This essay analyzes Death Stranding, the 2019 release from contemporary game auteur Hideo Kojima. Here, I discuss the unique potentialities of this game world, detailing the ways in which Death Stranding expresses ecological perspectives. Asynchronous multiplayer serves as a unique metagame, helping to prove that play is a process of action which facilitates ecological thinking. The world of Death Stranding is filled with strange objects. The nonhuman entities that the player encounters throughout the game, for example, seem entirely alien. And yet, when these entities are properly understood, we realize that their inclusion is necessary--and natural. Your "job" in the game is to deliver packages. The player is made aware that here, in this digital world, objects have an unusual weight. What can we learn when we play this game? As the player becomes increasingly immersed in this digital world, Death Stranding motivates deeper thinking about the world outside of the game. Although this is a work of fiction, play helps us to consider our impact on the world at large. Death Stranding affords things their proper power and considers human existence in context with a larger, ecological whole.

Ce mémoire analysera les différents procédés de transmission à l'oeuvre dans Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) et Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014) afin de saisir l'ensemble de la vision auctoriale du réalisateur de la série Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima, ce qui nous permettra dans un second temps de comprendre la signification du réseau communicationnel rhizomatique qui précède et accompagne ces jeux vidéo. Ma recherche sera ainsi divisée en trois sections. La première section s'intéressera à la publicité entourant les deux volets de Metal Gear Solid V, laquelle sera étudiée en tant que signe social. La deuxième section présentera une analyse scénaristique dans laquelle il sera question des inspirations historiques et intermédiales qui contribuent à former l'univers narratif de notre corpus. La troisième section sera une analyse du modèle interactif de Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes et de Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Il y sera question de l'avantage parfois insoupçonné de l'encadrement de systèmes logiques vidéoludiques afin d'influencer le joueur à abandonner ou à adopter de nouvelles perspectives sociopolitiques. Ce mémoire démontrera comment Metal Gear Solid V utilise et unit un maximum de méthodes de transmission afin de convaincre son public de se laisser séduire par son message auctorial, ce qui servira finalement à prouver le potentiel rhétorique d'une union songée du paratexte et du contenu d’une œuvre vidéoludique. / This memoir will analyse the different processes of transmission used in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014) in order to grasp the whole auctorial vision of the Metal Gear Solid series director, Hideo Kojima, which will in turn allow us to understand the meaning of the rhizomatic communicational network that precedes or accompanies these video games. My research will be divided in three sections. The first section will focus on the publicity (and therefore social signs) that surrounds the two parts of Metal Gear Solid V. The second section will present a story analysis where historical and intermedial inspirations of both games will be discussed. The third section will analyse the interactive model of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. That chapter will focus on the often unsuspected advantages of the logical videoludic systems as means to influence the player to abandon or to adopt new sociopolitical perspectives. This memoir will decompose how Metal Gear Solid V uses and unites a maximum of transmission methods to persuade its public to give in to its auctorial message, which will hopefully demonstrate the rhetorical potential of a thoughtful union of paratext and content within videoludic works.