Experiência em God Of War - Estudo de caso da série do jogo eletrônico

Abstract

This work aims to analyze and discuss how the concept of experience can be seen in the gameplay and plot of the God Of War series throughout its four main releases, between 2005 and 2018. The analysis aimed at strengthening the academic perspective on the videogame as a social structure and as a mass media, in addition to understanding how the mechanisms that provide experience behave in an electronic game. Our research was based on the case study of a typical sample, criteria that had us headed to the GOW game series as our main focus because of how well it represents the spectrum of successful violent electronic games. The investigation allowed us to perceive three main features: due to its communitarian nature, the video game is a mass media that reaches out from what Walter Benjamin considers to be a depleted experience; the presence of a balance principle involving the notions of experiencing and living embedded in the production of the four games analyzed and a kind of narrative evolution of the series. These points led us to understand the strategies used by the franchise to awaken in players a pursuit for the overcoming of shocks.