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Video Games and Storytelling: Reading Games and Playing Books
The potential of video games as storytelling media and the deep involvement that players feel when they are part of the story needs to be analysed vis-à-vis other narrative media. This book underscores the importance of video games as narratives and offers a framework for analysing the many-ended stories that often redefine real and virtual lives.
- GenresGamesVideo Games
246 pages, Paperback
First published September 16, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 6, 2017
4.5 : best overall theoretical accounting for video game studies I have read
June 5, 2025
One of the best books in game studies I've ever read.
September 13, 2025
It's tragic that it took until 2015 for someone to do away with the binaries and structural impositions that have long been plaguing game studies, but thankfully this book managed to challenge them quite substantially. I would call this a must-read if only it wasn't so complex and steeped in difficult postmodern theory, but it definitely deserves to be studied by anyone willing to do so.
This study is fantastically comprehensive and stands up to both academic and technical/professional scrutiny. Its final conclusions do feel somewhat one-sided: Deleuzian philosophy is certainly more useful than previous mainstream models for studying games, but it's hardly the end-all of the field. Still, the pendulum had to swing in this direction eventually, and it's a gift that the swing was undertaken by such a qualified and level-headed voice who was able to combine revolutionary and involutionary approaches so effectively in their rhetoric.
Now what's needed is a synthesis: Some aspects of structuralist critique would add a lot to this book's findings. Though so clearly opposed to postmodern theory—or perhaps because of that—maybe Jung or Eliade could point the way forward? Maybe more modern forms of psychology and anthropology? It's exciting to think about the possibilities.
This study is fantastically comprehensive and stands up to both academic and technical/professional scrutiny. Its final conclusions do feel somewhat one-sided: Deleuzian philosophy is certainly more useful than previous mainstream models for studying games, but it's hardly the end-all of the field. Still, the pendulum had to swing in this direction eventually, and it's a gift that the swing was undertaken by such a qualified and level-headed voice who was able to combine revolutionary and involutionary approaches so effectively in their rhetoric.
Now what's needed is a synthesis: Some aspects of structuralist critique would add a lot to this book's findings. Though so clearly opposed to postmodern theory—or perhaps because of that—maybe Jung or Eliade could point the way forward? Maybe more modern forms of psychology and anthropology? It's exciting to think about the possibilities.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews