According
to Roland Barthes’s “The Death of the Author”, video games are created by an
author, in that the author is the field in which all paths within the work are
unified. Whereas the player is on the other end of the spectrum playing through
the game with no knowledge of the many options to choose, how to reach the goal
of the game, or what messages are intended by the author; they are simply deciding
what choices to make within the parameters of the author.
For a
staff to be considered the author of a game, they must have complete control and
influence over the meaning derived from the game; as such, must control the
gamer to sit in front of their TV for endless hours at the will of the team of ‘authors’
who gave birth to the product. Whether a gamer has fun or not, they have
purchased the product and (unless they quit the game) are at the will of the
authors throughout the play experience.
However,
games like ‘LittleBigPlanet’ can be defined as not being an authored work;
because the gamer has the ability to choose environment, protagonist,
antagonist, tangible objects, what to create etc. The game’s message, meaning,
and goals are not inlaid within the game’s structure by an author; on the
contrary, they are juxtaposed within the gamer for the individual or group of
individuals to determine and derive their own comprehension of the game as
text. The only authoritative power within these games are the limitations of
their mechanics, the rest is up to us, the gamers.
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