Abstract

Films and video games may initially seem to have more elements in common than not, but upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that the two audio/visual mediums are equally as different as they are similar. An effective method to facilitate a lucrative comparative analysis is to examine the two mediums through the lens of shared genres. Game scholars, such as King, Krzywinska, and Wolf, have long argued how to best analyze the topic of genre within the medium of games, and by combining concepts from these texts with the work of film theorists, including Neale and Schatz, this thesis aims to introduce a novel system of generic classification that allows for a better comparison between similar films and games and a closer examination of how games utilize genre. Through the direct comparison of films and games, it becomes apparent that as the video game industry has evolved, games have gradually become more recognizably cinematic, a phenomenon that this thesis dubs as cinemafication, which can best be identified as the consistent trend of video game graphics and narratives increasing in complexity, allowing for more cinematic potential, thereby closing the gap between the mediums of film and games. By closely examining generic case studies of the action and gangster genres, this thesis will apply a novel system of generic categorization in order to explore the intricacies of how genres are affected by the medium through which they are presented.