Writerly Experience in Video Games A Classification of Video Games from Barthesian Perspective

Interactivity, highlighted by player’s course of action, is considered as one of the key features of video game experiences; in some games compared to others, such interactions interfere with authorial control so much so that the gameplay differs from the main game entirely, altering the player experience and putting freedom of action and expression into players’ and modders’ hand. In literary studies, Roland Barthes’ readerly/writerly theory idealizes a form of artistic work that is “no longer consumption, but play”. Such works encourage rereading and reinterpreting the text from a new perspective, engaging the reader/player to “reread the text…not the real text, but a plural text: the same and new”. This article aims to apply such an understanding of artistic works to video games in an attempt to classify various game genres and modes from Barthesian perspective. In so doing, it will depict a spectrum of readerly to writerly experiences, categorizing each game class via exemplification into: linear narratives, choice-driven, released RPGs, modded games, and modded multiplayer RPG servers. Through this, it will explicate that, in the realm of video games, the idealized form of writerly experience can be achieved in modded multiplayer RPG servers where players, community modders and contributors, and online viewers and audiences of content creators form a never-ending cycle of rereading “the same and new” every time a character development happens

Keywords:

Roland Barthes , Readerly/Writerly Theory , Multiplayer RPGs , Game Studies