Crossmedia transfer and narrative in the “WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw” videogame franchise

Abstract

WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw (THQ/Yuke’s 2004-2009) is a videogame franchise, developed by Yuke’s and published by THQ for multiple videogame consoles, based on a license to use World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)’s intellectual property: talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, wrestling moves, and logos that are popular thanks to WWE’s television broadcasts and live shows.

After providing an introduction to professional wrestling and the WWE, this paper will discuss WWE’s crossmedial production and focus on the process of content transferring from the WWE’s television broadcasts and live shows to the videogames. This process was addressed differently in different editions of the franchise, particularly regarding the narrative elements. As an example, we will examine the first and the currently last episodes of the franchise. We will define what is being transferred (universe, events, objects, characters), discuss the different structures of the events in the games by applying the taxonomy proposed by Aarseth (2009), and analyze the franchise as a series of “documentary games” (Aarseth 2009), an approach that will extend the understanding of the transfer by considering the possibilities for counterfactuality or metafactuality.