Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

For the first half of this post I have used the article Videojuegos trasladados al cine: análisis y caracterización de la narrativa audiovisual en ambos medios by Águeda Delgado Ponce and Francisco Granados García, which was published in the 10th edition of the Revista Comunicación (impact factor 1.102).

The paper mainly deals with the narrative consequences of the translations of videogames that have been adapted into movies, with a specific focus on the way that both platforms shape the content and the alterations that have had to be made as a consequence of that discrepancy. As such, the main qualitative method is content analysis, which in the case of the videogame texts is combined with a ludologist-/narratologist analysis as well as a methodologist background about the discussion whether those two can be strictly separated.

As with the article for last week's theme, the article doesn't strictly utilize qualitative methods, but instead opts for a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative approach is used on a select number of objects, including the Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy and Resident Evil and their respective movie adaptations. Quantitative methods are then used to justify the choice for these objects as well as elaborate on to which degree they are representative of the videogame adaptations industry as a whole.

I have elected to use the same paper as an example of case study, seeing as it it serves simultaneously as both an example of qualitative studies and case study. These three game-movie couples qualify as case studies, being single instances of the greater concept (in this case, videogame adaptations) being studied. What this specific paper does well is that is has used some of the major titles in videogame adaptation history as it's casus, though diverse enough in terms of genre, audience demographic and both commercial and critical success. This is a particular help in analyzing the data, because it allows for a varied cross-case pattern search.

However, because the entire concept of videogame adaptations is a very young one, the fact that they are a relatively large amount of time apart makes it somewhat problematic to compare them to each other at the same time - seeing as the entire field has seen enormous development in the short timespan in between. As such, the shaping hypotheses and enfolding literature phases are more apparent, with the latter relying specifically on more established traditions such as those surrounding Henry Jenkins, specifically his work on transmediality. As such, it is not possible to automatically assume these three games as being representative for the current or future state of videogame adaptations.