(Not) In the Game: History, Paratexts, and Games 9783110732924, 9783110737691

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(Not) In the Game

Video Games and the Humanities

Edited by Nathalie Aghoro, Iro Filippaki, Chris Kempshall, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Jeremiah McCall and Sascha Pöhlmann Advisory Board Alenda Y. Chang, UC Santa Barbara Katherine J. Lewis, University of Huddersfield Dietmar Meinel, University of Duisburg-Essen Ana Milošević, KU Leuven Soraya Murray, UC Santa Cruz Holly Nielsen, University of London Michael Nitsche, Georgia Tech Martin Picard, Leipzig University Melanie Swalwell, Swinburne University Emma Vossen, University of Waterloo Mark J.P. Wolf, Concordia University Esther Wright, Cardiff University

Volume 13

(Not) In the Game History, Paratexts, and Games Edited by Regina Seiwald and Ed Vollans

ISBN 978-3-11-073769-1 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-073292-4 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-073299-3 ISSN 2700-0400 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023937068 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: banjongseal324/iStock/Getty Images Plus Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents Regina Seiwald and Ed Vollans Introduction: Video games as networked texts

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Section 1: Games and paratexts – a theoretical approach Regina Seiwald De-centralising the text: The text–paratext relationship of video games 15 Esther Wright Paratexts, “authenticity,” and the margins of digital (game) history

Section 2: History as game paratext and games as historical paratexts Iain Donald, Andrew James Reid Account, accuracy, and authenticity: A framework for analysing historical narrative in games 57 Nick Webber The past as (para)text – relating histories of game experience to games as texts 81

Section 3: Game reception and paratexts Michael Pennington Histories of Hearts of Iron IV: Understanding the past(s) through HOI4 Wiki 101 E. Charlotte Stevens Video game fanvids as paratexts and as texts

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Section 4: Game production and paratexts Alan Galey and Ellen Forget Video games with footnotes: Understanding in-game developer commentary 139 Ed Vollans Artefact, advert, or advertising? Getting to grips with game trailers Alison Harvey Making sense of gameswork: University marketing materials as games paratexts 177

Section 5: Paratextual practices of play Esther MacCallum-Stewart “On a scale of 1–5, what floor are you on?” Practising methodologies of fun and play with transformative communities 197 Regina Seiwald, Ed Vollans Conclusion 217 Glossary

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Author information

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Introduction: Video games as networked texts Everything is connected. Every human artefact is the result of conditions of production and of reception, which in turn contributes to these conditions. Consider the last video game you played – maybe you have played it many times before and it is your go-to pastime or perhaps you have just purchased it, a new game for a new platform, or maybe you got bored with the last game. Whatever the scenario, context is key to understanding how you react to it. When we think about any creative artefact (our most recent game for instance), it forms part of a complicated web of things that came before it. Just like every object made for commercial gain, it is born with (1) a production context (how and why it was made as well as what it should do), (2) a promotional context (here is what it will do or do differently to others and why you should get it), and (3) the context in which it is used (as a pastime or as a text for academic study). No man-made object can exist without some kind of context. In order to have context though, we must conversely have text, the thing that context surrounds. Within the humanities, we often refer to objects of study as “texts,” but no text exists without us recognising it as such and giving it text-status. This kind of gatekeeping has long been the realm of “proper” academics in “proper” studies and used to marginalise and/or control what is or is not appropriate to a study, event or discipline. Literary studies mostly relies on letters and words in its definition of text, but for games, this criterion is inapplicable. We thus may want to look at media studies more broadly in order to understand how a more extensive idea of text could look like. As Nick Couldry argues in Inside Culture, these kinds of stabilising structures (deciding what is/is not “worthy”) can become part of the problem of understanding what we should be doing, stating ultimately that the real question of value here is not what the object of study is, but rather how it is used, and that anything is a text if the user/audience/consumer considers it to be worthy.1 In many respects, Couldry’s work echoes the famous thought experiment, which asks whether or not a tree falling in the forest makes a sound if no one is around to hear it. This kind of sociological approach to study offers us the chance to explore games, in and as context from a phenomenological perspective – sidestepping issues of whether something is worthy, and instead focusing on how it is used, received, interacted with or ignored. In short, we are now considering how  Nick Couldry, Inside Culture: Re-imagining the Method of Cultural Studies (London: Sage, 2000), 67. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-001

