An example of WebLiterature

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I) Online games & classical literature

1) Definition of MMO games : 

MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online. In those games, which are mainly taking place in a fantastic or science-fictional world, the player embodies a character who plays an active role in the adventures. The game has settings and characters, by extension players, evolve all along the party.

Just like in books, the game follows a plot and covers a timespan in which characters progress.

2) Similarities & Disparities

As i said earlier, there are similarities between MMO games and classical literature in the way that a weaving, a plot, a narrator, and written and told stories are to be found. Anyway it can not be simply read like a book, since you've got to play to discover the story and to progress in it.

Also, when we read a book, as we discover the settings, the places where it takes place, we think about it and thus create this fictional world in our mind and let go our imagination. In this sense, online video games are similar. The virtual world created is anyway common to all the players and shared through videos, sounds and pictures but it is also with that means that the player, part of the story, will get into it.

Those similarities can also be seen from a more accurate point, and for example kids who take refuge in books in the past, who used them as an outlet, a way to ignore their problems, are now more keen to take refuge in these kinds of games for the exact same reasons. And it is even more obvious and frequent nowadays because of the social community created by the games (thanks to the fact that here they are someone else, they are the characters they play).

Though, the main element in WebLiterature that redefines classical literature, and which is even more obvious in MMO Games is the huge community built with constant social interactions.

Players can exchange points of view more freely and in an easier way than they were used to with printed books.

Of course there are differences in terms of literary aspects between the two since there is much less to read in a game than in a book, but for instance there is no need to describe the environment as we are progressing in it, or no need to evoke the moral side of the character because we are discovering it throughout the story.

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II) Virtual matrixes

1) Virtuality as an extended reality

Videos games are lived by the players as narrations (MANOVICH (2001), The language of New Media, Cambridge : Mass). They are a hybrid support which lays on a triple role that the player has to assume. He is a reader of a story in a computerized environment but he is also the author and the decision maker of a progression in a narration. Therefore some people speak of the video game player as a "lectacteur" or "spectacteur" in french (WEISSBERG Jean-Louis (1999), Présences à distance : déplacements virtuels et réseaux numériques, Paris : L’Harmattan.).

In the case of MMO games this narration is even more complex. On the one hand there is the story of the universe in which the players evolve (often changed and modified) and on the other hand the common story that they build within the community of players. 

Literary aspects are also visible in online video games through written creations sections in the guilds of players (group of approximately thirty people fighting together and having a common forum in which many kinds of debates take place). Roleplays are for instance a form of literary creation from players (texts, poems, or videos invented by a player, which take part of the story of their gathering, to glorify and participate in the building of a collective and interactive epic).

This extended reality through virtuality is present in both cases of literature and the reader/player thus can make links between this virtual space and virtual characters and his real own life. Consequently I think that the virtual environment created by online video game community is even more relevant since it is build by thousands of individuals - and sometimes the border between this two worlds is crossed with gatherings, meetings of the members of a same guild in real life.

2) Phenomenological immersion

We talk of video games as phenomenological universes in the sense that they only exist through the interaction between the players and the digital space (WALTHER Bo Kampmann (2003), « La représentation de l’espace dans les jeux vidéo : généalogie, classification et réflexions »). And digital spaces are only established as the contributor, the player, evolve in it. This participation requires visual, cognitive and physical skills.

Mastering a video game means controlling a certain number of spaces, inducting numbers of patterns, reflexes, motor algorithmes (CLAIS Jean-Baptiste (2003), « Réalité virtuelle et engagement du corps dans la pratique vidéoludique », p.35-52, in La pratique du jeu vidéo : réalité ou virtualité ?) and it is finally entering a specific culture allowing complex intellectual involvements.

3) Anthropological immersion

Playing video games online is also synonym of becoming a sort of "native" of a virtual world. It includes learning a language, a kind of humor, some social rules, some codes and specific forms of sociability. The notion of guild of players is then really close to the one of tribe. Thus those sociological and anthropological notions show the change in the society from an identity logic towards one of identification - and in that sense, video games can easily be linked to books and what results from them.

In fact, since literature has also a role of entertainment, we can link it to online video games as the creation of the virtual communities (guilds also) are merely build around ludic and aesthetic purposes, and so its main aim is personal pleasure.

Finally for many players the game appears to be less important than being part of a community itself (thereby they essentially get involved in the organization of the community, meetings, reports, maintenance of the website, handling conflicts and so on and so forth.)

4) The use and misuse of the virtual spaces

a) An educative tool

As literature is often use as an educative tool, and since - as we show it in this study - videos are related to literature, they are therefore educative themselves.

More and more games are now used in school as a teaching method, but it has also been shown that, even with a pure playful purpose, online video games develop new skills among the players as multitasking. We speak here of a "présence divisée" (Turkle, 1995) or "attention divisée" (Greenfield 1994).

b) Illicit deviance

If virtual communities have multiple useful roles, they also sometimes serve a means of developing illegal activities. Within a virtual sphere each player is someone else than in real life. This means that nobody knows you, and you can in some way restart a life and even remain anonymous as long as you want. It is then thanks to this increased virtuality and extended reality that illegal networks can develop (pedophilia, arms or drugs traffic, etc.)

Conclusion

To conclude, as we saw all along the study, online video games play an important and increasing role in web literature.

It is mainly enhanced among youngsters and teens thanks to its simple and -at first sight- purely entertaining form, which is for the young public something less formal, less classical and thus less boring (since pupils are also bound to read books during all their school time).

Literature is in constant evolution. 

First it was orally told, then books arrived with printing, so why couldn't there be some sort of a "screen-literature", a literature of the game mixing written, oral, and video literary aspects ? Some kind of adaptation, by the use of the new technology, of the books so called "choose your own adventure books".

Nevertheless, both virtual spaces created by those two forms of literature are similar in the way that are not a genuine experience of the real world, they are mere second-hand ones, and therefore must not be taken too seriously.