Felix Schröter

IMAGE is an e-journal for interdisciplinary image studies, covering all areas of research that are concerned with questions of visual representations. The journal’s latest special issue deals with transmedia storytelling and transmedial storyworlds and includes an article (authored by myself) which discusses ‘game-like’ storyworlds and their video game adaptions. Its – totally funny and original – title is “The Game of Game of Thrones. George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and Its Video Game Adaptations“.

In the article, I argue that video games have not only become an integral part of transmedial entertainment franchises but have also influenced the narrative and aesthetic conventions that determine how their respective storyworlds are crafted. My claim is, first, that popular media increasingly feature ‘game-like’ narratives and storyworlds that subordinate narrative continuity to more abstract principles of narrative organization and, second, that this ‘game logic’ leads to some transmedial storyworlds being better suited for an adaptation as a video game than others. Still, video game adaptations tend to stick to a storyworld’s game logic only to a certain degree, as I demonstrate by taking the novel-based transmedial world of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire as my prime example. You can read the full piece here.

Moreover, the issue includes five other highly entertaining articles, among them Tobias Steiner on Convergence in the US Television Market Between 2000 and 2014, Robert Baumgartner on Warhammer 40,000, Transmedial Ludology, and the Issues of Change and Stasis in Transmedial Storyworlds, as well as Amelie Zimmermann on Functional Transmedia Storytelling in the German TV Series About:Kate. If this grabs your attention (and it certainly should!) head to the journal’s website to read the whole issue for free.