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a game might function as a product of time, a product of its reception context, and a historical artefact in its own right. Games are, of course, more than historical artefacts, both as media that have history, writing “a story of human creativity, aided by technological growth,”2 and as media that, according to Adam Chapman’s subtitle to Digital Games as History, “represent the past and offer access to historical practice.”3 Dependant on the perspective from which we look at games, they are industrial outputs, commentaries on how we spend our time, socio-technical assemblages of ideologies, technologies, and narratives4 as well as experiences and (hi)stories. No matter how we want to see games, we must acknowledge them within their specific socio-industrial context. As commercial goods, released games compete for our attention, justifying their existence through the kinds of experiences they might offer. In this respect, games function like other experience goods, on an equation and differentiation level akin to those seen with stories and genre development.5 Marketing a game generally works by saying that this game is similar to x and y but different (and better) because of z.6 This kind of shorthand is very common promotional rhetoric, used to quickly position a game or a console in the marketplace, and often relies on easily understood but not always accurate communication. Stereotypes, idealised narratives of consumption, and shared previous experiences prevail in these promotional narratives, and in doing so they blur the lines between what we have experienced and what we will, could, and hope to experience. In this respect, it helps to come back to the issue of contextual experience. On the phenomenon of media experience, Stephen Heath, in the 1970s, made the point that our experience (of a film) exists before it begins, suggesting that our understanding and reception of a single object or text spans an interconnected network of promotion, merchandise, cultural references, personal and collective memories as well as our wider cultural lexicon, all of which precede, follow, and surround the text itself.7 As with cinema, so too with games, or books or any other human output surrounded in context. Here we begin to see that our experience of a game might not be solely linked with the start-stop gameplay or with  Tristan Donovan, Replay: The History of Video Games (Lewes: Yellow Ant, 2010), xiii.  Adam Chapman, Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice (New York: Routledge, 2016).  T.L. Taylor, “The Assemblage of Play,” Games and Culture 4, no. 4 (2009): 331–339.  For a detailed analysis of video game genres, see Wendy Despain, ed., Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG (Boca Ranton: CRC Press, 2009).  This is as true for games as it is for consoles. See James Newman, Best Before: Videogames, Supersession and Obsolescence (London: Routledge, 2012), 41–47.  Stephen Heath, “Screen Images – Film Memoir,” Ciné-Tracts: A Journal of Film, Communications, Culture, and Politics 1, no. 1 (1977): 28.

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the “magic circle”8 in which the game exists, but with a wider network of promotional context, from reviews to our own knowledge of previous games in the genre, knowledge of the console or any other element connected to games and gaming. To that extent, commercial games are always going to draw on existing context. This is why early promotion for home consoles explained that it plugged into both the television and the wall, educating the audience,9 yet contemporary promotion for fundamentally the same device eschews this and assumes shared knowledge, focusing more on new features of the console, the technical specifications or games released with the console.10 At some point, knowledge moves on from needed educational communication as promotional rhetoric and becomes assumed knowledge based on the success of previous goods. In this sense, the context of video games illustrates their own historical narrative. This network of context, which we can consider as a network of things being connected with yet distinctly not the text, operates under the broad term paratexts. We will be complicating and unpacking this idea later on but paratexts are, for now, anything connected to something, but importantly not the sum-total of that object or text. These para-texts shape our understanding of their connected text, giving us clues as to how we might engage with it, what it is, and how we should make sense of it. Paratexts are thus fundamentally contextual because they give reason for something and position the reader/user/consumer in relation to the new product and, as Jonathan Gray notes, they are “as organic and naturally occurring a part of our mediated environment as are movies and television [and games] themselves.”11 At the same time, though, they operate with a different life-span and are subject to different industrial and consumer attitudes. Not being the text itself, they are often seen as a means to an end and of associated lesser value; we are more likely to throw away a poster, a box or instructions than the game associated with any of these items. Paratexts can easily become (lost to) history.

 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Kettering: Angelico Press, 2016 [1938]), 10.  Bryan-Mitchell Young, “The Disappearance and Reappearance and Disappearance of the Player in Videogame Advertising,” DiGRA 2007 – Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play (September 2007), 235–242.  See Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Jonas Heide Smith and Susana Pajares Tosca, Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction (London: Routledge, 2015), 138–140. Stephen Dahl, Social Media Marketing: Theories and Applications (London: Sage, 2015), 96–97.  Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 23.

