the cognitive map seems to fulfill a function that conventional representation has recently appeared less and less capable

of doing For Jameson, cognitive mapping is the key to any possible “political art” in postmodernism, because such mapping can, at least in principle, begin to make sense of the enormous complexity of contemporary culture and social organization (1991, p 54) It serves as a way to give coherent meaning

to increasingly fragmented and disjointed experiences

All the Arkham games require their players to engage in a kind of cognitive mapping in order to

prog-ress through and complete the story First, mapping in the literal sense takes place: as the player explores Arkham Island or the districts of Gotham, the in-game map expands, aiding navigation and automatically marking locations and goals This auto-mapping feature is common in most contemporary games and can

has its roots in the Metroid series, most notably in Metroid Prime (Retro Studios, 2002) and its sequels

(Arnott, in press-a) Thus no single way of looking at Batman’s surroundings is sufficient, whether it is for finding hidden entryways, or for tracking and disabling multiple enemies Moreover, the blending

of these playing modes seems far less contrived than in other games, not least because the logic behind Batman’s premise (a hero in the high mimetic mode, both physically and technologically) is so congru-ent with such a treatment of space and the hero/avatar’s movement within it When the various viewing modes are considered in addition to the repeated referral to maps, it becomes clear that something akin to Jameson’s cognitive mapping is at work: it is the representation of a totality, intelligible only in discrete, incomplete, and yet complementary semiotic systems, which are then deployed as a kind of postmodern triangulation The conquest of conceptual space is the ultimate goal – the game is only complete when the player has visited, scanned, and mastered every available environment

It is not a coincidence that in Batman media since the 1990s, Gotham City has been depicted as a series of islands – that is to say, physically fragmented and isolated spaces Likewise, Arkham Asylum began, from its introduction in the 1970s comics through to the mid-1990s, as a country estate on the outskirts of Gotham, but it has regularly been depicted in recent years as located on its own island ad-

jacent to the city: this happens in, for example, Batman Begins, and it continues through to the current Fox TV series Gotham Figure 3 shows how Batman: Arkham Asylum is mapped as an island connected

to Gotham by a bridge in keeping with this trend Thus Arkham, long since a microcosm of the ills of Gotham, also serves as a spatial metonym for the city, especially since each game in the series features

an increasingly larger, yet still insular, gamespace that serves as a figurative madhouse In Arkham City, the eponymous super-prison is on another of Gotham’s islands, as shown in Figure 4 In Arkham Origins,

two islands of Gotham are again presented as the playground of super-criminals, and still more islands

are added in Arkham Knight The construction of video game worlds as islands, often necessary given the

technological limitations of (ironically-named) open-world games, has long been noted (Juul, 2005), and

it is most spectacularly evident in Grand Theft Auto V’s (Rockstar North, 2013) city of Los Santos and

the surrounding Blaine County But this feature of current large-scale games can have a deeper meaning and reveal some possibilities for different ways of understanding the wider world

When fictional narratives are considered as a kind of representational experiment, connected and subject to multiple articulations even as they are isolated from the totality of lived experience, the “space”

of Gotham becomes newly illuminating The Arkham games become one possible layer on a cognitive

map of our world Fredric Jameson’s work is instructive again in this context, specifically his writings

on the idea of Utopia in science fiction and its connection to imagining political projects Science tion, in its depiction of utopias and dystopias alike, is especially suited to this kind of mapping; it is no coincidence that the growth of science fiction as a literary genre roughly parallels the social disruption

fic-of industrialization and post-industrial organization, nor is it coincidental that Batman narratives have

for decades flirted with science-fiction elements For Jameson in Archaeologies of the Future (2005),

any new global Utopia must still be represented in some way, since “representability, or the possibility

of mapping, is a very significant matter for practical politics” (p 221) Jameson describes how certain

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utopian visions require absolute mobility between non-communicating communities The best way to imagine this in spatial terms is as a chain of islands:

I therefore propose a more accessible or visualizable form of this imagined global system, about which

we must remember that its novelty as a Utopian mechanism consisted in the non-communicability or tagonism inherent in its component parts, a novelty which had the immediate effect of excluding rhetorics

an-of communication, multiculturalism and even empire (in the recent sense an-of Americanization) In this spirit, I propose to think of our autonomous and non-communicating Utopias – which can range from wandering tribes and settled villages all the way to great city-states or regional ecologies – as so many islands: a Utopian archipelago, islands in the net, a constellation of discontinuous centers, themselves internally decentered At once this metaphorical perspective begins to suggest a range of possible analo- gies, which combine the properties of isolation with those of relationship (p 221)

Gotham-as-archipelago seems to work as a small-scale, representational version of this same utopian principle: a way to imagine and map possible social arrangements In Jameson’s discussion of the utopian archipelago, communities must be related – insofar as people must have the ability to move between them

as they like; but the communities must be isolated too, so that they can evolve into distinctly different

Figure 3 Map of Arkham Island and its buildings

Adapted from Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady Studios, 2009) Source: The Author.