Narrative space in videogames : the representation of the virtual space as a new narrative mode in Entertainment Games and Cultural Games

Publisher: FedOA - Federico II University Press 

Series: Beyond accessibility. Cultural Heritage for All

Pages: 323

Language: Italian

NBN: http://nbn.depositolegale.it/resolver.pl?nbn=urn:nbn:it:unina-29631

Abstract: The videogame is the emblematic contemporary medium that invite to think about man's new ways of making knowledge and experience of the world. Video-gaming means for the user to access the writing of a spatial narrative, consisting of virtual environments to navigate, actions to perform, and multimedia representations to interact with. Today, the videogame is also beginning to be adopted in museum institutions, which are experimenting innovative languages in order to actualize their own way of telling the artworks and collections, offering more interactive experiences appropriate for new cultural audiences. To ignore this new narrative mode would mean for museums to create a barrier towards a large audience and, consequently, to hinder the cultural and communicative action they are called upon to provide. The videogame, in fact, can become a tool capable of increasing museum accessibility: the digital one, through the use of everyday technologies; the cognitive one, by reducing the sense of cultural inadequacy and emotional detachment for those audiences, especially younger ones, who do not identify with traditional methods of cultural transmission and who are stimulated by experiences guided by factors such as discovery, free exploration, interaction and immersion; and the physical-perceptual one, as it is capable of creating new forms of relationship between virtual game space and physical museum space. The book therefore reflects on the need to deal more methodically and systematically with the spatial narrative model used in the new medium, making visual procedural maps for its aware use in both Entertainment Games and Cultural Games. The research analyzes the virtual game space as a device for organizing narrative elements that can activate important parts of the player's interpretive process, as a tool for constructing museum-related stories and creating innovative experiences of Cultural Heritage fruition.