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Paratexts as historical markers Paratexts might, more often than not, help us understand what is missing. Just as promotional paratexts frame a forthcoming product, they simultaneously point to a textual “other,” irrespective of the product’s availability. Consider that a game-disc without a title or means to identify it is reliant on a games system that reads it in order to identify it. While we might own a game cartridge or disc, without a system to enable gameplay we are stuck with evidence of the game and simultaneously its absence. Similarly, games may disappear temporarily or permanently, leaving only trace (paratextual) evidence behind. Cartridges for the 1982 Atari game E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial were infamously withdrawn from sale and buried in a New Mexico landfill only to be found in 2014.12 Without access to the game, we are fundamentally reliant on paratextual references, rumours on chat rooms, industrial notes, and screen grabs from the remaining games. For many of us, the ability to play this specific game (rather than reissued versions) ourselves is curtailed by its availability, and the paratexts therefore become our only mode of engagement with the mostly unavailable game. This kind of disappearance is not unlike elements of promotion because we may be “turned off” by promotion, deciding based on paratexts that a specific game is not for us. In this respect, the paratext is metonymic with the text itself. If you have ever said or heard anything similar to “this game looks shit,” you are embodying the idea that paratexts are extensions of the game, allowing you to negotiate how much engagement you have with the text. Yet, in the same instance you are taking those paratexts as standing wholly for the game itself. Here we see that paratexts function just like academic gatekeepers (or nightclub doormen), helping decide what is worthy of attention, but also keeping the “wrong” audience out and inviting the “right” audience in. That video games function in association with technological systems adds to their fragility because we need both the game and some means to play it in order to experience the game and allow the text to function as it was intended. This creates a duality for their existence but also once again highlights their assemblage, as coded memory

 The games were retrieved due to the efforts of the makers of a documentary on the E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial game. The similarities between archaeological excavations and digging for the copies of E.T. make us realise how these games have become historical artefacts, similar to Roman coins or Viking hoards. See Raiford Guins, Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), 207–235. Amy E. Lerman, Good Enough for Government Work: The Public Reputation Crisis in America (And What We Can Do To Fix It) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019), 8. Andrew Reinhard, “Video Game Archaeology in Meatspace,” Archeogaming (June 11, 2013), accessed February 12, 2021, https://archaeogaming.com/2013/06/11/ video-game-archaeology-in-meatspace/.

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and as decoded experience. Here we explore how we might use historical methods to understand contemporary culture when the thing itself – the game, or more specifically the act of gameplay – is missing, whether just unavailable to us or unavailable to all. In examining the elements it left behind, we are implicitly exploring and constructing a history of that product, just as we might construct historical events, looking either at the games’ use of historical discourse or how games themselves are artefacts of a specific moment in time. In both cases, we are talking about how games use historical discourse to position themselves, or how we can use historical discourse, methods, and processes to understand and study games (or any cultural object, really). As with E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial’s planned disappearance, the discerning scholar might see references to a game in production notes or the game’s title in company strategy notes. While the game may be lost and thus does not wholly exist, the concept of it does. Just as physical human remains might point to a conflict but are only the aftermath of such, it is the job of the scholar in both cases to construct a plausible, evidenced interpretation of the absent object or event. It seems, therefore, that considering these examples together we can see that elements of cultural studies and elements of history have something in common, creating a hybrid network of relationships between paratexts, history, and games. Here we begin to identify the overlap between debates in media and cultural studies and key debates in historical studies; they have a long and shared history.13 When we start to consider that none of us are able to travel in time to specific events, it seems both logical and yet problematic (as we shall see) to claim that all historians are to some extent scholars of paratexts. The liminal space occupied by these “connected-with-yet-not-the-text” things offers room for the negotiation of meaning because they all have to be interpreted, they all help us make sense of something, and as a result can be sources of tension between our understanding and the direct-experience of something (which is, of course, still quite subjective). Understanding how these discourses of paratexts shape our grasp of the object of study is of vital importance to scholars wishing to explore the text without being able to transport themselves to a specific contextual moment. At a fundamental level,  See Chapman, Digital Games as History. William Uricchio, “Simulation, History, and Computer Games,” in Handbook of Computer Games Studies, ed. Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 327–238. Nick Webber, “Public History, Game Communities and Historical Knowledge” (paper presented at Playing with History: Games, Antiquity and History Workshop, DiGRA and FDG Joint International Conference, Dundee, August 1–6, 2016). Robert A. Rosenstone, History on Film/Film on History (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2006). Jeremiah McCall, Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011). Astrid Erll, Memory in Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Adam Chapman, Anna Foka and Jonathan Westin, “Introduction: What is Historical Game Studies?” Rethinking History 21, no. 3 (2017): 358–371.

