Game Design Second Edition 2nd Edition 2004

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 is accessible textbook gives students the tools they need to analyze games

using strategies borrowed from textual analysis. As the ﬁ eld of game studies

grows, videogame writing is evolving from the mere evaluation of gameplay,

graphics, sound, and replayablity, to more reﬂ ective writing that manages

to convey the complexity of a game and the way it is played in a cultural

context.

Clara Fernández-Vara's concise primer provides readers with instruction on

the basic building blocks of game analysis—examination of context, content

and reception, and formal qualities—as well as the vocabulary necessary

for talking about videogames' distinguishing characteristics. Examples are

drawn from a range of games, both digital and non-digital—from Portal

and World of Warcraft to Monopoly —and the book provides a variety of

exercises and sample analyses, as well as a comprehensive ludography and

glossary.

In this second edition of the popular textbook, Fernández-Vara brings the

book ﬁ rmly up-to-date, pulling in fresh examples from ground-breaking

new works in this dynamic ﬁ eld. Introduction to Game Analysis remains a

unique practical tool for students who want to become more ﬂ uent writers

and critics not only of videogames, but also of digital media overall.

Clara Fernández-Vara is Associate Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center,

New York University. She teaches courses on game studies and narrative

design, and works as a freelance game designer and writer. As a researcher,

her main interest is in exploring the integration of stories and gameplay, as

well as developing theoretical frameworks to understand games better.

Introduction to

Game Analysis

Introduction to

Game Analysis

Clara Fernández-Vara

Second edition

Second edition published 

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and by Routledge

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 e right of Clara Fernández-Vara to be identiﬁ ed as author of this work has been asserted by

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without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,

and are used only for identiﬁ cation and explanation without intent to infringe.

First edition published by Routledge 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fernández-Vara, Clara, author.

Title: Introduction to game analysis / Clara Fernández-Vara.

Description: Second edition. | New York, NY : Routledge, . | Includes ludography.

Identiﬁ ers: LCCN  (print) | LCCN  (ebook) |

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Subjects: LCSH: Video games—Evaluation. | Video games—Design. |

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List of Figures xi

Foreword to the Second Edition xii

Acknowledgments to the First Edition xiv

 The Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 1

Introduction 

How Are Games Texts? 

What Is Textual Analysis? 

Game Analysis for All 

TextBoxTheProblemswithCanons   

 e Building Blocks and Areas of Study

of Game Analysis 

Context 

Game Overview 

Formal Aspects 

Deﬁ ning the Area of Study and Our Audience 

Are We Ready? 

Notes 

 Preparing for the Analysis 25

Introduction 

Your Analysis Is as Good as Your Sources 

Playing the Game Critically 

What Does "Finished" Mean? 

Interactivity and Critical Distance 

ExerciseWhatTypeofPlayerAreYou?   

Walkthroughs and Cheats 

Gathering Information about the Game 

Contents

vi Contents

Overview of Possible Resources 

Game Box and Manual 

Game Reviews 

Academic Articles 

Press Releases and Advertisements 

Newspaper Articles 

Developer Diaries and Talks 

Postmortems 

Resorting to Pre-existing  eories to Understand Games 

Access to the Game and Accounting for Your Sources 

Secondary Sources 

TextBoxTheInternetArchive   

Player Data 

Preparing to Analyze Virtual Worlds 

 e Problem with Spoilers 

 e Readiness Is All 

TextBoxWalkthroughonHowtoPrepareto

AnalyzeaGame   

Notes 

 Areas of Analysis 1: Context 60

Introduction 

Context Helps Understand the Game 

What Counts as Context? 

Context:  e Building Blocks 

Context Inside the Game 

Further Reading 

ExerciseFanRemakes   

To Sum Up 

Notes 

 Writing the Analysis 201

Introduction 

TextBoxUsingSpeciﬁ cExamples   

Types of Analyses: Overview 

ExerciseAnalyzingtheAnalysis   

Game Summary:  e Key Section 

Journalistic Review 

ExerciseWriteaRetroReview   

TextBoxImitatingBadWriting   

Historical Analysis 

ExerciseKeyGames   

Game Communities 

Quantitative vs. Qualitative 

 e Issue with Virtual Worlds 

ExerciseExpertPlayersinOnlineGames   

TextBoxCloseReading   

Illustration of a  eory 

TextBoxDeﬁ ningYourTerms   

x Contents

Interpretative Analysis 

Personal Account 

ExerciseRewritetheAnalysis   

Putting It All Together 

Notes 

 Wrapping Things Up 258

So You Have Written Your Analysis. What Now? 

 e Art of the Rewrite 

Academic Integrity: Include Your Sources 

 e Challenge of Including Games in Your Sources 

What Next? 

Note 

Appendix I: Sample Analyses 

Sample Analysis : Journalistic Review 

Sample Analysis : Historical Analysis 

Sample Analysis : Games as Examples to Illustrate a

 eory 

Sample Analysis : Personal Account 

Notes 

Appendix II: List of Other Published Analyses 

Analyses of Individual Games: Articles 

Analyses of Individual Games: Books 

Collections of Game Analyses 

Analyses of Game Communities 

Glossary 

Ludography 

Index 

. Comparison between the covers for the game Ico () 

. Knight Lore (), developed for the MSX, running

on an emulator for OSX 

. Comparison between the original version of

Pac-Man () and its Atari VCS port () 

. Diﬀ erent multiplayer conﬁ gurations 

. In Galaxian , the player controls the ship at the

bottom, while the ships move sideways and then

ﬂ ow down the screen 

.  e overlap between the rules and the ﬁ ctional world is

the simulation; the more overlap there is between rules

and world, the more nuanced the simulation will be 

. Illustration of the zone of ﬂ ow ﬁ nds a balance between

the skill required and the diﬃ culty of the challenge 

Figures

xii

 ose of us who study games are in for a ride every day. Game stud-

ies involves many disciplines that must be in constant conversation, even

though at times each ﬁ eld may use what sounds like a diﬀ erent language.

Games—digital and non-digital—transform through the participation of

players; in the case of videogames, they use technology that is constantly

evolving and creating new opportunities to play.  e economic models of

games change constantly and strive to ﬁ nd new ways to both ﬁ nance their

creators as well as reach new audiences.

Because of the ever-changing nature of our object of study, a book on game

analysis is but a snapshot of the state the ﬁ eld at the moment of writing.

Even though there is a core of works and concepts that are well known, the

ﬁ eld does not remain the same for long. In the interval between the initial

release of this book and this second edition, the world of games has trans-

formed in ways that impact their study and analysis.  e revisions in this

volume are a response to these transformations—expanded sections, new

game examples, and updated bibliography and ludography.

 e growth of certain trends and the appearance of new phenomena needed

to be reﬂ ected in this textbook. Some of these changes and evolutions are

the widespread use of video streaming as a way to understand and critique

games, which has also become a mode of surrogate play, the increased ease

of access to virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, or how diver-

sity in game makers and players has become a mainstream discussion that

both the games industry and academia are addressing. New games also have

given me the chance to illustrate some of the building blocks that make up

the analysis in certain ways as well. Last but not least, the appearance of

new types of resources, such as the repositories of magazines and computer

games at  e Internet Archive, has also changed the way that we access

games, particularly older titles, that had remained hardly accessible before.

In the time since this book was ﬁ rst published, I have also been a full-time

professor at the NYU Game Center, where I have been teaching game

Forewordtothe

SecondEdition

Foreword to the Second Edition xiii

studies and design classes. Many of the tweaks and additions to this book

are responses to feedback from my students in these years, as well as tricks

I have developed to help them learn to think about games critically and

improve their academic writing.

In the writing of this second edition, I would like to thank the reviewers of

the ﬁ rst edition, who sent me feedback that I have tried to address as best as

possible. I also owe a big thanks to Janet Murray, Todd Harper, T.L. Taylor,

and Austin Walker, who provided essential feedback in key updates of the

text. I am also very grateful to my editor, Erica Wetter, for her enthusiasm

and support, without which this revised version would not have been pos-

sible. My students in the last ﬁ ve years, with their eﬀ ort, struggles, and bril-

liance, have also contributed to the expansions in this book—my thanks to

all them for helping me become a better teacher every day.

 e biggest and warmest thanks must go to my son Mateo and my husband

Matt, who tolerate me absconding to write in coﬀ ee shops, and always wel-

come me back home with cuddles. I would not have been able to do this

without you.

xiv

Acknowledgmentsto

theFirstEdition

 is book started as a class handout for undergraduate students, whose goal

was to provide some guidelines for analyzing games as part of their assign-

ment. I kept expanding the handout until it was actually longer than the

assignment students had to write, when I realized that I had a lot to say

about the topic.

First of all, thanks to my students over the years who have written game

analyses, from whom I have learned the most in order to write this book.

 anks to Mia Consalvo, who was the ﬁ rst to suggest that I should

turn the handout into a book, and has provided a lot of support and feed-

back throughout the whole process of production.

 e concept of this book and a good deal of its writing took place while

I was a researcher at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. My col-

leagues there, as well as collaborators and visiting scholars, provided

much of the support and feedback that kept this book going: Doris Rusch,

Geoﬀ rey Long, Jason Begy, Konstantin Mitgutsch, Todd Harper, Abraham

Stein, Pilar Lacasa, Jaroslav Svelch, David Finkel, William Uricchio, Philip

Tan, Chor Guan Teo, and the rest of the GAMBIT staﬀ and participants in

our weekly research meeting.

