Narrative, Gender and Ideology in Video Games

Narrative, Genre and Ideology in Video Games is an original academic thesis by author Bruna Boege Pickler in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Communication and New Media at the University of Macau.

This dissertation aims to produce knowledge regarding the modern video game medium by analyzing the narrative of one such game: Assassin's Creed Revelations, a contemporary example of the cultural form.

The dissertation focuses on the narrative structure of the text using the theoretical work of Vladimir Propp and the ideas he develops in Morphology of Folktale (1968). This work argues that the morphology identified by Propp as being present in traditional folk narratives can also be found in a contemporary electronic cultural text. It also identify and discuss issues regarding character development, the relationships between archetypes and categories, the allocation of tasks to the players within the story-as-game, characteristics such as temporal development of the narrative, the significance of roles of the main characters and the extent to which gender politics informs the narrative of this contemporary video game.