Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Kyle Rentschler Humanities

8-Bit Teardrops: A History of Melodrama in Video Games

Often understood as a film genre, melodrama is more accurately understood as a particular mode of expression which is actually highly prevalent in most forms of Western mass media. In his paper, Kyle will be addressing melodrama’s existence in video games. Focusing on narrative, design, and gameplay, Kyle will be taking an historical approach at analyzing how melodrama’s varying forms of integration in video games have changed over time and why this is important to how games are played. Through reading video game literature, interviewing game theorists and developers, and playing an exorbitant amount of games, Kyle hopes to unite film genre and video game studies and explore how a misunderstood mode of expression and an overlooked medium transform one another.

Profile image of Kyle Rentschler
Major: Film Studies
Mentor: Mentor: Professor Linda Williams, Rhetoric
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