Week 4

How does the fantasy genre relate to modern media such as video games?

In terms of content taking the Harry potter book and game as the example, the book almost acts as a base or starting point as to where to go from and what structure the game will follow. In that sense the game and book relate. But the player in the game is afforded the opportunity to fill in the bits in between with their own actions thus creating the consequences in between the familiar structural content. Burns,(2005) mentions when comparing the game and book that "there is a strong trajectory across the major blocks of narrative and game play. Where there is room for different traversals by players is quite specific.......the player has a kind of free time.This can be used to wander around Hogwarts, exploring, picking up extra resources." This demonstrates that by using the plot line of the orignal book as a rough guide to build up background, and letting the player construct the rest for themselves by the actions the take then a highly relatable game and book are created. Burns goes on to interview a child player of the game as the child talks about playing the game her narrative quickly turns from Harry as a character to you have to do this and that, showing that she previously was familiar with Harry from the books but as she played the game she became harry and thus created a new point of relevance between her the book and the game. "Penny:Well sometimes, well with Harry, well with the book,you'll be, you're just you're just reading it and everything will fall into place, whereas in the game you have to walk around quite alot and sort of make sure you find"Burns,(2005).

Reference

Burns,A(2005)'Potter-Literacy-from book to game and back again;Literature, film, game and cross-media literacy', in Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature, Vol 14, No 3.