Analyse formelle et visuelle de l'organisation des espaces sociaux vidéoludiques.

Application à quelques villages de The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Abstract

The goal of this article is to identify some general organization principles of social spaces in video games, through the formal and visual analysis of a few villages of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In most cases, the social space of the village is structured in two ways: it is based on an apparent phenomenological disorder aimed to reproduce the "natural" (non-rational) organization of real spaces, while hiding the rigorous logic of design elements needed by the game system. We compare this strategy to the concept of negligentia diligens in classical rhetoric. We will confront this hypothesis to the counter-example of a village under construction, the village of Tarrey Town, observing how video games reproduce a social space which is already rationalized: the space of the colony.