07 July

Game Study Muv-Luv Alternative: Metafictional structure of game works

Metafictional structure of game works
What gives us the opportunity to discuss this kind of argument is the current anime and game culture in Japan. For example, the meta-structure shown by the erotic game Fate/stay night has been discussed as follows.

The structure in which the story or the characters themselves are clearly aware of the constraint that the story must construct a fixed meaning as a narrative, has become a typical metafictional strategy in 20th-century fantasy literature. On the other hand, the fictional game worlds of the 21st century introduce meta-narrative perspectives that sometimes disrupt the fundamental meaning of the story as its unique metafictional strategy. The characteristic that are developed in the perspective of the game works that set them apart from the narrative fiction further deepen the philosophical phase that existed in fantasy literature. What is asserted by annihilating the typological “narrative” is the thorough speculativeness that the fictional structure as a descriptive system retains. Fate/stay night, a speculative visual novel, aims to fully expand the conceptual space of the fictional world by presenting the interesting concept of “conceptual magic” in addition to the conceptual beings, hero spirits and the conceptual personality, "Servants".

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This factor, which promotes the fusion and integration of existing fictional worlds, which can be regarded as a kind of entropy-increasing law, promotes the elevation of qualia making as a latent motive for the universe as a whole, and is recognized as the basis of the idea of teleologically acknowledging the functions of individual consciousness in comprehensive cosmology. A world image based on the reductionist picture premised on scientific thought will not only undermine the essential implication of the fictionality, but also hinder free qualia formation of each individual consciousness, and will have a serious negative impact on the sound progress of the universe as a whole. An immersive absorption in the fictional world and its characters, as recommended by Oscar Wilde’s theory of art, is the essential factor in the evolution of the universe, along with the sound preservation of the mind.


Estimating the Berserker’s defensive ability as an overwhelming powerful Servant that is able to neutralize any attack, Saber, the Holy Grail War warrior, tells Shirou.

“...... I suspect the Berserker’s noble weapon is armor. It is not simple armor, but closer to a magical theory called conceptual armament. Perhaps——Berserker has the ability to neutralize all attacks that do not reach a certain level. That’s probably why neither my sword nor Rin’s magic work.”

The “conceptual armament” that Saber refers to is nothing but an information concept that is reduced to prescribed correlations and set values, programmable as one of the various setting conditions for proceeding with the game structure according to the perspective that overviews the game world from outside the frame. The mechanism of magic and the special abilities of supernatural beings introduced in the game work make this visual novel remarkably self-reflective. A game work that is presented as an accumulation of conceptual information is not only an independent possible world, but also a virtual world experienced in the possible world as a “real world.” Through such a metafictional structure of games, the player/viewer who plays the work is provided with a transcending multifaceted perspective that is not bound by the perspective of a single world, as the subject of consciousness that extracts concepts and constructs only one worldview as a single possible world.

“Existence, Phenomenon and Personality: Summoning Magic and Individuality in Fate/stay night”
https://www.academia.edu/106632362/Existence_Phenomenon_and_Personality_Summoning_Magic_and_Individuality_in_Fate_stay_night