The Functioning of Communicative Units in the In-game Text of Video Games

Abstract

This article describes the results of a pragmatic analysis of communicative units that were selected from different types of in-game text (spoken and written game plot-related text and interface text) taken from six video games of various game genres (action-shooter, action-adventure, role-playing game, simulator etc.) and narrative genres (fantasy, science fiction, horror, military, medieval, western). It further offers a model for classification of the abovementioned units based on the pragmatic aim of the utterance, i.e. to assist the player during gameplay or to express the artistic aspects of the game. The two main pragmatic types of utterances have respectively been labelled as ludic and narrative. It has also been noted that ludic utterances are widespread in any video game, while narrative ones can only appear in games with an in-depth virtual world, and their perception by the player does not usually affect the completion of the game.

The article further suggests to use the following terms to describe the different kinds of ludic utterances: 1) identificatory (helping to recognise and distinguish between the different subjects and objects of the in-game world); 2) informative (giving practical information about those objects); 3) explicitly appellative (directly encouraging the player to act); 4) implicitly appellative (encouraging the player to act, but in an indirect manner); 5) feedback (responding to the player’s actions). Among the narrative functions, the following terms have been offered: 1) storytelling (depicting the in-game events); 2) descriptive (artistically describing the in-game world and its characters); 3) compositional (outlining the structure of the game and assisting the player to navigate through it).

The study also suggests that an utterance can combine multiple communicative functions, and the abovementioned functions be expressed not just verbally, but also via the visual, auditory, haptic and other modes since videogame discourse is a multimodal type of discourse. The results of this study can help in training of localization specialists as this research should facilitate their understanding of the pragmatic purpose behind the translated fragments of text.

Key words: computer game discourse, discourse of video games, multimodal discourse, multimodality, pragmatics of videogame text, videogame discourse.