"The World of Real Emotion" A Study of Communication: Conveying Emotions Through Narrative in Final Fantasy

Abstract: This essay investigates the communicative elements video games in the RPG genre utilise in order to convey emotion through narrative, and the difference between older and newer games. The essay focuses on the execution and interplay of verbal and non-verbal communication of the linguistic and semiotic examined in four video games chosen from the Final Fantasy series. It quantitatively compares empirical data collected from each game as well as the execution of the communicative properties in order to establish the conclusion. In addition it conducts a survey of anonymous participants with the purpose of testing the ability to identify emotions in respective games to quantitatively compare the success rates of older and newer games. A majority of participants of the survey consider newer games to be better at conveying emotional meaning than older ones. However, this contrasts strong implications of the results concluding that the difference is not as big as the general impression.