Many thanks as well to Nick Montfort, who lent me a space to continue

researching at  e Trope Tank in MIT, and provided constant inspiration

and challenges that have found their way into the book.

 anks to all who provided resources and feedback as the manuscript was

taking ﬁ nal shape: Jesper Juul, Mikael Jakobsson, Brendan Keogh, Chris

Dahlen, Mattie Brice, Joel Goodwin, Nina Huntenman, T.L. Taylor, and the

anonymous reviewers of the proposal.

My editor Erica Wetter and Simon Jacobs, editorial assistant, have been

supportive and patient, and always had ideas and solutions whenever I was

stuck. To both, many thanks.

Acknowledgments to the First Edition xv

 e inspiration from this book comes from many years of writing literary

analyses, which helped me come up with my own model to analyze media

as texts.  anks to my literature professors through the years, especially:

mi padre, Jesús Fernández Montes y el otro Jesús en el Instituto Parla III,

Robert Shepherd, Manuel Aguirre, and Philip Sutton, whose handouts on

how to analyze a theatrical performance were the model I used for the origi-

nal guide.

And of course this book would not be here without the unfailing support

of my husband Matt, who is my living encyclopedia of games and gives me

cuddles so I can keep going.

To all of them goes my gratitude.  e faults in this work are my own.



 INTRODUCTION

Waiting in line on the ﬁ rst day of PAX East , I overheard two video-

game fans talking about Dragon Age .  ey were sharing their opinions about

the game, which they had enjoyed.  ey talked about how the writing was

great, as one could expect of Bioware, but the graphics still needed another

pass; the smooth gameplay made up for some of the graphical glitches.  e

game was the right length; this mission was fun.  en they moved on to

talk about a series of fantasy novels, whose title I did not pick up. According

to these fans, the novels had very engaging characters, whose story across

the novels was consistent but also surprising; they particularly loved how

believable the dialogue was, which managed to blend contemporary lan-

guage with a fantasy setting.  e writing style was not pretentious, and it

built a world they wanted to be part of.  ey recapitulated their favorite

chapters, and why they liked them.

What shocked me about this overheard conversation was the diﬀ erence

between how they discussed videogames and novels. While their opinion

of Dragon Age: Origins () rated a laundry list of high-level concepts

of game reviews, they discussed fantasy novels from their experience as

readers, using a much more speciﬁ c vocabulary, and providing arguments



TheWhysand

Whereforesof

GameAnalysis

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

based on speciﬁ c aspects of the novel.  eir opinion of videogames was

based on a series of sliding scales (gameplay, graphics, story), whereas their

discussion of the novels centered on a more nuanced discussion on why

they liked them.

 e diﬀ erence in discourse made me realize one of the main problems of

videogame analysis and criticism. Videogame fans talk about games by bor-

rowing terms from game reviews, which at the same time cover the talk-

ing points provided by marketing: Fantastic graphics! Immersive gameplay!

Hollywood-like stories! It is not a problem of literacy—these two fans were

able to provide thoughtful criticism, and they knew the game well. However,

their vocabulary to talk about games was not on a par with how they dis-

cussed novels. In my own experience as a teacher, I have seen the same shift

in students who can produce a thoughtful and solid ﬁ lm analysis, but then

shift to a casual, shallow register when they write about a game.

 e guidelines presented in this book are based on my own experience as

a media and game studies teacher, as a researcher and as a developer. Con-

versations like the one I overheard at PAX are part of my inspiration for

this book—I want students who are passionate about games to snap out of

their shallow discourse and use their knowledge to discuss games with the

depth and nuance they deserve, since they often demonstrate the knowl-

edge and capacity they need. My goals also include reaching out to those

who may not consider themselves "gamers" or "board game geeks," but who

would like to learn more about games by playing them. A third group this

book is intended for are scholars with a background in the humanities and

social sciences, who want to extend their appreciation of media to games,

both digital and non-digital. Although they may feel comfortable applying

the theories and methods of literature, ﬁ lm, or communication studies to

games, the aim here is to highlight what the aspects of games are that not

only deﬁ ne them, but also distinguish them from other media.

For those readers who may already come from an established humanistic

or social sciences ﬁ eld, the main hurdle to entering game studies is perhaps

a pervading skepticism about whether games, digital or not, can become a

medium worthy of study, as literature, theater, or ﬁ lm already are. Games

discourse is not usually associated with academic conferences or special-

ized journalism, but rather online streamers talking over the games they are

playing for their audience, or newscasters talking about the uproar about

the violence in the latest bestselling game.  e academic study of games,

 e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 

however, is much older than people may think—Johan Huizinga's Homo

Ludens , one of the foundational texts of game studies, discusses play as an

essential aspect of cultural practice, and was ﬁ rst published in ;

 psy-

chologist Jean Piaget discussed the role of play in child development in his

book, La Formation du Symbole chez l'Enfant: Imitation, Jeu et Rêve, Image

et Représentation in .

 Although the ﬁ eld of game studies is relatively

young in comparison with other disciplines, it is also becoming an estab-

lished academic ﬁ eld rather fast. At the end of the s, scholars like Espen

Aarseth or Janet Murray started calling attention to games as their focus of

study;

 the ﬁ rst issue of the academic journal Game Studies was published in

July ,

 while the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) confer-

ence started back in .

As we will see in the following chapters, a sophisticated discourse on games

does exist and it is becoming more widespread. Unfortunately, only a

reduced group of scholars and a smaller number of practitioners and critics

are familiar with it these days. At present, mainstream videogame journal-

ism and industry dominate the creation of analytical models in relation to

popular culture—it is more likely that videogame fans will watch a video-

game review on YouTube, or read a development blog than any of the papers

given at the DiGRA conference.  is is why these pages introduce readers

to exemplary texts from a variety of sources, focusing on academic analyses

of games.

 e inﬂ uence of marketing on the discourse, particularly in the area of digi-

tal games, is not negligible. Game reviews are one of the ﬁ rst (and often

only) types of game writing that mainstream audiences are exposed to.  is

type of writing can be subject to a series of economic pressures that may

condition its content. An online visit to some of the major websites special-

izing in videogames will probably reveal a site plastered with huge adver-

tisements for the latest videogame releases. Publishers may also provide

journalists and videogame reviewers early access to the games provided

they do not publish anything before a speciﬁ c deadline.

 If a site posts any

news that breaks the embargo, its staﬀ may not get advance copies of games

and publishers will withdraw their advertisements from the site, preventing

the site both from having advance content and taking away revenue from

advertising. Subjectivity is inevitable (and even necessary) in reviews; the

issue is that, in some specialized sources, the revenue model can inﬂ uence

the content to the point that some reviews are overtly biased toward the

positive.

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

 ere is a space for videogame reviews as consumer reports; the problem

is that those reviews can be skewed by economic interests.

 Plus, there are

other types of journalistic writing, written in a way that is accessible to the

general public, which reﬂ ects on the cultural role of games and players.

 e state of videogame reviews is steadily changing thanks to new jour-

nalistic models and approaches, and it is not a problem that will be tackled

directly here. My concern is that there is no reason for writers outside

certain specialized sites to replicate that kind of discourse, particularly

in academia. Scholars should be able to talk about what we like and what

we do not with a certain level of nuance, understanding our role as play-

ers and how our experience may diﬀ er from other people's, being able to

explain what it means to have a user interface that does not follow con-

ventional conﬁ gurations, or discuss the diﬀ erences between the male and

female player characters in terms of mechanics.  ere is so much more

that game analysis can talk about beyond the quality of the graphics or the

diﬃ culty curve.

A more sophisticated way to talk about games is useful to both scholars and

players.  e aim of this book is to make the tools of academic analysis more

accessible to everyone. Many schools have incorporated the study of games

in their curricula, particularly in departments of social sciences and the

humanities, and it may be diﬃ cult to know where to start or how the new

subject ﬁ ts with the rest of the materials covered. Game analysis is also rel-

evant to practice-driven schools or computer science departments, because

they need to be familiar with pre-existing works and what they have done in

order to understand them as well as create innovative games.

My aim is also to encourage everyone with an interest in games to learn

more about them and produce thoughtful reﬂ ections. If you consider your-

self a gamer who breathes and lives in game worlds, my aim is to take advan-

tage of your expertise and apply it to examining games systematically, within

a speciﬁ c academic domain and approach. Having an extensive knowledge

of games is obviously helpful to analyze games; in my classes, I try to take

advantage of the personal investment my students already have as a motiva-

tion. My teaching focuses on the aspects of games that can provide material

for analysis, their interrelationships, and how those aspects can be tackled

from diﬀ erent perspectives. Analysis is also a tool for budding game design-

ers, who can learn about diverse design aesthetics and develop a vocabulary

to understand games better, as well as to communicate their designs to the

people they work with. Being aware of the diﬀ erent processes that generate

 e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 

meaning in games is essential to understanding their role as a cultural and

artistic expression.

 e guidelines in this book should also be helpful to those who do not con-

sider themselves game experts.  e strategies here are not strict guidelines;

they provide some considerations to be made when tackling games, a map

of the diﬀ erent building blocks of the analysis, and a series of comparative

examples.  e idea is to help writers ﬁ nd their own way into games and

how to talk about them, making use of what they already know, even if it

is not games but other media. We must also remember we do not have to

limit ourselves to videogames, and that there are many types of games—

playground games, card games, board games, arcade games, casual games,

shooter games, escape the room activities, to name but a few—which can all

be dissected and discussed.

