• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.114-124
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• 2009

73 percent of online games in Korea hold perspectives of medieval times in them. So far in history, about a millennium in medieval times is said to be a period of darkness and savagery, but it is newly revived in the digital virtual world. Such phenomenon is paradoxical and meaningful to often bring out 'medieval times' as a theme for online games, which are revealed by up-to-date technologies in present days. This research examines the background of views of medieval times appeared in online games and how they are realized. Medieval fantasy games have appeared because people dream about escaping from pre-modem times and have fantasy about medieval times. Moreover, perspectives of medieval times have enormously influenced background epics, quest stories, creation of characters in a game scenario. The dual structure having coexistence of nature and super naturalness acts an important role to set up the epic for medieval fantasy games. And medieval romance literature, which has a three-step quest narrative of 'targeting - adventure and fight - achievement' is reflected in a quest story of medieval fantasy games. The strict pyramid system represented by feudalism forms a meaningful metaphor for designing characters, and players organize communities for online games through horizontal collective consciousness in such vertical system of history at the same time.