Paratextualizing Games
Title | Paratextualizing Games PDF eBook |
Author | Benjamin Beil |
Publisher | transcript Verlag |
Pages | 364 |
Release | 2021-11-30 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 3732854213 |
Gaming no longer only takes place as a ›closed interactive experience‹ in front of TV screens, but also as broadcast on streaming platforms or as cultural events in exhibition centers and e-sport arenas. The popularization of new technologies, forms of expression, and online services has had a considerable influence on the academic and journalistic discourse about games. This anthology examines which paratexts gaming cultures have produced - i.e., in which forms and formats and through which channels we talk (and write) about games - as well as the way in which paratexts influence the development of games. How is knowledge about games generated and shaped today and how do boundaries between (popular) criticism, journalism, and scholarship have started to blur? In short: How does the paratext change the text?
Paratextualizing Games
Title | Paratextualizing Games PDF eBook |
Author | Benjamin Beil |
Publisher | Transcript Publishing |
Pages | 300 |
Release | 2021-04 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9783837654219 |
This anthology examines paratexts that gaming cultures have produced as well as the way in which paratexts influence the development of games. How is knowledge about games generated and shaped today and how do boundaries between (popular) criticism, journalism, and scholarship have started to blur?
(Not) In the Game
Title | (Not) In the Game PDF eBook |
Author | Regina Seiwald |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |
Pages | 230 |
Release | 2023-08-21 |
Genre | Games & Activities |
ISBN | 3110732920 |
How do games represent history, and how do we make sense of the history of games? The industry regularly uses history to sell products, while processes of creation and of promotion leave behind markers of a game’s history. The access to this history is often granted by so-called paratexts, which are accompanying elements orbiting texts. Exploring this fully, case studies in this work move the focus of debate from the games themselves to wider, ancillary materials and ask how history is used in, and how we can use history to study games.
Game Play
Title | Game Play PDF eBook |
Author | Paul Booth |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing USA |
Pages | 265 |
Release | 2015-04-23 |
Genre | Games & Activities |
ISBN | 1628927445 |
"Analyzes paratextual board games--particularly games based on film, television, and books--as unique media texts"--
Games as Texts
Title | Games as Texts PDF eBook |
Author | Alayna Cole |
Publisher | CRC Press |
Pages | 86 |
Release | 2020-12-17 |
Genre | Computers |
ISBN | 1000329739 |
Games as Texts provides an overview and practical steps for analysing games in terms of their representations of social structures, class, power, race, sexuality, gender, animals, nature, and ability. Each chapter applies a traditional literary theory to the narrative and mechanics of games and explores the social commentary the games encourage. This approach demonstrates to players, researchers, games media, and non-gamers how they can engage with these cultural artefacts through both critical reading and theoretical interpretations. Key Features: Explores games through various literary and theoretical lenses Provides exemplar analysis and guiding questions to help readers think critically about games Highlights the social commentary that all texts can reveal—including games—and how this impacts narrative and mechanics
Beyond Games and Scripts
Title | Beyond Games and Scripts PDF eBook |
Author | Berne |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 1983 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
Second Person
Title | Second Person PDF eBook |
Author | Pat Harrigan |
Publisher | National Geographic Books |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2010-01-22 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0262514184 |
Game designers, authors, artists, and scholars discuss how roles are played and how stories are created in role-playing games, board games, computer games, interactive fictions, massively multiplayer games, improvisational theater, and other "playable media." Games and other playable forms, from interactive fictions to improvisational theater, involve role playing and story—something played and something told. In Second Person, game designers, authors, artists, and scholars examine the different ways in which these two elements work together in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), computer games, board games, card games, electronic literature, political simulations, locative media, massively multiplayer games, and other forms that invite and structure play. Second Person—so called because in these games and playable media it is "you" who plays the roles, "you" for whom the story is being told—first considers tabletop games ranging from Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs with an explicit social component to Kim Newman's Choose Your Own Adventure-style novel Life's Lottery and its more traditional author-reader interaction. Contributors then examine computer-based playable structures that are designed for solo interaction—for the singular "you"—including the mainstream hit Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the genre-defining independent production Façade. Finally, contributors look at the intersection of the social spaces of play and the real world, considering, among other topics, the virtual communities of such Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) as World of Warcraft and the political uses of digital gaming and role-playing techniques (as in The Howard Dean for Iowa Game, the first U.S. presidential campaign game). In engaging essays that range in tone from the informal to the technical, these writers offer a variety of approaches for the examination of an emerging field that includes works as diverse as George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards series and the classic Infocom game Planetfall. Appendixes contain three fully-playable tabletop RPGs that demonstrate some of the variations possible in the form.