By providing tools to analyze games in a cultivated way and promoting the

generalization of academic discourse, my hope is that the readers of this

book realize that there are many ways to talk about games. Improving the

discourse will allow players to engage with games in novel ways and become

more critical of what they play. In ﬁ lmic terms, it is similar to the diﬀ erence

between a moviegoer , who is someone who goes to the movies regularly to

be entertained, and a cinephile , who is a more demanding audience member,

has an extensive knowledge of ﬁ lm history, and can articulate the relevance

of a movie and relate it to other works. In a similar way, we need more

diversity of ways to engage with games, ranging from the casual player to the

ludophile who knows about the history and form of the medium in depth.

 e foundation to a more sophisticated discourse on games is to understand

them as texts .  e methods I propose here are strategies for textual analysis

applied to games, both digital and non-digital, derived from a humanistic

background.  is raises a set of questions, which I will address in the follow-

ing sections: How are games texts? What is textual analysis? What can we

learn through the analysis of games?

 HOWAREGAMESTEXTS?

 e term text is usually associated with the written word, which is also part

of the dictionary deﬁ nition. Because the practice of textual analysis has

a strong tradition in the humanities, particularly in literature, the phrase

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

has persisted in relation to reading and writing. As someone with a strong

background in literature, I studied poems and novels, for example. When

studying theater, however, it became evident that the text alone was not

enough, because the meaning of the text would also depend on the way

the actor would deliver a certain line, and the context of the performance.

In this case, the term text also applies to the performance of the play or an

excerpt from it. "To be or not to be" means something diﬀ erent depending

on the actor playing it and the overall concept of the production, even if

the words do not change. I realized that what text means extends to other

artifacts that can also be objects of study: from literal text, such as a novel,

philosophical essays, or historical documents, to non-written or even non-

verbal text, such as movies or paintings, to sports events or broadcasts.

 is is not my discovery—French theorist Roland Barthes, in his book

Mythologies , provides a classic example of how the concept of text can be

applied to activities and artifacts that may also be a form of human expres-

sion.

  e articles included in the book examine the cultural status of items

such as red wine and detergents, to activities such as professional wrestling

or striptease.

Textual commentary can also take many shapes and forms, from a very

systematic analysis that helps develop speciﬁ c theoretical concepts. For

example, Gérard Genette's Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method is a

book-long analysis take on Proust's multi-volume novel À la Recherche du

Temps Perdu [ Remembrance of  ings Past ], which at the same time is devel-

oping a conceptual framework to understand general structures of narrative

discourse.

 A very diﬀ erent form of textual analysis can take advantage of

the properties of digital media, creating a free-form multimedia essay, such

as Peter Donaldson's article on Shakespeare's  e Tempest , which invites the

reader to explore the essay to convey the multi-layered, complex nature of

the play and one of its ﬁ lm adaptations, Prospero's Books (). 

 is broad understanding of the term allows us to approach games as texts,

whether they use cardboard, computers, or spoken words. We can study

games as a cultural production that can be interpreted because they have

meaning.  eir cultural signiﬁ cance can derive from the context of play:

who plays games, why and how, how the practice of playing relates to other

socio-cultural activities and practices. Meaningful play also results from the

player interacting with the systems and representations of the game.  us,

when we analyze games, we study meaning within the game (meaningful

play) and around it (cultural signiﬁ cance).  e text is not limited to the work

itself, but also to where the text is interpreted and by whom.

 e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 

If we consider games texts, we can also understand them better by analyz-

ing what Gérard Genette calls paratexts —texts that surround the main text

being analyzed, which transform and condition how the audience interprets

that main text.

 Texts such as the author's name or the title, reviews, or

discussions about the work can predispose the audience to read the text

a certain way. For example, some readers may be more willing to engage

with a novel if the writer is a renowned author; if the work comes from a

new novelist, readers may be more critical. Again, these texts do not nec-

essarily have to be written, since we are using the term in a broad sense.

In videogame terms, paratexts would include the box of the game, the

instruction manual, the game's commercial website, reviews, and interviews

with the developers, as well as other media, from other games to commer-

cials or ﬁ lms that may have been inspired by the game or spawned by it.  e

way that a game is branded also becomes part of the paratexts of the game

and how we understand it—branding creates expectations because it may

belong to a pre-existing game series, or feature the name of a famous devel-

oper on the box. Extending Genette's concept to videogames allows us to

understand how they become complex media artifacts in the light of these

paratexts, since they provide further layers of interpretation.  e building

blocks described in the context area of Chapter  deal with the variety of

paratexts that we can use to analyze the game.

One of the challenging issues when writing about games, particularly when

bringing methods and approaches from literature, ﬁ lm, or communication

studies, is whether games can actually be understood as a new way of com-

munication. Mark P. Wolf entitled one of the earliest books in the game stud-

ies ﬁ eld,  e Medium of the Video Game ;  the word medium seems to imply

that there is a message in them. Games as an expressive medium, however,

are hardly a one-way method of communication where the designer "tells"

a message to the player.  e player is a necessary part of the text; it is dif-

ﬁ cult to ﬁ nd games where there is no player input,

 as the game is not really

a complete text without a player who interprets its rules and interacts with

it. When we study games, we investigate how players engage with the text at

diﬀ erent levels: how players understand the rules, and follow or break them,

how players create goals for themselves, how they communicate with each

other, to name but a few.  e materials can be very rich—Mia Consalvo's

book, Cheating , deals with the diﬀ erent ways in which players deﬁ ne cheat-

ing in games, how they cheat, and how it changes the game.



Players can also communicate and relate to each other through the game—

after all, most games without computers are social activities.  erefore,

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

some of the processes that can be studied if we consider games a medium

are how players connect to each other through the game. Some games do

incorporate responses to the designer, such as a table-top role-playing game

where the players talk directly to the game master, or playground games

where players are constantly inventing, negotiating, and arguing about the

rules. In others, the cycle of feedback may take longer, with players post-

ing on online forums what they like or dislike about a game, or stream-

ers providing moment-to-moment commentary as they play. Even though

games are not usually a two-way medium where the player can respond

to the designer of the game, the necessary participation of the player and

their interpretation constitute a cycle that can be understood as a medium.

It may be the case that there is no designer to talk back to, because it is a

folk game (like Poker or Go Fish), which may prove that the communication

is not between the player and the designer, but rather between the player

and the game. If players do not like Old Maid, they will not complain to the

designer, even if there was one. If they do not like the rules, they will simply

change them and adapt them to how they want to play.

 Some games have

made talking to the player about the game directly into an expressive device,

such as  e Beginner's Guide () where the designer analyzes a series of

incomplete game levels by a ﬁ ctional game designer, or Getting Over It with

Bennett Foddy (), a game of heightened diﬃ culty where Foddy himself

encourages the player to persevere and reﬂ ects on the nature of failure as

the player struggles to advance in the game.

So games are a strange medium, where the communication takes place as

a constant cycle of players making sense of the game, ﬁ guring out what

they want to do, and seeing what happens. It is a medium that, by neces-

sity, establishes a dialogue between the game and the players, and among

players.

Some aspects of games can be analyzed from the standpoint of other media,

such as examining cinematics from a ﬁ lm studies point of view, or from

visual design.  e purpose of this book, however, is to call attention to how

games are diﬀ erent from other media. Rather than limiting ourselves to

thinking about games as a medium to convey messages, we can think of

them as artifacts that encode certain values and ideas, which players decode

and engage with as they play. Mary Flanagan argues that game developers

should be more aware of the values that their games incorporate, and use

them as an expressive device.

 An example of the type of issue Flanagan

talks about is the arcade game, Death Race (), whose creators thought

 e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 

it would be funny to have a game where the goal is to run pedestrians over,

then marking a tombstone on the spot where the person was killed. Even

with blocky graphics in black and white, the game caused one of the earliest

controversies about videogame violence in the US.

 Death Race was inter-

preted as a message inciting players to violence by people who did not play

it; however, the creators and many players thought it was a fun game and

did not think about the implications of their design decisions. Similar con-

troversies repeat periodically, only the games get better graphics and sound

and more complex design. What we can learn from this story is that games

can be read diﬀ erently depending on the audience, and that the system of

the game embodies certain values which can also be the subject of interpre-

tation. Once we accept that games are a type of texts, we can analyze them

as such.

 WHATISTEXTUALANALYSIS?

 ere are multiple methods to help us understand our reality, which change

depending on the ﬁ eld we come from and what we want to learn.  e prac-

tice of textual analysis cuts across diﬀ erent disciplines, both in the humani-

ties and the social sciences: literature, philosophy, history, anthropology,

communication and media studies.

Textual analysis is the in-depth study of a text in the sense discussed above,

using the text as a sample or case study to understand a speciﬁ c issue or

topic. By using inductive reasoning and analyzing speciﬁ c texts, we can

develop general theories that can be applied to other works.  e strategies

of textual analysis go beyond interpreting the piece or event itself: part of it

is trying to make sense of the text, while it may also address the varied ways

in which diﬀ erent people can interpret it, as was the case in the Death Race

controversy.

