Exploring dialogue in RPG video games: an additive multi-dimensional approach

Abstract

Although video games increasingly capture the attention of global audiences, their function as input for second language acquisition remains unaddressed in current research. This thesis aims to provide a detailed description of dialogue in role-playing games (RPG) by conducting an additive multidimensional analysis on The Video Game Dialogue Corpus, focusing on the characteristic features of RPG dialogue, its comparison to written and oral registers, and the possible effects of subcategories, such as ratings, on dialogue. The thesis is divided into two chapters: the first chapter describes video games and previous research on video game dialogue, and the second chapter contains the empirical analysis. The results of the analysis establish the RPG dialogue as a complex register, combining features of spoken and written language. Keywords: video games, role-playing games, video game dialogue, corpus linguistics, additive multidimensional analysis, multidimensional analysis.