New media Theory: Electronic Games, Democracy and Reconfiguring the Author-Audience Relationship

Abstract

New media forms open many possibilities not only for the development of “new media theory”, but also for re-conceiving previous media relationships. Digital, non-linear and interactive media forms such as electronic games allow increased possibilities for participation in the construction of narratives, although such media are also produced with various constraints over the extent of participation. This paper examines how new, emerging theories of the interactive media process can be understood in light of previous notions of media, with emphasis on re-conceiving earlier media author–text–audience synergies along a continuum of interactivity. It is argued here that the rise of interactivity as a form of audience participation is a strongly held and culturally based desire to participate in the creation and transformation of the text that has been denied by previous technologies of media production and distribution; interactivity achieves a new stage in the democratisation of user participation with the electronic game.