Embodied Narratives in Video Games: The Stories We Write as We Play

• Main Author: Sichter, Patrick John Harrington
• Format: Others
• Published: CSUSB ScholarWorks 2016
• Subjects: Video Games; Embodiment; Narrative; Stories; Composition; Literature; Digital Humanities; Other Rhetoric and Composition
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/366; https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1363&context=etd

ABSTRACT This article explores the nature of narrative in video games, and how it can be applied to the contemporary classroom to help teach literature and composition. Specifically, it is concerned with the idea of embodiment in video games. First proposed by theorist James Gee, embodiment is a word describing the phenomenon wherein a player inhabits the character that s/he plays. This article takes the idea of embodiment a step further, by introducing the idea of the embodied narrative, the idea that players do not only embody their characters, but those characters’ stories as well, and are composing unique, personal stories as they play. This article also explores the importance of narrative in teaching writing, as narrative and stories are fundamental to the ways in which we think and learn. It proposes that, because video games are a literary medium in which composition is actively taking place, they have the potential to be used in literature and composition classrooms alongside, or even in place of, more traditional methods of teaching. In addition, they can serve as an excellent way of integrating the study of narrative into the composition classroom.