TV series and video games: the poetics of seriality in playful form

Abstract

This paper presents the encounter between fictional television series and video games from the perspective of the recent work on the digital seriality. The changes are reviewed that have occurred in various disciplines in recent decades towards incorporating new forms of dialogue between the media, either from the transmedia, theories of possible worlds, the media ecology or computer models, that have led to the paradigms with which ontological theories of video games have traditionally been configured. The serial, bases its narrative on the management of repetition, change and continuity. This originates from the combination of different serial models: the series and serial. These models are ways of representing the interactions between time, character and action patterns that are perfectly suited to the dimensions in which the game uses repetition: a performative dimension where gameplay prevails on the evolution of the character and storytelling, an evidentiary dimension where trial and error is the basis of evolution in skills and a third where the progression of the character / player looks conclusively close to a story. This paper draws a parallel between these three models of fiction and video games and looks to open a new perspective in the study of time in the game, closer to the player experience than textual analysis.