We have a general disposition to make sense of texts, often without formal

training, in practices that can be observed in everyday life—conversations

between friends after going to the cinema, reviews in consumer websites,

book clubs, and discussions of last night's sporting match. We constantly

try to unravel the texts that we engage with on a daily basis; it is natural

curiosity.  e game fans whose conversation I overhead at PAX East were

precisely doing informal text analysis, as a way to share and enjoy their

media experiences and making sense of them together. It was precisely that

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

impulse which probably took them to the convention in the ﬁ rst place, in

order to ﬁ nd like-minded people with whom to talk about their favorite

games and to partake of the culture surrounding games.  us, analysis is

not only a form of deeper engagement, but also of creating communities

that play them critically and create a discourse based on those texts.  ose

communities may be academics, journalists, or fans; they may also be the

practitioners who produce those texts and need a discourse to communi-

cate with each other.

 GAMEANALYSISFORALL

So if we practice textual analysis naturally and we do it so often, what

is the point of getting formal training? What are the beneﬁ ts of learn-

ing academic methods for text analysis? Isn't that a bit of cultural snob-

bism? In everyday life, people may associate the academic approach to

media analysis with high-brow ﬁ lm critics haunting art-house cinemas,

for example, who seem to speak another language and with whom general

audiences ﬁ nd it diﬃ cult to relate to. Academic critics may pan a ﬁ lm that

may later become a cultural reference, encouraging the divide between

everyday audiences and the academic realm. It has happened before—

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho () was received with mixed reviews when it

was released,

 and yet today it remains a point of reference for ﬁ lmmakers

and critics alike.

Is this book encouraging an elitist approach to analyzing and discussing

games? Well, yes and no. First of all, nothing will prevent the informal analy-

sis of games, which is second nature to so many people. What is at stake here

is fostering structured, systematic, and methodical ways to discuss games,

similar to the ones that already exist for literature, ﬁ lm, theater, non-ﬁ ction,

documentaries, and philosophy, for example. We need to construct an aca-

demic discourse that allows us to relate games to other media as well as

other academic ﬁ elds, to help expand and improve our knowledge.  ere is

a need to include games in the map of academic study, because the study of

games is eminently interdisciplinary, as we will see. In the end, more sophis-

tication is a means to broaden the types of discourse in relation to games,

expanding the spectrum of ways of understanding them depending on one's

background, the context of play, and so on. It is not that the pre-existing

discourse should disappear; rather, what we need is a wider variety of ways

to talk about games.

 e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 

Encouraging more sophisticated ways of discussing games is a way to

include game knowledge as a form of cultural capital. Pierre Bourdieu

deﬁ nes cultural capital as the kinds of knowledge that allow one to

acquire power and status, such as formal education and speciﬁ c skills.



At the moment, the contribution of games and game studies to cultural

capital is limited, mostly because the general knowledge of games is usu-

ally derived from the marketing of games and the generation of hype about

certain titles, which trickles down to journalistic articles and blog posts.

 is type of knowledge is usually not as useful to acquire "power and sta-

tus"; rather, it is often considered a waste of time.  is is slowly changing

in speciﬁ c instances where expertise translates into speciﬁ c status. For

example, top e-sports players enjoy a reputation within their ﬁ eld and

among their fans, and are able to make a living out of their gameplay—but

they do not yet make as much money as what elite sports players may

earn.

 By improving the discourse on games, we can make it so that being

well-versed in games can be admirable and knowing about games an intel-

lectual currency.

Being able to discuss games in a cultured manner is not the exclusive realm

of hard-core players—the key is not playing a lot, but playing well. What

"playing well" means depends on the context. According to Drew Davidson,

"playing well" in this context means enjoying the experience, understand-

ing the game, and, more importantly, being able to explain what one likes

or not and why, without using terms that marketing dictates.

 One plays

well by being able to understand the social set-up of a game, by interpreting

games as a performative activity, by breaking down how participation in a

ﬁ ctional world is structured, by being able to appreciate the beauty of a sys-

tem, by spotting the references to other games or other media, and tracing

the variations or innovations with respect to other games. Understanding

the complexity of games as activities, as well as their expressive means and

features as aesthetic objects, implies expanding the ways in which we can

enjoy games, digital or not.

 e aim of textual analysis in general, and this approach to game analy-

sis in particular, focuses less on making value judgments on the game and

more on appreciating how we make sense of them. Creating a game canon,

which includes games that are "good" or "the best" and which serve as a

referent to all in the ﬁ eld, is not necessarily a way to improve games knowl-

edge as cultural capital. A game canon lays a common ground, a series of

compass points for those who enter the discourse, allowing us to chart the

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

corpus of the texts that we study. A canon, however, can also limit the ﬁ eld

of study, again by using elitism as a criterion. Moreover, often the prime

candidates that would be popularly included in a game canon are bestsell-

ers; if we think of digital games, the list could include works such as Super

Mario Bros . (), Halo (), or FIFA  (), once more displaying the

power and inﬂ uence of marketing. Determining which are the best games

to label them as the games worth playing or analyzing is reducing our ﬁ eld

of study. What we want is to expand the ﬁ eld—the method here provided

is all-inclusive, where all games are worth studying, thus opening up the

possibility of discovering smaller, forgotten games, encouraging the practice

of game archeology in order to highlight works that may have been over-

looked, and ﬁ nding new meanings in games that at ﬁ rst may have seemed

trite. If our goal is to learn, there is so much that we can gather from playing

ﬂ awed games, as well as the top of the crop.

The Problems with Canons

One of the clearest markers of how a writer is thinking about their audience

is how examples help illustrate the discussion. Many ﬁ elds assume that the

reader will be familiar with the texts referred to, because they may be consid-

ered canonical and covered in foundational courses of the ﬁ eld. For example,

scholars of English Studies are expected to know Shakespeare's key tragedies

( Romeo and Juliet (1595), Hamlet (1602), Macbeth (1606), King Lear (1607),

Othello (1604)), whereas ﬁ lm scholars should know Citizen Kane (1941) or

Goodfellas (1990). In a similar way, in game studies, the assumption is that

scholars will be familiar with Pac-Man (1980) or Super Mario Bros. (1985).

On the one hand, canonical works provide us with a list of texts that serve

as common referent to the participants in a discipline, so we do not have to

explain every example from scratch. If you read an analysis from a ﬁ eld that

is not yours, you will realize how difﬁ cult it can be to follow the argument if

you are not familiar with the texts they are discussing. On the other, canonical

lists across ﬁ elds perpetuate works that are supposed to be "good," usually

sidelining works that may be worth revisiting, apart from often marginalizing

the work of diverse creators, especially women and people of color. In the case

of game studies, the tendency is to focus on mainstream commercial games,

because they are more accessible and more people may be familiar with them.

This is one of the reasons why I encourage my students to ﬁ nd games that may

have been overlooked, or may be unusual—lesser-known examples may be an

undiscovered trove of knowledge, and may help highlight different creators

whose work had not been noted before.

 e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 

Games as texts can be tackled from two angles: as works connected to

other works, or as works that can be read in diﬀ erent ways. In the ﬁ rst

instance, we can look for what diﬀ erent games have in common, ﬁ nd-

ing recurring patterns in their design, topics, aesthetics, and so on. Alan

McKee calls this a structuralist approach,

 which points to the work

of theorists like Barthes, mentioned above, or Claude Lévi-Strauss, an

anthropologist who discussed the commonalities between diﬀ erent cul-

tures and societies. On the other hand, we can focus on the processes

of sense-making while playing a game, the context in which it is played,

and how it may be understood by diﬀ erent audiences. McKee calls these

post-structuralist strategies, relating this approach to the work of scholars

like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, or Julia Kristeva. Going back to the

Death Race example, a structuralist analysis would focus on how it con-

tinued the tradition of two-player arcade games, such as Computer Space

() or Pong (), or how driving in the game maps the two steering-

wheel controllers to a top-down view of a ﬁ eld, or what the game may have

to do with the movie that supposedly inspired it. Reading the game from

a post-structuralist view, we could explore the question of why people

who had not even played the game were so upset, and their understanding

of what an interactive medium is, and compare it to the approach of the

designers, documented in various interviews. Discussing how the game

may seem very tame (or not) by today's standards and why may be another

productive avenue of discussion.

 is book provides an overview of a series of building blocks that can help

writers following either approach, structuralist or post-structuralist. We

can follow one or the other depending on what we want to learn from the

game. My goal with this book is to provide a rich framework that allows us

to understand the complexity of our subject matter and the multiplicity of

ways in which audiences can engage with the texts.



Game analysis is also a necessary tool to develop the concepts and vocabu-

lary of game studies, which is still a relatively young ﬁ eld of study. Using

an inductive method (that is, extracting general principles from speciﬁ c

examples), we can ﬁ nd overarching concepts that allow us to understand

a wider range of games.  ese concepts allow us to relate games and their

development, as part of the structuralist approach just described. Doug

Church complains about the limited vocabulary to talk about games, par-

ticularly within the practice of game design, and calls for the development

of what he calls formal abstract design tools , derived from the analysis of

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

speciﬁ c games.

