Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds - Games, Books and Gamebooks, Jun 2024

Both role-playing game tie-in novels and adventure modules are little-studied and under-theorized topics. Whereas a tabletop role-playing game as a medium is participatory, interactive and narratively open-ended, the novel presents a fixed narrative. When a module is adapted into a novel, this forms a certain tension. This article examines the novels The Temple of Elemental Evil (Reid 2001) and White Plume Mountain (Kidd 1999), adapted from modules of the same names, and the ways that they engage in dialogue with the original texts, as well as how they form a part of the greater realized world of Dungeons & Dragons. These ways include cartographic storytelling and the logic of unfolding (Caracciolo 2019) in how the mapped areas of the module are presented to the novel’s reader, as well as the palimpsest, the doubled pleasure (Hutcheon 2013) of experiencing two texts simultaneously.

Interactive toy books are subsets of a large set of bookish media. They can be seen as complex multimodal media that combine visual cues such as illustrations, language cue, and interaction. In this article, I discuss how movable toy books link space and interactivity to create a specific reading or playing experience. Learning more about such books helps us not only to understand historical media, but it also ultimately throws light on what play is and how other playful media function. In light of recent developments, I briefly discuss recent remediations of interactive toy book in digital games, an example of which is the 2011 movie tie in game Winnie the Pooh, towards the end of this article.

This article discusses an interactive storybook series titled The Final Hours which provides behind-the-scenes perspectives on the creation of certain video games. The focus is on how the specific interactive, playful elements which make up the reading – or playing – of these books provide forms of engagement which deviate from more traditional paper-based books on the making-of games. The analysis is situated within ongoing discussions about the role of paratextuality in and around games, in this case focusing on the question how these storybooks give shape to players’ understanding of games and game production through playful interactions with the making-of games. To account for the medium specificity of this type of interactive books, the paratextual analysis also connects to studies on paper-based pop-up or ‘movable’ books, a genre often associated with play, providing not just insights into paratextual functions but also highly ludic form.

This article investigates the interrelations between video games and literature, with a specific focus on the Chinese cultivation genre, which is influenced by Chinese mythology, Daoism, alchemy and other traditional Chinese elements. Drawing upon discussions of intertextuality, intermediality and intermateriality, the article offers an analysis of the theoretical trajectory and examines the connection between cultivation games and novels. By closely examining the cultivation genre, it explores the transition from intertextuality to intermediality and subsequently to intermateriality within the context of video games and online fiction. This study seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between cultivation games and literature, paving the way for further exploration and critical discourse in the study of the intertwining of games and novels within the broader landscape of cultural production.

This article offers an intermedial analysis of how books are represented in The Witcher 3, building on the media theories of Lars Elleström and W. J. T. Mitchell. The analysis shows how the game pits books against images and exposes latent tensions in the representational conventions of games. The game reflects an intermedial excess that speaks to a more profound crisis in the discursive construction of the computer games medium. Building on the analysis, the article turns to discuss how the medium of computer games is qualified through both its likenesses and differences to other narrative media, most notably literature and cinema. Compared to these media, computer games entice their players with promises of immersion and control, while ultimately failing to fulfil both. The intermedial excess of The Witcher 3 can be understood as a playful commentary on the promises and limits to the representational capacities of computer games.

This article analyses Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play self-help book and card game, a tool designed to re-allocate domestic work more equitably for a stereotypical heterosexual American couple. I situate Rodsky’s work within three contexts: as a transformative role-playing game, as a critique of patriarchy hampered by its white feminist and gender essentialist biases, and as a self-help project offering its players a kind of fantasy play: the dream of their happier selves.