Super Mario seriality : Nintendo’s narratives and audience targeting within the video game console industry

Smith, AN

Abstract

While games studies has theorised the ways in which video games convey narrative it has so far neglected the industrial circumstances that structure these narratives. Using the video game developer, publisher and hardware-manufacturer Nintendo as a case study, this chapter intervenes within this field by connecting the storyworlds of the company’s Super Mario and Legend of Zelda series to its industrial practice of audience targeting. It shows how Nintendo’s aims to attract both new audiences and dedicated consumers result in individual instalments of ongoing series appealing to new players via self-contained storylines and to dedicated players through serial techniques of repetition and variation concerning the narratives of prior instalments. It furthermore demonstrates how Nintendo incorporates its innovations in console hardware technology within these serial techniques.

Citation

Smith, A. (2014). Super Mario seriality : Nintendo’s narratives and audience targeting within the video game console industry. In R. Pearson, & A. Smith (Eds.), Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age: Exploring Screen Narratives (21-39). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137388155_2

• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2014
• Deposit Date: Feb 16, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 23, 2020
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 21-39
• Book Title: Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age: Exploring Screen Narratives
• ISBN: 9781137388148
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137388155_2
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137388155_2
• Related Public URLs: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137388155; https://www.palgrave.com/gp