 By examining closely the design of exemplary games, he

comes up with concepts that allow not only explaining how the game works,

but also identifying elements that can be used to understand other games

and make design connections between them. One such example is "Perceiv-

able Consequence: A clear reaction from the game world to the action of

the player," which is identiﬁ ed both as a good element that helps the player

know that their actions are meaningful in the game world, and as a design

strategy to help the player understand the consequences of their actions in

the game.  ere has been a growing number of academic works to develop

those formal abstract design tools, in the form of reference libraries or dic-

tionaries, such as the Game Design Patterns project, the Game Ontology,

or the Operational Logics approach.

  e conceptual framework to under-

stand how games tick and how we relate to games is still a work in progress;

Church's proposal to derive tools from the close reading of actual games and

comparisons between them helps in developing those concepts in context.

 e strategy is not new—in the fourth century BCE , Aristotle generated the

terms for his Poetics from the close reading of theater plays and epic poetry,

creating a series of concepts that helped describe and compare the texts.



Following Aristotle's steps, we can generate terms that allow us to describe

them with nuance and depth.

 THEBUILDINGBLOCKSANDAREASOF

STUDYOFGAMEANALYSIS

Starting an analysis can be daunting, because there are so many things one

can talk about. In order to ease our way into analysis, its building blocks can

be divided into three interrelated areas: the context , the game overview , and

the formal aspects . Each area comprises a series of building blocks, which

writers can select to analyze a game.  ink of these building blocks as plas-

tic bricks that one assembles to construct the analysis—depending on what

the analysis is for, the writer will use some pieces instead of others.  ese

building blocks can be interrelated, so that in the same way that a door

piece may need a hinge piece to build a doorway, there are analysis building

blocks that usually go together. For example, when Camper discusses the

graphic style of La-Mulana (), he uses two diﬀ erent building blocks:

technology and the representation.

 With respect to the technology, the

game runs in current computers but it is developed to evoke the looks of

games developed for an older computer standard, the MSX, whose pro-

cessing capabilities were much more limited. Alongside the discussion of

 e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 

technology, Camper also discusses the aesthetics of the visual representa-

tion of the game, and how the careful choices to evoke a speciﬁ c technology

become an artistic statement.

 ere are many building blocks that we can use to construct the analysis of

a game.  is book presents three general areas in order to make them more

accessible. Each diﬀ erent area may provide a diﬀ erent focus to our analysis:

the social sciences may focus on the context of the game or its reception,

speciﬁ cally in relation to players and communities, whereas game designers

may want to discuss the formal aspects.

Interrelated building blocks can be the connection between the diﬀ erent

areas, meaning that while we analyze a game, we are not limited to one

speciﬁ c set. In the example of La-Mulana above, the two building blocks

fall into two diﬀ erent areas: while the technology used for the game and the

technology it pays homage to are part of the context, the representation that

recreates that technology is discussed as part of its formal qualities.

 e following is a brief overview of the diﬀ erent areas of analysis of games.

 e introductions in Chapters , , and  will provide a more extensive

description of these areas, as well as the building blocks that they comprise.

Context  e context of the game comprises the circumstances in

which the game is produced and played, as well as other texts and com-

munities that may relate to it. Although some literary scholars defend that

textual commentary should be limited to the text itself, as we will see later

in the book, ignoring the context in which it is produced overlooks aspects

that may be essential to understanding the text.  e importance of context

may be obvious in historical analyses, which must by necessity refer to the

socio-political circumstances that produced texts like a newspaper article

or a political discourse.  ere are other cases where the context is essential

to disambiguate speciﬁ c components of the text. For example, the Bible

uses thou as the second person singular pronoun because that was the lin-

guistic norm of the time; if a contemporary text uses it, it can be a sign of

wanting to evoke a speciﬁ c time period, or a reference to the Bible. In many

fantasy videogames, such as Ultima VII:  e Black Gate (), characters

speak using thou as part of the language of the fantasy world in which they

take place, marking that the action takes place far from everyday life.  e

same word can thus have diﬀ erent connotations depending on the con-

text and who is reading it; what applies to a word can also be extended

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

to a larger text.  us, when we are analyzing a game, we have to take into

account these other circumstances that may aﬀ ect the way we understand

it as a text.

An illustration of how context can aﬀ ect the way we understand a game is

Resistance: Fall of Man (). Its release met the disapproval of the Church

of England, because one of the levels takes place within Manchester Cathe-

dral.  e Church of England considered that having a battle within a digital

version of the cathedral was a desecration, as well as copyright infringe-

ment.

  e legal claims here were dismissed, although Sony, the publisher

of the game, released a public apology about the level.  is controversy is

part of the context, and helps us understand the game, which seems to pride

itself upon the realism of the locations to the point of copying real places.



 e game takes place in an alternate history, so the similarities with the real

world are an important part.

Game Overview  is area focuses on the content, the basic features

that distinguish the game from others, and how it has been read, appropri-

ated, and modiﬁ ed by diﬀ erent audiences.  ese building blocks provide us

with a summary that gives us an idea of what the game is about and who

plays it, as a way to identify it.

 e game overview covers the information that players need in order to

get started. Players do not play games for their digital properties and struc-

tures, but because they mean something to them. Even as a pastime, games

provide a means to relax and meditate, to become someone one is not,

to explore, to learn about fantasy worlds as well as the real world, to make

friends, to blow oﬀ steam. Games can also be provocative texts that prompt

players to create their own interpretations and parallel texts, such as cre-

ating their own levels, drawing their favorite characters, or writing stories

based on the games they play. Although the analysis of fan-made texts is

beyond the scope of this book, these paratexts (remember: texts outside

of the work being analyzed but directly related to it)

 can also help gain a

deeper and complex understanding of a game.

When analyzing a videogame, one has to take into account the player's posi-

tion in the game. As a performance activity, the game is not complete until

the player participates in it, and therefore the player is also part of the con-

tent of the game.

 It is certainly an ambiguous position, since the player is

also part of the context of the game. It is very diﬃ cult to account for the role

 e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 

of the player in the game, because diﬀ erent players will participate diﬀ er-

ently, and will therefore transform the text being analyzed.  is also means

that the person analyzing the game is part of it too, and their approach to

the game as players will also color how they understand it.

 e design of a game usually encourages certain types of interactions, which

is one of the aspects that we can explore. Games provide aﬀ ordances , which

deﬁ ne what the player can do, and curtail other actions, thus deﬁ ning the

space of possibility of the game. For example, in Super Mario Bros . (),

the player controls Mario, who can run, jump, and pick up objects, get rid of

enemies by avoiding them or jumping on them, and grow larger by picking

up a magic mushroom.  is limited repertoire of actions allows Mario not

only to traverse the world, but also to increase the ﬁ nal score.  e game,

however, does not let Mario talk to the enemies and ask them politely to

pass by, or use the coins to buy a vehicle that would make him run faster.

 e intersection between what the player can do in the game and what is

not aﬀ orded is the possibility space of the game.



Formal Aspects  e area dealing with the formal aspects studies how

the text is constructed, the pieces that make it up. Verbal texts are made

up of interrelated components: words, sentences, paragraphs at their most

basic level. Word choices, patterns, and ﬁ gures of speech are other com-

ponents that literary analyses are concerned with. In cinema studies, being

familiar with the vocabulary to refer to diﬀ erent types of shots, camera

movements, and editing conventions is basic to writing a textual analysis of

a ﬁ lm. In games, the formal aspects refer to the system of the game and its

components (the rules, the control schemes), as well as how the system is

presented to the player (interface design, visual style).

 ere are two humanistic approaches that base their methods on the for-

mal analysis of their object of study: formalism and structuralism.

 While

formalism seeks to ﬁ nd the inherent components of a literary text at an

abstract level, structuralism is the result of applying grammar-like struc-

tures to works beyond the verbal level, in order to understand where the

meaning lies and how we make sense of that text. For instance, Vladimir

Propp came up with what seems like a mathematical formula to describe

a wide collection of Russian fairy tales, which is a typical example of the

formalist approach to study literature.

 He lists the typical lists of char-

acters (the villain, the dispatcher, the helper, the princess, the donor, the

hero, the false hero). Each of these characters has a speciﬁ c function;

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

for example, the donor provides an item that helps the hero during the

adventure. Later on, Joseph Campbell's work on the Hero's Journey, also

called the monomyth, can be conceived as a structuralist approach, since

he parsed thematic commonalities in how the adventures of a hero cross

cultures and ages.

  is (often misunderstood) journey follows a very spe-

ciﬁ c pattern: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a

region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a

decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from his mysterious adventure

with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

 Both formalist and

structuralist methods have often been accused of overlooking the context

by focusing exclusively on formal components over the content—the post-

structuralist methods mentioned above are a response to the limitations of

structuralism.

 Although these reservations are not unfounded, it is also

true that we can gain relevant insights by studying the structures of the

text, how they relate to the content, and how these structures connect it to

other works.

 e method here proposed to study the formal aspects of games has a struc-

turalist foundation as a conceptual tool to discuss games. Games are often

structured systems, in the form of rule sets of computer programs, which

are models that lend themselves to study of their form. According to Cail-

lois, this type of organized play is termed ludus , as it has speciﬁ c regulations

that constrain the activity.

