Narratives and Databases in Game of Thrones - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 155

by winning “dominance” (more players standing at the end of a round), and
by winning a battle with a regal character—there is only one way to victory,
and that is through playing the proper narrative within the game: “each move
becomes a strategy, bringing the player closer to winning.” 45 One can only win if
one completes the narratives as they are enacted by the cards.
Each of these win conditions—as with the mechanics at the game level and
at the play level, as described above—hinges on a relationship to the original
text as either a network of information in a database structure or as a serialized
connection organized in a narrative framework . It is not that the novel series and
the television series relect one of these aspects over the other; rather, both of
these texts can be examined using either organizational principle. here are
database-like characteristics within the novel and within the show. Similarly,
there are serialized characteristics within both.
Understanding he Board Game as a database highlights a larger understanding
of the Game of hrones stories, and the digital context in which they sit. his, in
turn, allows players to reexamine their understanding of the novels. Paratextual
board games allow us to reread the original text through a new lens. Seen
through the structure of the database, Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire becomes
akin to what Gwenllian-Jones calls “deterritorialized iction.” Comparing the
encyclopedic form of cult narratives to a virtual world constructed in readers'
minds, Gwenllian-Jones describes how a database of information about a cult
world becomes “explicit data and implicit potential of the text and the readers'
internalized encyclopedia of the real world and the reader's imagination.” 46
Interpreting the novel Game of hrones in this manner allows readers and players
alike to imaginatively enter this hyperdiegetic text. Martin's world of Westeros,
as with other fantasy worlds like Tolkien's Middle-earth or Roddenberry's
Federation of Planets, is larger than the works that contain them. Interpreted as
a database of information—highlighting the network of connections between
elements (e.g., this battle took place here with these people who are related
through this ancestor)—the novel becomes an archive of information to be
accessed as the player/reader desires.
Because the HBO Card Game focuses more on a narrative serialization
for its game play, it allows the players to experience the television series as a
narrative of events, mirroring the digital experience of serialization as well. his
understanding highlights the way individual elements can have particular efects
on others; the cause-efect structure becomes more obvious and stronger when
viewed through a narrative lens. Instead of viewing the show as an encyclopedia