Guardians of the Video Game

**Guardians of the Video Game** (전자오락수호대), also well-known as **GOTVG** in acronym, an ongoing webcomic or manwha series authorised by Gasfard (가스파드), Wien Mustapa but currently in the status of hiatus due to health condition. GOVTG webtoon is first published on NAVER Webtoon (NAVER 만화) - a South Korean comic website - on October 8, 2014 and currently updates on every Thursday, then subsequently published on LINE Webtoon in English translation on December 20, 2014 and currently updates on every Saturday. Most uploaded episodes of GOTVG have been updated in regular interval of every 7 days, excluding some episodes after the author made announcement on hiatus or changes.

## Story Concept

GOTVG comic is labelled as the genres of "Fantasy" and "Drama" in LINE Webtoon. The story context of GOTVG laid foundation on one of the trending story materials, which is the topic of "game". This type of story material usually describes how the main character survives through the conflicts in the fantasy world inside the game and may or may not involve the reality of the real world. In short words, the story concept of GOTVG is about a young guardian fights his way to guard the operation of video games.

## Story Premise

In GOTVG, the story mainly focuses on the world behind the games, a huge corporation known as "Guardians of the Video Game" (exactly same as the title of comic). The interesting twist is that the story plot revolves around a guardian of the video game inside the world of game itself, instead of the usual idea of main character - the player of the game. The official story premise of GOTVG stated on LINE Webtoon:

> "*Patch is an agent for a company that secretly operates and guards the world of video games. His perfect track record as an elite agent is interrupted by the "Hungry Bird", a new player on the scene*."
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## Drawing Style

There are four distinctive aspects regarding to the drawing style of GOTVG as below:

### **Panel**

The term "panel" usually refers as a box or a frame in a comic to divide section for the progress display of story scene. A panel can be obviously identified by its outline of a rounded square with the line weight of approximately 11/2 pt in GOTVG. As GOTVG is initially published in an online comic-reading platform, the main display of panel style is significantly unlike the normal hardcopy printed comics that adjusted according to the size of materials being published. This comic follows the distinctive characteristic of a website - reading by scrolling down instead of flipping the hardcopy or clicking the soft copy of the next page in a comic, hence, recommended to read from top to bottom vertically, and from left to right horizontally.

### **Title of Episode**

The title of the GOVTG in the comic usually located between the panels in each episode with inconsistency in sequence. The author usually uses it to serve as the preview or reflection of the episode itself with different colours and abstracts applied.

### **Pixel Resolution**

The characters created in GOTVG must match according to the unique default pixel resolution respectively depends on which game department they belonged to or assigned for. Some game departments have higher pixel resolution compared to other game departments. For instance, First Person Shooter (FPS) Game Department has more refined pixel resolution compares to Classis Game Department with its famous 8-bit byte graphics. Whenever a character transfers from a game department to another different genre of game department, the relocated character is obliged to wear the name tag of the game department to transform into its default pixels or graphics for the purpose of uniformity.

### **Player's Game Screen**

The framework or layout structure of each episode always never fail to end with the drawing of a single distinctive panel as the displayed game screen of what the player sees on the surface as a passive effect from the development of the story plot inside the game.

## Frequent Used Terms

* Guardian
* Game Master
* Player / Main Character / Hero
* Non Player Character (NPC)
* Health Point (HP)
* Mana Point (MP)

## References

1. ↑ Gasfard, (n.d.). Gasfard. Retrieved from https://blog.naver.com/gasfard
2. ↑ Genre. *LINE Webtoon*. Retrieved on March 10, 2018, from http://www.webtoons.com/en/genre.
3. ↑ Gasfard (2014, Dec 20). Guardians of the Video Game. *LINE Webtoon*. Retrieved from https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/guardians-of-the-video-game/list?title\_no=368&page=1