 Structuralism, however, can also be applied to

study informal and unstable systems, such as make-believe play, which does

not have hard rules and is made up as the players advance; Caillois calls this

type of play paidia , improvisational play, spontaneous, an opportunity for

players to express themselves.



 e area of formal analysis may be familiar to writers coming from literature

and ﬁ lm, where these approaches have long been applied. It may also be the

most relevant to those interested in game design, as a way to understand

how games work, as well as being able to communicate ideas to their devel-

opment teams.

 e building blocks of game analysis will be categorized under one of these

three areas (context, game overview, formal aspects), giving us a glimpse

of the richness and complexity of games, and the range of materials that

we can comment on.  e three areas are so interwoven it is diﬃ cult to talk

about certain aspects of games without making references to others; we

spread them in three areas to facilitate mapping them.

 e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 

 e richness of games as a subject of study is such that not only can we

write our class homework on games, but also theses and dissertations.

 ere have been whole books written on games or game series, such as

Dan Pinchbeck's Doom: Scarydarkfast , a monograph on Doom (), its

process of creation and design, as well as its cultural inﬂ uence, or World

of Warcraft and Philosophy .   ere is so much we can explore and write

about!

 DEFININGTHEAREAOFSTUDYAND

OURAUDIENCE

In my classes, I often see students who want to say everything about their

favorite game, because the texts can be very rich indeed.  ey know the

game backwards and forwards, and they talk about it with their friends

all the time.  is often results in students freezing when it comes to writ-

ing, because they are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information.

Another common occurrence is that they try to cram everything they know

in a single -word paper, going from idea to idea but without really hav-

ing a core argument. My method to assist students is usually asking them

to stop and think about what they want to say, and focus on what makes

the game noteworthy.  e goal is to learn something new about the game,

hopefully something that might have been overlooked or not noticed before.

Part of my job also includes reminding students that they are not writing a

blog post that their fellow gamers will read, but an academic paper where

the teacher has certain expectations and standards, and which should be

readable by people outside the class.

My trick to avoid being overwhelmed by the amount of material to discuss,

or to fall into trite and not very productive discourse, is to be speciﬁ c about

what I am studying and who I am talking to, even before starting to write.

By knowing who my audience is and what methods to use, I can be more

eﬀ ective in reaching my audience, as well as reduce the scope of what to say.

 e approach of this book caters to scholars coming from a variety of dis-

ciplines within the humanities and the social sciences.  is is still a broad

audience, and diﬀ erent scholars may feel more at home with one approach

instead of the other. Although game analysis is inherently interdisciplin-

ary, we cannot use every method and discuss every single aspect of a game.

In order to remain practical, we must identify the areas that we want to study

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

and which discipline we are addressing. Some of the questions we can ask

ourselves to deﬁ ne the scope of our paper can be:

 What do I want to learn from the game?

 What is the ﬁ eld of study that I'm approaching it from?

 Who am I talking to? What do they know about games?

 What are the aspects of the game that are going to be relevant to the

analysis?

 e previous section brieﬂ y examined how diﬀ erent ﬁ elds of study may

tackle the games; we are not done with the multiplicity of ﬁ elds yet.  e dis-

cussion of the diﬀ erent building blocks in Chapters , , and  will include a

connection to the speciﬁ c discipline and methods they relate to.

Being aware of where we come from as authors, what we know best, and

who we are writing for is a necessary exercise of introspection. It may be

the case that the author is a teacher of literature who has decided to include

videogames in their syllabus, as a way to appeal to their students.  e meth-

ods and approach of literary analysis are relevant and useful to understand

videogames.  e literary scholar, however, should be careful not lose sight

of what makes games diﬀ erent from other media, forgetting about their par-

ticipatory nature or the social aspects of playing. In another case, the author

may be a hard-core gamer who may have a lot of conﬁ dence in their knowl-

edge of games.  is is a great asset to have, but it may also get in the way of

communicating one's ﬁ ndings to a readership who may not be as familiar

with the games being discussed, and may get lost within the myriad speciﬁ c

names, jargon, and even in-jokes.  e opposite can also be true—I am a

scholar who is trying to reach out to game developers who are not familiar

with academic discourse. My strategy to talk about my work to commercial

game developers is to focus on basic theoretical concepts and ground them

on examples. I cannot count on my audience knowing about literary theory

or semiotics, but I can count on them knowing their games well.

 AREWEREADY?

 ere is so much to be done in the ﬁ eld of game analysis! Rather than being

afraid of it, we should be very excited about the possibilities. We can be

 e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 

pioneers in highlighting and arguing for the intellectual value of works that

already have a cultural impact. Better still, we can become digital archeolo-

gists and discover an obscure game that turns out to be a wonderful work of

art, and put it in the spotlight.

Not everybody who writes game analyses may be an avid gamer, but

through analysis one can learn to appreciate games as a cultural artifact.

 e following pages do not intend to transform readers into videogame

fans. After reading this book and applying it to your own work, some will

still remain critical and skeptical about the status of games as art.  at

is okay, because the goal of this book is not to evangelize, but to expand

the variety of discourse as well as its quality. By enriching the discourse of

games, we can also reach out to audiences in order to make it more wide-

spread.  e study of games must not be exclusive to a set of self-appointed

experts. Everybody plays games—in playgrounds, on tables, with friends,

with computers, with mobiles. Now let us start thinking about what games

can mean and how.

 NOTES

 Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Boston:

Beacon Press, ).

 Piaget, Jean. La Formation du Symbole chez L'enfant: Imitation, Jeu et Rêve ,

Image et Représentation (Neuchâtel: Delachaux Niestlé, ).

 Both authors published key works in : Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext (Balti-

more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, ); Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the

Holodeck:  e Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: Simon & Schuster,

).

  e issues of Game Studies:  e International Journal of Games Research are all

available online at: http://gamestudies.org/ (accessed January , ).

 See, for example, how Bethesda set the terms of the release of reviews for Fallout 

() in Schreier, Jason. "Fallout  Review Embargo Gets Embargo." Kotaku ,

November , . Available at: https://kotaku.com/fallout--review-embargo-

gets-embargo-. (accessed January , ).

 A good discussion of the problematic economic model of certain game review

websites is Walker, John. "A Response to PAR's Adblocker's/Games Press Arti-

cle." John Walker's Electronic House , April , . Available at: http://botherer.

org////a-response-to-pars-adblockersgames-press-article/ (accessed

January , ).

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

 Barthes, Roland. Mythologies . Trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill & Wang,

).

 Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, ).

  e essay is available online, Donaldson, Peter. "Digital Archives and Sibylline

Fragments:  e Tempest and the End of Books." Available at: http://shea.mit.edu/

eob/ (accessed January , ).

 Genette, Gérard. Paratexts:  resholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, ), pp. –.

 Wolf, Mark J. P.  e Medium of the Video Game (Austin, TX: University of Texas

Press, ).

 For a detailed discussion of zero-player games, see Bjork, Staﬀ an, and Jesper Juul.

"Zero-Player Games. Or: What We Talk about When We Talk about Players."

In Proceedings of the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference , Madrid, .

Available at: www.jesperjuul.net/text/zeroplayergames/ (accessed January ,

).

 Consalvo, Mia. Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames (Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press, ).

 For a rich and insightful discussion of how players adapt their game to their

needs to play better, see DeKoven, Bernie.  e Well-Played Game: A Playful Path

to Wholeness (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, ).

 Flanagan, Mary, Daniel C. Howe, and Helen Nissenbaum. "Values at Play: Design

Tradeoﬀ s in Socially-Oriented Game Design." In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Con-

ference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , CHI ' (New York: ACM,

), pp. –.

 For a detailed history of Death Race , see Donovan, Tristan. Replay:  e His-

tory of Video Games (Lewes, East Sussex: Yellow Ant Media Ltd, ),

pp. – and Kocurek, Carly A. " e Agony and the Exidy: A History of

Video Game Violence and the Legacy of Death Race ." Game Studies:  e Inter-

national Journal of Computer Game Research , no.  (September ).

Available at: http://gamestudies.org//articles/carly_kocurek (accessed

January , ).

 See Smith, Joseph W.  e Psycho File: A Comprehensive Guide to Hitchcock's

Classic Shocker (Jeﬀ erson, NC: McFarland & Co., ) and also Crowther, Bos-

ley. "Screen: Sudden Shocks." New York Times . June , . Available at: www.

nytimes.com/movie/review?res=EEEDFDEBCFDFBB

EDE. (accessed January , ).

 e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis 

 For the deﬁ nition and discussion of cultural capital, see Bourdieu, Pierre. Dis-

tinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, ), pp. xvi–xvii, –.

 Nguyen, Mai-Hanh. "See How Much the Top eSports Teams, Athletes, and  eir

Organizations Make." Business Insider , January , . Available at: www.busi

nessinsider.com/top-esports-teams-players-salaries-- (accessed January ,

).

 Davidson, Drew. Well Played .: Video Games, Value and Meaning (Pittsburgh,

PA: ETC Press, ).

 McKee, Alan. Textual Analysis: A Beginner's Guide (London: Sage Publications,

), pp. –.

 Another overview of methods and approaches to analyzing games from a dif-

ferent perspective can be found in Consalvo, Mia, and Nathan Dutton. "Game

Studies—Game Analysis: Developing a Methodological Toolkit for the Qualita-

tive Study of Games." G ame Studies:  e International Journal of Computer Game

Research , no.  (December ). Available at: www.gamestudies.org//

articles/consalvo_dutton (accessed January , ). For a more detailed dis-

cussion of methods for content analysis, see Consalvo, Mia. "Videogame Content

Game, Text, or Something Else?" In  e International Encyclopedia of Media

Studies: Media Eﬀ ects/Media Psychology , edited by N. Valdivia Angharad and

Erica Scharrer (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, ).

