Need advice for my master's thesis about literature and games.

Hello,

I have not much time left to prepare my master's thesis on the literature field. Basically I planned to study Culture Studies and had different idea about my thesis, but I ended up on Literary Studies...

I, to be honest, never was interested in literature, except some gaming books like WarCraft, Diablo, Silent Hill etc. and I would like to connect it somehow to the games and create my Master's thesis of that.

Could you guys please help me and give me any ideas about something interesting I could write about when it comes to games and literature?

I'd be very glad for any sort of help from you guys.

Maybe you could look at how gameplay - puzzle solving, observing the environment etc can tell a story differently to traditional methods we see in cutscenes - exposition etc.

You could write about how, because video games make the player (reader?) take part in the story, it can become more impactful then a tradition story telling media like film or literature.

Maybe you could do a survey of different methods of literary analysis, and how applicable/inapplicable they are to analysis of games?

You could write about how different game developers have tackled some literary work that has been adapted to video games countless times (eg. Journey to the West) and how each adaptation reflects the perspective of their respective development year via what parts of said story they've chosen to adapt.

Have you ever written a thesis before? Maybe during your undergrad?

You should really be doing some academic research, ideally through your university's library's website. Search both 'video games' and 'literature' - see what research is currently predominate in the field, what 'future research' they suggest, - you know, compose a bibliography and go see your thesis supervisor (if you have one currently).

@gloomyjack I have an article in a magazine I saved somewhere that compares the narrative lunacy of Metal Gear Solid 2 to James Joyce's Orpheus. Given your thesis topic, it sounds like mandated reading.

I've just done a quick google search and can't find it but if you're interested, let me know and I'll see if I can dig out the magazine and get some HQ photo's or even just transcribe the thing for you.

@gloomyjack: As someone that's completed multiple theses, really what you need to be doing right now is what @supesdupes mentioned: research. Forget about trying to outline the actual piece of writing for now and just read, read, and then do some more reading (maybe some playing/youtube video watching since you are dealing with video games after all). After this, you can start to formulate an idea about how a great thesis in your subject area would look. You need to see what's out there before you can start to write about it.

Also, again echoing Supes, but, if you're in a Master's program and you're writing a thesis, you should have a committee of professors, or at least one faculty supervisor to talk to and bounce your ideas off of in a non-judgmental fashion. I'd suggest coming up with some ideas, take it that person(s) and then see what they think.

Out of curiosity, what country are you in and what are the requirements for your thesis?

Good luck and have fun! Thesis writing can be both cruel and enjoyable, but it's always didactic, so it's a win/win!

Why are you trying to get a master's degree in a field that you have no interest in and no ideas about?

Agree with Supes,

While I believe websites can be used as non-official references (depending on the academic writing standard), the quality and credibility of your thesis/article/essay etc. will depend on the references you collect. Alot of times, your institution's Library will have both physical and digital mediums of articles. For your current idea, I really do think that the digital medium will be the way to go in order to find the most recent articles that themselves will have a references section that you can draw from.

As far as idea, there's alot of good ones listed here, and it all depends on the relationship you'd like to make between literature and gaming.

For instance, if this were me, I would probably write about the influence of past events on video games (i.e. world wars, political climates, economy fluxes etc.). In contrast, you can write about how fictional novelizations of the past have found some legging in some of today's rpg games (i.e. mythologies, fantasy novels, etc); note that this is a specific example and might be hard to find references on, but it's an idea to draw from anyway.

Hope that helps somewhat!

- hiro