Abstract
In recognition of the central place that the concept of tragedy holds in the historical understanding of culture and society, this paper features an analysis of its presence, current state, and value in the digital environments of the postmodern era, with special attention to videogames. Thus, the overcoming of a classic model of tragedy in the cybertextual condition is first determined, along with the discursive dimension underlying said overcoming. To this end a theoretical statement to the issue of tragedy is proposed, from the perspective of the cybertext as procedural rhetoric. This will establish the formulation of a semiotic analytical model that problematizes Greimas’ actantial system under the light of the digital and interactive reality of videogames. To avoid this constraint, we propose to attach a new variable to the base of the generative trajectory: the “configurative synthesis,” product of the so-called “gaming/playing function.” This addition will integrate the figures of the game and the player in the dynamic distinction of the “quasi-Actant.” Finally, a sample of 79 cases will be observed in regards to the implications of the cybertextual notion of tragedy to the narrative and discourse of videogames.
Appendix
No. | Title | Year | Developer |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Vigilance 1.0 | 2001 | Martin Le Chevallier |
2 | Real Lives | 2002 | Educational Simulations |
3 | September 12th: A Toy World | 2003 | NewsGaming |
4 | JFK Reloaded | 2004 | Traffic Software |
5 | Super Columbine Massacre RPG! | 2005 | Danny Ledonne |
6 | The Marriage | 2006 | Rod Humble |
7 | McDonald’s Videogame | 2006 | Molleindustria |
8 | Darfur is Dying | 2006 | Take Action Games |
9 | Oil God | 2006 | Arcade Wire |
10 | Passage | 2007 | Jason Rohrer |
11 | Pandemic | 2007 | Dark Realm Studios |
12 | Points of Entry | 2007 | Persuasive Games |
13 | Grand Theft Auto IV | 2008 | Rockstar Games |
14 | Sweet Pool | 2008 | Nitro+Chiral |
15 | Braid | 2008 | Number None |
16 | Oiligarchy | 2008 | Molleindustria |
17 | Psychosomnium | 2008 | Cactus |
18 | Bars of Black and White | 2009 | Gregory Weir |
19 | Don’t Look Back | 2009 | Distractionware |
20 | Gray | 2009 | Intuition Games |
21 | The Company of Myself | 2009 | Eli Piilonen |
22 | Custody | 2009 | Akrasia |
23 | Everyday the Same Dream | 2009 | Molleindustria |
24 | The Path | 2009 | Tale of Tales |
25 | Lose/Lose | 2009 | Zack Gage |
26 | One Chance | 2010 | Akward Silence Games |
27 | There is No Game | 2010 | Kamizoto |
28 | Prior | 2010 | Krang Games |
29 | Loved | 2010 | Alexander Ocias |
30 | The Arm | 2010 | Tipp |
31 | Covetous | 2010 | Austin Breed |
32 | Inmortall | 2010 | Armor Games |
33 | Jeff Koons Must Die!!! | 2011 | Hunter Jonakin |
34 | Let There Be Smite | 2011 | Pippin Barr |
35 | The End of Us | 2011 | Dikaffe |
36 | Shitty Fucking Art Game | 2011 | Haunted Bees |
37 | Sweatshop | 2011 | Littleloud |
38 | Spent | 2011 | McKinney |
39 | Penny Girl | 2011 | Abaraya |
40 | Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment | 2012 | Pippin Barr |
41 | A Sad Tale | 2012 | Lurk |
42 | Jeremy | 2012 | Mike McDee |
43 | Spec Ops: The Line | 2012 | Yager Development |
44 | Unmanned | 2012 | Molleindustria |
45 | Imscared: A Pixelated Nightmare | 2012 | Ivan Zanotti |
46 | Loss | 2013 | Amidos |
47 | Press [X] to Give Up | 2013 | Bram Michielsen et al. |
48 | Depression Quest | 2013 | The Quinnspiracy |
49 | 400 Years | 2013 | Armor Games |
50 | Certain Defeat | 2013 | Leon Arnott |
51 | Pretentious Game | 2013 | Keybol Games |
52 | Reunion | 2013 | Maan Ashgar et al. |
53 | You Were Hallucinating the Whole Time | 2013 | Kazemi |
54 | 10 Seconds in Hell | 2013 | Amy Dentata |
55 | Naya’s Quest | 2013 | Terry Cavanagh |
56 | The Novelist | 2013 | Orthogonal Games |
57 | Papers, Please | 2013 | Lucas Pope |
58 | Save the Date | 2013 | Chris Cornell |
59 | The Stanley Parable | 2013 | Galactic Café |
60 | Calm Time | 2013 | Goos Entertainment |
61 | Neocolonialism | 2013 | Subaltern Games |
62 | The Slaying of Sandy Hook Elementary | 2013 | PigPen |
63 | Actual Sunlight | 2014 | Will O’Neill |
64 | The Dead Rest Beneath Us | 2014 | Florian Veltman |
65 | Exoptable Money | 2014 | Wertpol |
66 | Ladylike | 2014 | E. Butler and N. Freeman |
67 | I Love You | 2014 | Da Neel |
68 | I’m Null | 2014 | Zak Ayles |
69 | Entire Screen on One Game | 2014 | Tom Murphy VII |
70 | To Build a Better Mousetrap | 2014 | Molleindustria |
71 | Queers in Love at the End of the World | 2014 | Anna Anthropy |
72 | Life is Strange | 2015 | Dontnod Entertainment |
73 | A Good Gardener | 2015 | Turn Follow |
74 | Jostle Parent | 2015 | Pippin Barr |
75 | Emily is Away | 2015 | Kyle Seeley |
76 | Masochisia | 2015 | Oldblood |
77 | Presentable Liberty | 2015 | Wertpol |
78 | Obéissance | 2015 | Merritt Kopas |
79 | Everyday Misanthrope | 2015 | Liz England |
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Dr. Manuel Ángel Vázquez Medel and Dr. Manuel A. Broullón-Lozano for their kind recommendations in the first drafts of this paper.
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- Semiotic approaches to “traditional music”, musical/poetic structures, and ethnographic research
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Spontaneous emergence of language-like and music-like vocalizations from an artificial protolanguage
- A sociological analysis of moves in the formation of Iranian epitaphs
- Sign systems: The dawn of earliest mankind
- L’ambigüité structurale et l’acquisition des compétences linguistiques en français en passant par la langue maternelle
- The corporeal meaning of language: A semiotic approach to musical glossolalia
- Bringing back the image into its frame: Barthes’ soldier and the contextual frame of human perception and interpretation of signs
- Context-based analysis of an advertising poster
- Semiotic approaches to “traditional music”, musical/poetic structures, and ethnographic research
- The theory of synesthesia according to the Pythagorean tradition and Nabokov’s revisiting of Pythagorean synesthesia
- “Do you understand these charges?”: How procedural communication in youth criminal justice court violates the rights of young offenders in Canada
- Between the institution and the individual: What walking in a place that includes institutional heritage discloses
- Finite semiotics: Cognitive sets, semiotic vectors, and semiosic oscillation
- The “Fiat 500L” commercial: A journey into Italian style
- Epiepistemology/neuro-semantic programming
- Diagrams and mental figuration: A semio-cognitive analysis
- Perelman’s phenomenology of rhetoric: Foucault contests Chomsky’s complaint about media communicology in the age of Trump polemic
- Semiotic and discursive consequences of the cybertextual condition: The case of tragedy
- Signizing: The root of the functions of the intentional sign
- Review Article
- Vital signs: The Darwinian semiotics of beauty in the animal and human worlds