Swedish Academy

• The decision sent out shockwaves: for the first time, a musician had received the most prestigious literary award on the planet.
• Does it mean the same as it did in 1901, when the first Nobel prize for literature was awarded?

High and low culture

• Is there a justification for distinguishing high and low culture?
• What is the relationship between culture and power?
• Often, the word “literary” is a status symbol, a seal of approval to distinguish “high” culture from more vulgar or less valuable “low” forms of culture.

Word play: text-based video games

• According to data from video game data consultancy Newzoo, more than 3 billion people play video games worldwide – almost half of the world’s population.
• When the first video games were developed in the 1950s, two distinct genres emerged: one was action oriented (such as the pioneering 1958 game Tennis for Two), and the other more text based.

• The inclusion of images in adventure games would not arrive until 1980, when Mystery House became the first “graphic adventure” game.
• Despite technological advances, these games inherited several features from interactive fiction, including the predominant role of text.

Literature on the screen: “story-rich” games

• In more recent years, a new sub-genre of adventure games – known as “story-rich” games – has become popular thanks to independent creators and producers.
• In Papers, Please (2013), a border policeman in a fictional dictatorial regime deals with terrible moral dilemmas on a daily basis.

• They have to explore several corridors while trying unsuccessfully to interact with their surroundings, accompanied by the voice of an enigmatic narrator.
• Upon reaching a room with two open doors, the voiceover states that Stanley “entered the door on his left”.
• Each decision then opens up new paths leading to dozens of possible endings, similar to a “choose your own adventure” book.

• These works are fundamentally based on language, begging the question of why video games cannot also fit into this category.
• Writing has always tried to break away from established ideas, and we know that literature is not limited to words on paper.

Andrés Porras Chaves no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.