Tim Summers
University of Oxford
Opera in video games
Abstract
This paper investigates instances of opera in video games. These operas may be pre-existing, such as Tosca in Hitman: Blood Money, or newly composed ‘shadow opera’ (to use Francis Rizzo’s term), like Der Fluch des Engelhart in Gabriel Knight 2. Moments of staged opera are examined to understand what these games ‘say’ about opera, and what opera ‘does’ in games. Building upon arguments by Cheng, Collins and Thompson on games and Citron, Joe and Weiner on film, this paper identifies three dimensions of opera in games.
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