Amazônia Virtual no game Brasil Ragnarök Online: representações, construção e circulação de sentidos sobre a região

Abstract

The present study aims to analyze the presence of Amazonian representations in Brasil Ragnarok Online (BRO), a digital game for thousands of simultaneous participants. The investigation was based on documents and literature to support the discussions of representation processes, construction and circulation of meanings in games, especially on digital games, and briefly introduces the transformation of representative capacities of these media products over its history. For the description and analysis of the empirical object, it was sought the construction of analytical model representations in digital games, based on theoretical contributions of Denise Jodelet (1989), Mikhail Bakhtin (1995), Stuart Hall (2003, 2005) and José Luiz Braga (2012) and in the methodological proposals directed to digital games of Ian Bogost (2007, 2008), Cristiano Pinheiro (2007) and Felipe Teixeira (2007), respectively, procedural rhetoric, the digital game model and dynamic hermeneutics. Following the proposed model of analysis, it was conducted a survey of digital games which submitted representations of Amazon in its contents to verify aspects relatable to those found in BRO. It was found that the meanings built in BRO reinforce numerous stereotypes about the Amazon region, in order to present similarities with the meanings contained in digital games discovered in mapping. Nevertheless, it is believed that digital games are configured as a potential media to value and debate about the Amazon region, showing a reality that enables forthcoming researches.