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the creation of a historical narrative is an attempt to negotiate both the presence and the absence of evidence, and ultimately help us understand what has happened. Just as paratexts can be used to construct the absent game, games (particularly narrativedriven ones) offer us the chance to construct absent moments in history. Here we can start to see the success of historical games that are set in, or set out to explore, the past (e.g. the Total War series, Age of Empires or Red Dead Redemption), which can be seen as being connected with, yet separate from the historical text. Through such games, players are offered the chance to revisit past events without having to fulfil the impossible task of travelling back in time to those events. We start to see that the text here, namely the historical narrative, has its own paratexts shaping popular understandings of specific periods, events, and people. We are not concerned with issues of historical accuracy in games, but rather how the gaming industry uses its textual output in conjunction with the idea of history coming to life. Historical interpretations serve as substitutes for the events themselves, irrespective of accuracy. The ephemerality of historical events maps onto the ephemerality of the game experience, both being events linked to specific moments in space and time, no matter how repeatable some of these moments may be.

Using this book This book emerges from a scholarly context of academic writing and sits at the intersection of history, games, and cultural studies. At the heart of this is a core concept: Where does the text (in humanities, broadly “the thing of study”) begin, and where does it end? As academia is built upon questions, answers, and most importantly, disagreement, it is perhaps only logical that the existential issues of “what is a . . . ?” are the most debated. This book (if we first can agree that it is, in fact, a book) exists to help us unpack the question “what is . . .” and, though the subject of this enquiry changes with each chapter, we have two key foci. The first of these is “what is historical discourse in games?,” with the nested questions within this being “how is the concept of history used?,” “how does historical discourse manifest itself within games?,” and “how does the concept of history intersect with games themselves?.” To that end, essays in this work addressing this key point are focused on historical games and understanding how they use (or abuse) history as well as how historical narratives function as paratexts to, for, and in games. Here, we unpack how claims about games and history are made, how history is used within a moreoften-than-not commercial context, and how ideas about history work their way into popular discourse through games. Each of these points could be, and indeed has been, the subject of scholarly inquiry in its own right. Combining this focus with

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the next offers a unique platform to illustrate the role of the scholar in constructing paratextual or historical interpretations. The second broad focus inverts the first. Rather than seeing how games use the concept of history, it flips this first point, and shows how historical and paratextual methods can be applied to understand games as historical events. It seems convoluted, really, to make this kind of distinction until we realise that this second point explores the idea that games, being a product of specific conditions and subject to the relentless march of time (and associated development) exist as artefacts, as evidence of human output. Like any man-made object, they provide the clues to help us understand a specific time and space yet may not be readily available to us (just like travelling in time to the battle of Agincourt). The essays in this section will look at individual paratexts and their function in creating the history of a specific game, a genre or a studio, taking into account production contexts and player reactions. In short, as the title of the book suggests, the essays within this work address what IS NOT the game. In many respects, this work is not about what is absent but what is left behind, as evidence of that absence. A better title might be “What suggests the game,” but few would consider that paratext is an especially worthy sales pitch. The contributions in this volume help us understand the process of history, its value as part of consumer culture, but also how we can use methods from history and media/cultural studies in understanding elements of consumer culture. This is particularly important given the role of digital systems and the infrastructure that is key to accessing older games and electronic systems. Just as celluloid degrades, jeopardising old film footage, games exist as an assemblage of systems and contexts dependant on wires, chips, and processes that all too quickly become obsolete, uncool and/or unavailable. With the development of technology, our ability to access earlier incarnations of games might cease and we may find ourselves locked out of early (or perhaps simply commercially unsuccessful) games and gaming systems, leaving behind only paratextual elements of the game readily accessible to scholars and researchers. Similarly, there is a movement both in digital game studies and wider elements of media and cultural studies to explore the different contexts that surround and shape our mediascape. Consider that for many non-specialists, our understanding of a particular historic event or period will be mediated and remediated through references within popular culture.

