Actantial Model as a Tool in Analyzing Video Games Narrative

Video game is one of the mediums for channeling human’s expressions. At first, it is considered as a mere entertainment, but recently it received attention from the academic world. The complexity of current video games opens up interest from various field of studies. Literary studies find the incorporation of narrative in a game as a new area for their research. However, the interactivity element of video games created a challenge as there is no methodology in literary criticism that can be used to analyze this element. Therefore, this field offers opportunities for researchers to develop methodology for this purpose. This article proposes a modified actantial model as a methodology in analyzing video games’ narrative by combining the gameplay and the narrative aspects. The model combines Greimas’ actantial model proposed in 1966 and Konzak’s concept of gameplay elements developed in 2002. This model was then tested on the game Bioshock (2007) which utilizes both gameplay and narrative elements in its storytelling. The findings show that the use of the modified actantial model provides a clear presentation of the complex relation in the gameplay and narrative elements in a video game. The model is applicable for other research of video games’ narrative.