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Video Games, Literature, and Close Playing: A Practical Guide offers 24 case studies of mainstream and independent video games from
Tetris to
The Sims,
Undertale to
Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and
Assassin's Creed to
Gone Home in order to introduce key video game and literary studies concepts, ideas, definitions, and possibilities. This book also includes a brief history of video games and literature, critical questions and suggested readings for each chapter, and a collection of prompts, activities, and assignments for students and instructors to engage, adapt, and explore. This book is designed to be useful, modular, and playful, to provoke questions and conversation, to encourage connections and collaboration, and to inspire critical thinking.
List of contents
Introduction: Gaming Our Classrooms
Lore I: Literary Gaming
1
ImmorTall 2
Tetris 3 The Beginner's Guide
4
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 5
BioShock 6
Assassin's Creed 7
Undertale Side Quests I
Lore II: Literature and Video Games
8
The Sims 10
Portal 11
Red Dead Redemption 12
Super Columbine Massacre RPG! 13
Dark Souls 14
NBA 2K18 15
Pokémon GO 16
Minecraft Side Quests II
Lore III: Gamifying Literature
17
Loved 18
Animal Crossing: New Horizons 19
Dragon Age: Origins 20
Barbie Dreamtopia: Adventure Games 21
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 22
Queers in Love at the End of the World 23
When Rivers Were Trails 24
Gone Home Side Quests III
Lore IV: Getting Messy
9
The Walking Dead
About the author
Edmond Y. Chang is Associate Professor of English at Ohio University. He has published on queer games, digital humanities, popular culture, and speculative literature of color including "Queergaming" in
Queer Game Studies (2017), "Why Are the Digital Humanities So Straight?" in
Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities (2021), and "Gaming While Asian" in Made in Asia/America (2024). He is an editor for
Analog Game Studies and a contributing editor for
Gamers with Glasses.
Timothy J. Welsh is Associate Professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans. He is the author of
Mixed Realism: Videogames and the Violence of Fiction (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) as well as articles on video games, interactive narrative, and digital society such as "(Re)Mastering
Dark Souls" (
Game Studies, 2021) and "Doing Nothing in San Andreas: Contesting the Value of Play in Rockstar's
Grand Theft Auto V" (
Configurations, 2024). He is managing editor of the
Journal of Games Criticism.