Structure of this work This collection has been composed with the student in mind. Each contribution within this volume has been selected to speak primarily to either the themes of the

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games’ use of history or of games as historical texts. In presenting a case study for one theme, each author will necessarily contribute to both, while making individual points about games, history, paratexts, and culture. There are, therefore, many ways to use this volume. Students may particularly benefit from focusing on a single essay, a specific topic, or the entirety of this volume that deals with a question or element relevant to their studies. Care is taken in the conclusion to draw out these key points and signpost them back to the student reader. The scholars contained within this work are arguably some of the first generation of researchers exploring the intersection of history and games in this manner and while the contributors are at the time of writing at different stages of their careers, each one will have had to defend their respective projects and subject areas to (seemingly unfair) criticism. Similarly, each scholar within this work will have realised during the course of their studies that no ready-made methodology applies and that they have been forced, to some extent, to develop their own approaches. As the next generation of scholars and practitioners reading this work, it is our hope that the case studies can offer guidance to you in terms of methodology, supporting scholars in conducting their own research in this area. In focusing on methodological and structural decisions that have been made, it is hoped that the student can quickly and effectively build a framework for their own studies that provides a jumping-off point for further research to support their efforts. While speaking to two key foci, the contributions in this volume have been organised into areas of study, interconnected and often overlapping. In the first of these – Games and Paratexts – Regina Seiwald and Esther Wright offer a theoretical framework for studying and understanding paratexts. Seiwald provides a comprehensive introduction to the key debates and challenges within the field, looking at the history of the term paratext itself. Paratext designates many different meanings depending on the object it refers to, and as such has been the root of much criticism. Exploring the foundations, the term and its grounding in literary theory, this chapter discusses how the concept it denotes can be applied to games. Seiwald’s work here is therefore the introduction to a complex debate regarding the text, the context, and more broadly the object of study: not games. Wright’s chapter expands this theory into an autoethnographic realm by providing a clear methodological grounding for discussing and collating paratexts of historical games through case studies from the studio Rockstar. The exploration of history as being used to legitimate and provide consumption context for the work thereby clearly demonstrates how history is commodified. The two chapters in this section thus function as theoretical discourses from two differing methodological perspectives with the result of developing key terms and debates. In the second of our thematic sections – History as Game Paratext and Games as Historical Paratexts – Iain Donald and Andrew James Reid as well as Nick Webber

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explore the foci of historical discourse(s) in games as shaping (at least public) definitions of history. In many ways, the study of paratexts invokes the same processes found elsewhere in historical studies, primarily since paratexts exist on a separate timeframe to the object they relate to and many circulated long before or after the object itself exists. Donald and Reid’s work proposes a framework for assessing the kinds of paratextual claims made. As a result, they invert Wright’s discussion, suggesting that historical games are paratexts of a wider historical discourse rather than paratexts using historical discourse. Webber’s work questions the nature of games and their paratexts and offers explications of the relationship between games, history, text, and paratext. Concerning materials produced by players that historicise the game experiences, this case study essentially helps us understand the relationship between historical documentation and the experiential, and thus ephemeral, text. In apprehending the game as historically positioned, as historically relevant, and as historical event, the two contributions found in this section set up the framework discussion for elsewhere and are perhaps the most overtly connected to debates surrounding history. As we move to the next section, we start to pivot between our two key foci – from historical discourse in games to viewing games as historical artefacts. From understanding how history is used to position games and how key historical claims are made, we move to the third distinct section: Game Reception and Paratexts. Broadly, this section follows on from Webber’s work and develops the key points therein, explaining and showing how we might make sense of audience, gamer, and fan responses. We open with Michael Pennington’s discussion of wikis as historical representation and reception of Hearts of Iron IV. Pennington provides a clear discussion of how paratexts represent and reflect reception practices surrounding historical events and moments. From this, we move to E. Charlotte Stevens’ study of fan-made videos as historical markers of the otherwise ephemeral experiences of games, suggesting that these videos not only form reified moments of audience response and engagement but live on far beyond the gameplay experience and occupy the same historical relevance in the absence of the game as writers have of historical events long since passed. The fourth section – Game Production and Paratexts – once again considers the absent game by focusing on production and promotional output to shed light on games. Exploring the by-products of games culture, this section forms the logical conclusion to the wider discussions of industrial paratexts. Crucial to this approach is that the research materials are not strictly the game artefacts but context-oriented data such as (paratextual) developer perspectives. The reason for this is two-fold: first, to emphasise that a multiplicity of materials more effectively highlights contradictions in discourse and practice; secondly, we need to examine their context in order to empirically situate games as artefacts in time and space. Alan Galey and

