Narratives and Databases in Game of Thrones - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 141

Card Game is played in a serialized fashion, just like Lord of the Rings: he
Complete Trilogy, creating a narrative out of the turn order. 5 It focuses on
serialization and developing a linear understanding of game play, using the
individual to stand in for the Westeros family. In other words, in he Board
Game , each player plays as a network of relationships while in the HBO Card
Game, each player sits in the center of his or her own network of individual
characters. hese diferences between the types of games highlight the thirteenth
principle of paratextual board games:
Principle 13: Paratextual board games expose the database and the serial at the
heart of licensed gaming, revealing connections between players, texts, and actions
through the mechanisms of play, algorithmic procedure, narrative, and player
interaction.
Furthermore, diferent emphases of thematic content within the Game of
hrones paratextual games relect a similar tension between the narrative and
the database in contemporary digital media. he games' twinned emphases on
these concepts lead to a fourteenth principle of paratextual board gaming:
Principle 14: Paratextuality can be achieved in multiple ways through difering
emphases on simulating thematic content.
It is not that one version of Game of hrones necessarily exempliies one
element over another, but that the games augment one particular facet of the
text at the expense of others. Both paratextual games use database-like elements
and serialized elements; however, the difering emphases of each create diferent
styles of game play. I explore these elements by irst discussing the way database
and narrative styles of game play unfold in each game, and then focusing on the
impact of socialization as a key mechanic in each game. Finally, I conclude the
chapter by looking at win conditions and how ending the games helps shape
player interpretation of the narrative.
Networking and serialization
he thematic and playable diferences between he Board Game , the HBO Card
Game , and the Fantasy Flight Card Game speak to the larger structures of the
database and narrative in the contemporary media environment. Imagine a
collection of photographs held in a folder on your computer's desktop. hese