The Meaning of Video Games Gaming and Textual Strategies [Paperback]

The Meaning of Video Gamestakes a textual studies approach to an increasingly important form of expression in todays culture. It begins by assuming that video games are meaningfulnot just as sociological or economic or cultural evidence, but in their own right, as cultural expressions worthy of scholarly attention. In this way, this book makes a contribution to the study of video games, but it also aims to enrich textual studies.

Early video game studies scholars were quick to point out that a game should never be reduced to merely its story or narrative content and they rightly insist on the importance of studying games as games. But here Steven E. Jones demonstrates that textual studieswhich grows historically out of ancient questions of textual recension, multiple versions, production, reproduction, and receptioncan fruitfully be applied to the study of video games. Citing specific examples such as Mystand Lost, Katamari Damacy, Halo, Fa?ade, Nintendos Wii, and Will Wrights Spore, the book explores the ways in which textual studies conceptsauthorial intention, textual variability and performance, the paratext, publishing history and the social textcan shed light on video games as more than formal systems. It treats video games as cultural forms of expression that are received as they are played, out in the world, where their meanings get made.

Introduction
1. The game of Lost
2. Collecting Katamari Damacy
3. The Halouniverse
4. The game behind Facade

5. The Wii platform
6. Anticpating Spore

 

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Glossary

Index

Steven E. Jones rolls his katamari through wol“Å