We are pleased to announce the call for papers of the next issue of L’Atalante, under the title of “Ludonarratives: Narrative complexity in video games”, which is open to contributions.
In recent years, narratives in video games have grown increasingly complex, evolving from serving merely as a context designed to present the rules and mechanics of the game towards the development of much deeper and more complicated structures, plots and characters, and the exploration of new thematic perspectives. Narrative complexity is already a central part of the gaming experience in games like Telling Lies (Sam Barlow, 2019), Life is Strange (Dontnod Entertainment, 2015), What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Sparrow, 2017), and VR experiences like The Invisible Hours (Tequila Works, 2017). Having moved past the debate between narratology and ludology (Frasca, 2003; Aarseth, 2019), there is a consensus among researchers that video games should be analysed as cultural artefacts that can harbour a complex narrative development as part of their design. In this sense, academics like Brenda Laurel (1986, 1991), Janet Murray (1997), Mary Laure Ryan (2001, 2004, 2006), Henry Jenkins (2004), Susana Tosca (2004), Clara Fernández-Vara (2009), or more recently Hartmut Koenitz et al. (2015), have developed a theoretical pathway that examines the specific features of narratives in interactive digital media, including ludofictional worlds (Planells, 2015), specific forms of seriality (Cuadrado, 2016), and complex entertainment structures (Pérez-Latorre, 2015).
