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transcript form a radio prog.
Nathan Anderson: Yes, that's right. And really the concept, or the paper I put together, and the thinking reaches to this point where potentially looking at Massive Multiplayer online games (MMOs) as a form of melodrama through both the nature that they don't have a clo
sed story if you like, but also quite a few other things around components of character stereotypes and subjectivity. So thinking about soap opera as a form of melodrama, there is no single protagonist or defined lead character in soap opera, it's an ensemble cast. Very much a cast of character archetypes or stereotypes, unlike other TV production content. They stand alone in that sense. MMOs have a similar component where there's no single lead player, and very much it's about an amalgamation of player and different character types that need to work together to complete a particular objective. And that component, again, points to similarities between the two formats in regards to how character stereotypes are used and the lack of subjectivity around a main character.
Arguably in MMOs the player is the main character. But you need to work with other players to complete story components within an MMO in the same way that a single character in a soap opera obviously works in a melodramatic way with other characters to create the story experience and the narrative experience for audiences.
Antony Funnell: Is it going too far to suggest that massive multiplayer online games might be descended, in a sense, from soap opera? They might be the natural progression on from soap opera.
Nathan Anderson: No, I don't think so. That really was the point I was making in this paper, and it's looking at not the fact that MMOs are replacing soap opera. The audience is actually very different. People that play MMOs to people that watch soap opera are quite different. But the construction around the story experiences and the social components that are delivered through soap opera are very similar to what's provided through MMOs, and looking at it therefore not as an evolution of soap opera but more as a component of melodrama that fits into the family of melodrama and what audiences are looking for.
So it's a suggestion that it's a future form of soap opera, or moreover a future form of melodrama that we're seeing in MMOs at the moment, and certainly their meteoric rise in audience consumption as well.
Nathan Anderson: Yes, that's right. And really the concept, or the paper I put together, and the thinking reaches to this point where potentially looking at Massive Multiplayer online games (MMOs) as a form of melodrama through both the nature that they don't have a clo
sed story if you like, but also quite a few other things around components of character stereotypes and subjectivity. So thinking about soap opera as a form of melodrama, there is no single protagonist or defined lead character in soap opera, it's an ensemble cast. Very much a cast of character archetypes or stereotypes, unlike other TV production content. They stand alone in that sense. MMOs have a similar component where there's no single lead player, and very much it's about an amalgamation of player and different character types that need to work together to complete a particular objective. And that component, again, points to similarities between the two formats in regards to how character stereotypes are used and the lack of subjectivity around a main character.
Arguably in MMOs the player is the main character. But you need to work with other players to complete story components within an MMO in the same way that a single character in a soap opera obviously works in a melodramatic way with other characters to create the story experience and the narrative experience for audiences.
Antony Funnell: Is it going too far to suggest that massive multiplayer online games might be descended, in a sense, from soap opera? They might be the natural progression on from soap opera.
Nathan Anderson: No, I don't think so. That really was the point I was making in this paper, and it's looking at not the fact that MMOs are replacing soap opera. The audience is actually very different. People that play MMOs to people that watch soap opera are quite different. But the construction around the story experiences and the social components that are delivered through soap opera are very similar to what's provided through MMOs, and looking at it therefore not as an evolution of soap opera but more as a component of melodrama that fits into the family of melodrama and what audiences are looking for.
So it's a suggestion that it's a future form of soap opera, or moreover a future form of melodrama that we're seeing in MMOs at the moment, and certainly their meteoric rise in audience consumption as well.
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