 Church, Doug. "Formal Abstract Design Tools." In  e Game Design Reader: A

Rules of Play Anthology , edited by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press, ).

  e rationale and methods of these academic projects can be found in Bjork,

Staﬀ an. Patterns in Game Design (Hingham, MA: Charles River Media, n.d.),

and Zagal, Jose P., Michael Mateas, Clara Fernández-Vara, Brian Hochhalter, and

Nolan Lichti. "Towards an Ontological Language for Game Analysis." In Chang-

ing Views: Worlds in Play (Vancouver: University of Vancouver Press, );

Osborn, Joseph C., Noah Wardrip-Fruin, and Michael Mateas. "Reﬁ ning Opera-

tional Logics." In Proceedings of the th International Conference on the Founda-

tions of Digital Games , . (New York: ACM, ).

 Aristotle. Poetics . Trans. Malcolm Heath (London: Penguin Books, ).

 Camper, Brett. "Retro Reﬂ exivity: La-Mulana, an -Bit Period Piece." In  e

Video Game  eory Reader  , edited by Bernard Perron and Mark J. P. Wolf (New

York: Routledge, ), pp. –.

 "Cathedral Row over Video War G ame." BBC , June , , sec. Manchester. Avail-

able at: http://news.bbc.co.uk//hi/england/manchester/.stm (accessed

January , ).

  e Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

 "Resistance: Fall of Man—Game vs Real Life."  e Average Gamer . Available at:

www.theaveragegamer.com////resistance-fall-of-man-game-vs-real-

life/ (accessed January , ).

 Again, the deﬁ nition of paratext comes from Genette, Paratexts:  resholds of

Interpretation .

  e study of videogames as a performance activity is central to my work. You

can read a summary of the main concepts in Fernández-Vara, Clara. "Play's the

 ing: A Framework to Study Videogames as Performance." In Breaking New

Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and  eory: International Digital

Games Research Association (DiGRA) Conference . Brunel University, UK, .

Available at: www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/plays-the-thing-a-frame

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 For a brief study of how game design deﬁ nes the space of possibility, see Salen

and Zimmerman. Rules of Play , pp. –.

 For an extensive account of the formalist and structuralist approaches and main

proponents, see Eagleton, Terry. Literary  eory: An Introduction (Minneapolis,

MN: University of Minnesota Press, ), pp. –, –. Structuralism here

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 Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale . nd edn (Austin, TX: University of

Texas Press, ).

 Campbell, Joseph.  e Hero with a  ousand Faces (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, ).

 Ibid., p. .

 Eagleton. Literary  eory: An Introduction , pp. –.

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 Ibid., pp. –.

 Pinchbeck, Dan. Doom: Scarydarkfast . Landmark Videogames (Ann Arbor, MI:

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... This analysis of complexity as a double boomerang involves tracing the features of narrative complexity that have characterized video games historically, and the features of post-classical film narratives, and identifying them in a corpus of contemporary video games in order to analyse narrative design in relation to game design and emergent behaviours in players. The methodology for this study draws on explorations of video game narrative in Game Studies (Fernández-Vara, 2015;Planells, 2015;Navarro Remesal, 2016) from the perspective of semiotics (Pérez Latorre, 2012, audiovisual narrative and discourse analysis (Gaudreault & Jost, 1995;Gómez Tarín, 2011;Marzal & Gómez Tarín, 2015), and the model proposed by Hartmut Koenitz (2015) for the analysis of interactive narratives, focusing more on the system than on the resulting outcome, which is only one of multiple possibilities. The combination of these models for video game analysis reflects the fact that narratives in video games call for specific methodologies and approaches, but also that many of these new paradigms are based on concepts from traditional narratology. ...

Video game narratives have become more complex and increasingly interrelated with game design over the last decade. However, video games have in fact always had complex ludonarrative structures. The aim of this article is to examine the looping back of complex narrative influences in contemporary video games based on the idea of a "double boomerang", whereby, on the one hand, features that have always been inherent to video games are reclaimed and reintegrated into the ludonarrative layer while, on the other, features of complexity adopted and re-created by post-classical cinema and other audiovisual media are integrated, once again, into that same videoludic narrative layer. This analysis involves tracing the features of narrative complexity that have characterized video games historically, and the features of post-classical film narratives, and identifying them in a corpus of contemporary video games in order to analysing narrative design in relation to game design and emergent behaviour in players. The findings reveal how some of the innovations in video games connect with and continue the interactive work of early video game creators like Douglas Adams, and how features shared with post-classical cinema only work as complex features when they are not merely assimilated automatically but used to subvert the traditional dynamics of videoludic language through the game design and narrative design and the way the information provided to the player is managed and controlled. [ARTÍCULO DISPONIBLE TAMBIÉN EN CASTELLANO EN LA WEB DE LA REVISTA]

... 15 In contradistinction to agency as "the cueing of the interactor's intentions, expectations, and actions so that they mesh with the story events generated by the system" (Murray 2005: 85) and connects it to "the pleasure we feel when we actively engage with the fictional world" (Murray 2015: n.p.). 14 It will likely go without saying that we are not suggesting that the kind of literary texts Herman refers to here share a particularly large amount of features with the kind of videogames that the present article explores, or that it would be of particular analytical value to conflate the two, but we would certainly accept that the latter can still appropriately and productively be conceptualized as a form of "text" in a broader sense (see also, e. g., Aarseth 1997;Eskelinen 2012;Fernández-Vara 2019). 15 While the question of audiovisual aesthetics is not at the center of the present article, it is worth noting that Disco Elysium employs unusual watercolor-like graphics that offer a perhaps even better many other role-playing games, the core game mechanics of Disco Elysium do not include a fighting system, but rather limit themselves to exploration, dialogue with nonplayer characters, and avatar configuration. ...

Bettina Bodi
Jan-Noël Thon

Drawing on Janet Murray (1997), Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (2004), and other previous proposals, this article conceptualizes player agency as the possibility space for "meaningful" choice expressed via player action that translates into avatar action, afforded and constrained by a videogame's design. It further distinguishes between four core dimensions of agency thus conceptualized: First, spatial-explorative agency is afforded by those elements of a videogame's design that determine the player's ability to navigate and traverse the game spaces via their avatar. Second, temporal-ergodic agency is afforded by those elements of a videogame's design that determine the player's options for interacting with the videogame as a temporal system. Third, configurative-constructive agency is afforded by those elements of a videogame's design that allow the player to configure their avatar and/or (re)construct the game spaces. Fourth, narrative-dramatic agency is afforded by those elements of a videogame's design that determine the player's "meaningful" impact on the unfolding story. The article then moves on to analyze two case studies of independently developed videogames: ZA/UM's role-playing game Disco Elysium (2019), whose complex nonlinear narrative structure primarily affords configurative and narrative agency, and System Era Softworks's sandbox adventure game Astroneer (2019), whose procedurally generated game spaces and "open" game mechanics primarily afford explorative, constructive, and dramatic agency.

... Another topic of continuous attention is the question of methodologies. It has been argued that the particular characteristics of games that differentiate them from other media objects ask for more sophisticated method-ologies that allow a systematic analysis of games and the discourses embedded and surrounding gaming practices (Fernández-Vara, 2014). We are confident that scholars interested in digital gaming will continue to explore new avenues in this regard, and tackle the challenges of the ever-changing phenomenon they are trying to understand. ...

This thematic issue presents a number of emerging scholarships into the study of digital gaming. The articles are based on a 2019 symposium on game studies hosted by the Digital Games Research section of ECREA. As the phenomena related to digital gaming keep on evolving and emerging, so must research keep up with the times and constantly challenge itself. Whether speaking about validating previously developed research methods, imagining totally new ones, or even challenging the whole philosophy of science on which research is being done, there is a constant need for reappraisal and introspection within games research. As a cultural medium that has become deeply embedded into the social fabric of the 2020s, digital gaming continues to excite and challenge academia. This thematic issue provides a collection of approaches to look into the future that addresses some of the challenges associated with game research.

Anna Nacher
Filip Jankowski

The article is aimed at presentation of the case study in video games creation by Indigenous auteur and designer, Elizabeth LaPensée, which at the same time demonstrates how video games can both mediatize the process of re-writing history and decolonize popular imagination. The analysis of LaPensée's three games: Invaders, Thunderbird Strikes, and When the Rivers Were Trails to some extent follows her own strategies of self-identification as Anishinabee (Ojibwe). Drawing upon reconfiguration of the auteur theory and the framework of ludostylistics by Astrid Ensslin, we also strive to demonstrate how the notion of a singular author is in fact grounded in collective and collaborative qualities of indigenous digital culture, including digital game design.

Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Narrative Aesthetics in Video Games is a collection of contemporary research and interpretation that explores the narrative structures in video games and ludonarrative content design in related media. Featuring coverage of a broad range of topics including narrative theory, game studies, history of video games, and interdisciplinary studies, this book is ideally designed for scholars, researchers, intellectuals, media professionals, game developers, entrepreneurs, and students who wish to enhance their understanding of the relationship and correlation of video games, narrativity, and aesthetics.

