Continuity and Discontinuity: An Experiment in Comparing Narratives Across Media

Abstract

What is the metaphor of the digital game? How might we see the world differently in the age of the Playstation than we did when RCA was a cutting edge company? There is, of course, not one answer to that question, and more than one way to investigate it. This paper is one attempt to think about the social and cultural change introduced by this new medium. Using Edmund Carpenter’s (1960) brief analysis of multiple renditions of the Caine Mutiny as a model, I want to share some impressions of the transformation that mythically-styled narrative undergoes when it moves from one medium to another—with a specific focus on the digital game medium.