Digital Game as Cyberdrama: ‘Alice in Wonderland’ Cover Image

Bir Siberdrama Biçimi Olarak Dijital Oyun: ‘Alice Harikalar Diyarında’ Örneği
Digital Game as Cyberdrama: ‘Alice in Wonderland’

Author(s): Özge Baydaş Sayılgan
Subject(s): Media studies, Film / Cinema / Cinematography, Drama
Published by: Uluslararası Kıbrıs Üniversitesi
Keywords: Digital game; cyberdrama; narrativity; interactive story; new media;

Summary/Abstract: As a product of cultural industry, digital games taking place more and more in daily life activities and with its dramatic potential, being subject to theoretical discussions shaped by the researches from different scientific disciplines during 90’s, are accepted as the new storytellers of ‘new media’ which come forward with its interactive quality. Looking at digital games from a ‘narrative’ perspective, J. Murray(1997)’s ‘cyberdrama’ and M. Mateas’ (2004) ‘interactive drama poetics’ concepts, evokes ‘interactive drama’ definition shaped by technological possibilities of cyberspace. Within the scope of this research, it’s aimed to follow the formal transformation to cyberdrama of a selected story presented in reading, watching and playing activities both in historical process and today. As the sample determined within this research, the novel ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (Carroll, 1865), and its cinema and digital game adaptations’ (Burton, 2010; McGee, 2011) narrative structures are analysed. The study’s main problematic is to question the transformation of ‘narrative’ (epic) structure to the ‘representative’ (dramatic) structure on film screen and to cyberdramatical structure on game screen with its interactive images and story. To question if the digital game text, calling continuously the user activity, is bringing or not a contextual changing in the basic story’s coming to prominence for this research. In this context, archetypal character and plot structures and dramatic structure components are used as notions referenced for narrative analysis and comparison of the adapted texts.

  • Issue Year: 18/2012
  • Issue No: 72
  • Page Range: 113-134
  • Page Count: 22
  • Language: Turkish