Video Game Characters and Transmedia Storytelling: The Dynamic Game Character

By Joleen Blom

Characters are a vital aspect of today's transmedia practices. Combining theories on fictional persons from Japanese and Euro-American practices, this book discusses video game characters embedded in our popular media culture in which they are constantly produced and re-imagined. This book introduces the dynamic game character, a type of game character with a development structure that consists of multiple outcomes in a game. Through their actions and choices, players can influence these game characters' identities and affect their possible destinies. Games subvert the idea that fictional persons must maintain a coherent identity. This book shows that dynamic game characters challenge strategies of top-down control through close readings of the Mass Effect series, Persona 5, Hades, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and more. It is directed to all scholars interested in the topics of transmedia storytelling, video games, characters, and Japanese narratology.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9463722955
• ISBN13: 9789463722957
• Release Date: October 2023
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"