engleski

Videogames – a New Form of Fairy Tale?

The fairy tale is a dynamic, fluid and flexible literary genre which underwent various changes. Although, over time, the fairy tale has changed cultures and media (from oral to written and print culture to film), it has always had a significant function in human society. One of its roles was being the mediator of fantastical experience and a place of symbolic conflict. In the digital era, fairy tales are being adapted and revived in various digital genres, but their social role remained unchanged. One of the digital genres that incorporates fairy tales is the videogame. Fairy tales and videogames share many similarities: from their structure and archetypal characters, to creating a “playing space” – a space of exploration and symbolic conflict. Many of the fantasy RPG videogame franchises such as Dragon Age (Electronic Arts, 2009 – 2014), The Witcher (Atari Inc., 2007 – 2011) and The Elder Scrolls (Bethesda Softworks, 1994 – 2012) have a coherent metanarrative and they incorporate characters and narrative functions which can be analysed by the same model Vladimir Propp used for morphological analysis of the fairy tales. Using examples of Dragon Age: Origins (which provides more of a linear storytelling) and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (which allows the player more freedom of space exploration), this paper analyses narrative building similarities between a fairy tale and a videogame, and explores the usage of fantastical localities as an immersion point for both the reader of a fairy tale and the videogame player.

Videogames, Fairy Tales, Dragon Age: Origins, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

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