Overlapping Expectations: Studying the Genre Relationship of Open-World and Ecocritical Genres
First author: GonzalesYear: 2025
Abstract
While feature-level and media-specific frameworks are used throughout game scholarship, genre-focused analysis remains underutilized. This absence stems from a misunderstanding of genres as lists of deployed features. Rather genres shape and are shaped by audience expectations and reinforced through interactions within a discourse community. Understood in this way, genre-focused analysis is a socio-cultural-technologically mediated contextual framework that anchors context-driven analysis of interactive digital narratives and other forms of interactive storytelling. This study demonstrates genre-focused analysis by elevating feature-level analyses of Horizon Zero Dawn. While existing scholarship identifies a thematic incoherence in Horizon Zero Dawn, this study argues that these issues are a result of tension between the ecocritical and open-world genres within a particular moment in time. The work demonstrates genre-focused analysis’ necessity, implementation, and value in game studies and IDN scholarship.Details
Language: EnglishCountry of affiliation: United States
Published in: Interactive Storytelling
Publication type: Conference proceeding
Source: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-78453-8_16
Games
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Franchises
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