Joleen Blom

This study presents a theory about dynamic game characters within a broader character ecology in which characters are constantly produced and reproduced in a variety of media. Characters do not appear only in games, they migrate from one medium to another. They are independent from any medium in particular: a character does not require a specific medium to come into existence. Authoritative forces try to shape the overall interpretation of circulating characters transmedially in comics, television series, films, games and more through different venues of control, such as authorship, canonisation and ownership or intellectual property. This study addresses the struggle for interpretive authority by explaining how the player constructs the identity of dynamic game characters in digital games, and by discussing how dynamic game characters connect to and influence other character manifestations within a broader media ecology in which characters circulate. The research question of this study is: What are dynamic game characters? Through reader�response theory adapted for cybermedia phenomena such as games, this study approaches characters as a player-constructed phenomenon, in which the game character needs the player in order to be invoked, but the game encourages the meaning-making process with different means to different effects. Dynamic game characters are those game characters whose development structures branch into different outcomes, each of which are undetermined until the player actualises one or more possibilities that steer that direction onto distinct paths with a specific outcome. Dynamic game characters have become a phenomenon that challenges practices of (trans-)media control. A theory of dynamic game characters tells us about the migration of entities via different works, and how the perceiver comes to understand them within a context saturated with characters, stories and a variety of media platforms. Digital games are just one of the many media platforms that participate in this character ecology, and they allow characters to challenge the idea that within a single piece of work the character must maintain a linear, continuous and coherent identity that stretches the understanding of characters as authored and predictable within a single work. This study argues that dynamic game characters are a type of quasi-person in digital games whose development consists of multiple outcomes. Digital games accelerate a dynamic game character's identity within a single work, unlike non-cybermedia in which a character's identity is constructed over multiple works. They challenge venues of control, because the player has creative agency over the dynamic game character's characterisation process within a single work. However, once dynamic game characters transfer to other works, authoritative institutions break the player's participation in the dynamic game character's development. These transfers sacrifice player participation to create the illusion of a coherent identity between the manifestations of the character over multiple works

The goal of this edited book is to bring together gaming faculty and course developers to present and talk about their syllabi. There are three objectives for such a goal. First, anyone interested in teaching a gaming course will be able to browse this edited volume to find course ideas. Second, we believe in the value of teaching with and through games. Rather than seeing this as a competition, we believe that the more courses that are created, the stronger the field. This book will allow for strengthening of all gaming courses. Stronger courses will lead to bigger programs and more graduates to positively influence our field. Third, our field is changing. A collection of game syllabi will allow scholars to look across multiple contexts and disciplines to understand how gaming is perceived and taught. In this edited volume, readers will be able to hear from successful instructors while they also see detailed course outlines (by week or module) that help them craft better gaming courses. More specifically, they will be able to explore multiple aspects of course syllabi including: the catalog description, course purposes and objectives, context, pedagogy, assignments, assessment, an expanded course outline, a set of best practices for instruction, and authors' descriptions of potential future changes to make the course stronger.

Mateo Terrasa Torres

Difficulty is the personal experience of a subject facing resistance that prevents them from reaching a goal or desired state. It is an experiential part of everyone's existence. In digital games, difficulty is strongly linked with designed challenges and obstacles that must be overcome by physical effort, manual skills, coordination, and dexterity. But this widespread perspective is a reductionist categorization of the expressive possibilities of difficulty. Because as experiential, difficulty is aesthetic expression and therefore it is much more than the mere skill challenge. The difficulty experience that emerges from an opposing force between object and subject, between game and player, can be interpretive, poetic, narrative, ethical or atmospheric among other expressive forms. Understanding difficulty from these broad parameters, we pose it as an aesthetic expression, which forges multiple experiences at the intersection between mechanics, fiction, and the player's performance. This study analyses, drawing from philosophy, postphenomenology, and game studies, some aspects of two contemporary games, The Last of Us Part II and Death Stranding from the view of difficulty as aesthetic experience perspective, considering the significant and discursive tensions beyond purely ludic and mechanical elements.

Emma R Tait
Ingrid L. Nelson

This article examines the generation of digital outer space natures in the space exploration game, No Man's Sky. Using procedural generation, No Man's Sky offers nearly infinite planets, flora, and fauna on the fly. With the rapid development of gaming technology and tools, game developers and others are attempting to diversify the representation of various forms of nature in gaming content and to expand the use of games in behavioral change, education, conservation, and other fields. Many scholars argue that games offer promising ways for various publics to understand their place and their interconnectedness with microbes, ecosystems, planet Earth, and beyond. We examine how No Man's Sky struggled to coproduce digital outer space natures at the two scalar extremes of the vast expanse of outer space and of the embodied player relating within complex biomes. Our results from an in-depth, qualitative analysis of the initial version of the game, of player world-building experiences in No Man's Sky, and of subsequent developer modifications to the game demonstrate that nonscalability theory is useful for studying what digital outer space natures do in games. We also argue that nonscalability theory would benefit from a more robust engagement with the digital. No Man's Sky was initially scalable to such an extreme that it made players into objects without an origin story, broader purpose or way to build meaningful relations in the game. For a brief period, this game undermined players' interplanetary colonial imaginaries. Subsequent updates to the game introduced a limited scope of nonscalability, but only to the extent of satisfying gamers' desires to become more impactful agents of exploration. We see great potential for analyzing the role of innovations in computing and game design in linking multiscalar digital, outer, and earth spaces, which as other scholars have shown, bear significantly on our understanding of multiple worlds and natures.

David Jara Soto

The dissertation discusses the use and impact of "literary" framing (as by Werner Wolf) in generating and negotiating fictional spaces, narratives and meanings within the medium of tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs). In a second step, the text describes some of the specific and most salient framing features and strategies used by players during game sessions. By analyzing these through actual gameplay it is possible to identify the 'transceptional' border (Bunia) between reality and fiction to be the constitutive moment of role-play where players are both aware of, and immersed in, the fiction they collaboratively construct. Finally, the dissertation adapts Wolf's theoretical framework in order to discuss and analyze the often overlooked category of "storytelling" TRPGs - one that, as the text argues, rather than focusing on narrative as such, aims at creating gameplay texts with heightened aesthetic and literary value while also enabling players to experience particular forms of immersion and deep emotional involvement. In the conclusion, the dissertation proposes re-conceptualizing literary framing as a defining characteristic of the fictional practice in general across media. In this regard, the dissertation argues, TRPGs reveal how framings are used and adapted in order to enable a specific mode of human interaction which is based on the figuration of emotional complexes via fictional "masks."

Antonio José Planells

In current digital games, classic fictional worlds are transformed into ludofictional worlds, spaces rich in characters and emotions that are especially affected by the intervention of a player. In this book, we propose a model, inspired by the Semantics of Fiction and Possible Worlds, which is oriented to the analysis of video games as integrated systems.

Todd Harper

This book examines the complex network of influences that collide in the culture of digital fighting games. Players from all over the world engage in competitive combat with one another, forming communities in both real and virtual spaces, attending tournaments and battling online via internet-connected home game consoles. But what is the logic behind their shared playstyle and culture? What are the threads that tie them together, and how does this inform our understanding of competitive gaming, community, and identity? Informed by observations made at one of the biggest fighting game events in the world - the Evolution Series tournament, or "EVO" - and interviews with fighting game players themselves, this book covers everything from the influence of arcade spaces, to the place of gender and ethnicity in the community, to the clash of philosophies over how these games should be played in the first place. In the process, it establishes the role of technology, gameplay, and community in how these players define both themselves and the games that they play.

Joshua J. Zimmerman

Community management is an important but relatively understudied facet of computer game development. This article begins filling this gap by examining how community managers in the computer game industry manage communities of players through the establishment of structures of membership: positions and practices designed to encourage membership hierarchies. Beginning with the construction of an analytical framework through which to understand different subcommunity activities, this article then examines structures of membership at every stage of Kim's membership life cycle and, ultimately, how those structures help to attract, educate, and retain dedicated community members.

C.A. Kocurek

In 1976, Exidy's Death Race triggered the United Statesâ€™ first video gaming moral panic. Public outrage not only fueled sales of the game and made Exidy a household name, but established a pattern by which controversial games receive a high levels of press attention, which in turn drives these games' marketplace success. Exidy released Death Race in the midst of changing cinema production codes and distribution regulations that led to the emergence of films featuring unprecedented displays of violence and sexuality. The game is based on one of these films, Death Race 2000, in which competitors in the Annual Transcontinental Road Race mow down pedestrians for points. Although the filmmakers did not authorize the use of their concepts for the game, the game relies directly on the film's narrative. The chase-and-crash game invites players to strike stick-figure "gremlins" with on-screen cars. Context, including the game's cabinet graphics and the film, contributed to moral guardians' perception that the game was celebrating violence. However, Death Race was distributed in a market filled with numerous other violent games. This suggests the game triggered outrage not only because it was violent, but because it depicted violence which questioned the state's monopoly on legitimized violence and did not follow culturally accepted narratives of violence, such as military or police violence, or the western. Public disapproval of Death Race did not squelch distribution, instead driving sales and vaulting Exidy into the national spotlight. Discourse surrounding Death Race forged a strong tie between video gaming and violence in the public imagination, ensuring the development of similarly violent games. This bond has persisted and led to the development of several similar games, including the controversial Grand Theft Auto franchise, which is the progeny of Death Race in both narrative theme and reception.