Week 4

How does the fantasy genre relate to modern media such as video games?

Fantasy relates to video games today heavily. The amount of video games that are fantasy type based is unimaginable. Off the top of my head I can name the Final Fantasy Series, World of Warcraft, Fable, Dragon Age, Rift and many more. The point is all these games couldn’t exist if fantasy didn't exist. They all maintain the illusion that magic is possible and monsters roam the earth. They are all set in another world, and all follow the rules of fantasy.

This being said however, when reading this weeks reader I became aware of an interesting view. "Truckers argument here, is that they contain structures, above all, influenced by the images and practises of video games" Burn, 2005. This quote was referring to the Harry Potter series. I find this interesting as it is claiming the video games are responsible for Harry Potter, and potentially any new day fantasy, rather than the fantasy being responsible for the video games. An interesting theory.

The article continues to show parts of Harry Potter where Harry is expected, and lives up to the expectations, of doing most of the action in dangerous events. He is often the one to save his friends. Is this not very similar to a video game?

But either way we want to look at it, the Fantasy Genre is strongly related to many of the modern day video games that are coming out, and they do have many similarities.

Burn, A (2005) 'Potter-Literacy - from books to game and back again; literature, film, game and cross media literacy', in papers: Explorations into children's literature vol 14, No 3

Trucker, N (1999) 'The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter', Children's literature in Education, 30:4 pp 221-234.