Video Game Characters and Transmedia Storytelling: The Dynamic Game Character (Games and Play)

Characters are a vital aspect of today’s transmedia practices. Combining theories on fictional persons from Japanese and Euro-American practices, this book discusses video game characters embedded in our popular media culture in which they are constantly produced and re-imagined. This book introduces the dynamic game character, a type of game character with a development structure that consists of multiple outcomes in a game. Through their actions and choices, players can influence these game characters’ identities and affect their possible destinies. Games subvert the idea that fictional persons must maintain a coherent identity. This book shows that dynamic game characters challenge strategies of top-down control through close readings of the Mass Effect series, Persona 5, Hades, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and more. It is directed to all scholars interested in the topics of transmedia storytelling, video games, characters, and Japanese narratology. Table of Contents 5 A brief note on Japanese names and words 7 1. Introducing the dynamic game character 9 2. Characters in contemporary media 41 3. How the dynamic game character develops 69 4. Strategies to control a character’s transtextual identities 97 5. Parasocial relationships with nonplayable characters 125 6. The construction of transmedia game characters 151 7. The future of dynamic game characters 171 Glossary: A brief typology of characters 179 General bibliography 183 Index 205