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Ellen Forget bring theories of textual materiality into conversation with the practices of in-game developer commentary in video games. Their work approaches marginalia – “external” comments inserted into a text – through literary studies and a comparative analysis of other media to determine the material connection between texts and their surroundings. Exploring the question of why such commentary matters opens discussions of how this kind of paratext may impact the reception of video games and player engagement with digital textuality. Galey and Forget’s chapter demonstrates how complex and varied video game marginalia can be and how they serve to question authority, authorship, and autonomy. Next, Ed Vollans’ contribution discusses the challenges of identifying ubiquitous paratexts while simultaneously addressing how the industry sees itself and wants to be seen, asking how we study a specific paratext when there is no clear definition of such. Here, we touch again upon issues of archiving and definition. From this duality, we move to Alison Harvey’s research into industry training promotion. Forming a key source of dialogue in how the industry frames its worker development pipeline, Harvey addresses the hegemony of play as manifest in industry promotion, literally showing historical evidence of the ways in which elements of the industry document themselves, and thus providing supporting evidence for the ways in which industrial attitudes may shape the representations (also of historical events) in games. The fifth and final section of this book, entitled Paratextual Practices of Play, comprises a chapter, authored by Esther MacCallum-Stewart, that moves away from the traditional discourse of (dry) academic research and into an autoethnographic study of experiences of play. Taking the Worldcon as its arena of paratextual practices, the author retrospectively looks at attendants and staff experience of playfulness that is the result of a shared sense of the “otherness” of ludic frameworks. This chapter thus strings back to the theoretical perspectives presented in the preceding ones by exploring them in practice. By this point in the volume, we expect the average reader to have more than a significant amount of fatigue, to that end we conclude. While each case study has been unique in that it presents a clear argument at a microlevel, Seiwald and Vollans take the time here to distil key conclusions and draw macro-connections between chapters and themes. In unpacking not only the specific contributions to the field but also how they advance the wider debates, this conclusion identifies the key next steps, namely the challenges of combining elements of seemingly disparate intellectual fields. Identifying the demands and issues that new generations of scholars may face, this section points students to the learning materials at the end of this work, with a glossary presenting core definitions and discussions that arise within this collection.

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References Chapman, Adam. Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice. New York: Routledge, 2016. Chapman, Adam, Anna Foka, and Jonathan Westin. “Introduction: What is Historical Game Studies?” Rethinking History 21, no. 3 (2017): 358–371. doi: 10.1080/13642529.2016.1256638. Couldry, Nick. Inside Culture: Re-imagining the Method of Cultural Studies. London: Sage, 2000. Dahl, Stephen. Social Media Marketing: Theories and Applications. London: Sage, 2015. Despain, Wendy, ed. Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG. Boca Ranton: CRC Press, 2009. Donovan, Tristan. Replay: The History of Video Games. Lewes: Yellow Ant, 2010. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon, Jonas Heide Smith, and Susana Pajares Tosca. Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. London: Routledge, 2015. Erll, Astrid. Memory in Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Gray, Jonathan. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press, 2010. Guins, Raiford. Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014. Heath, Stephen. “Screen Images – Film Memoir.” Ciné-Tracts: A Journal of Film, Communications, Culture, and Politics 1, no. 1 (1977): 27–36. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Kettering: Angelico Press, 2016 [1938]. Lerman, Amy E. Good Enough for Government Work: The Public Reputation Crisis in America (And What We Can Do To Fix It). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019. McCall, Jeremiah. Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011. Newman, James. Best Before: Videogames, Supersession and Obsolescence. London: Routledge, 2012. Reinhard, Andrew. “Video Game Archeology in Meatspace.” Archeogaming. Posted June 11, 2013. Accessed February 12, 2021. https://archaeogaming.com/2013/06/11/video-game-archaeology-in -meatspace/. Rosenstone, Robert A. History on Film/Film on History. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2006. Taylor, T.L. “The Assemblage of Play.” Games and Culture 4, no. 4 (2009): 331–339. Accessed February 12, 2021. doi: 10.1177/1555412009343576. Uricchio, William. “Simulation, History, and Computer Games.” In Handbook of Computer Games Studies. Edited by Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein, 327–338. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005. Webber, Nick. “Public History, Game Communities and Historical Knowledge.” Paper presented at the Playing with History: Games, Antiquity and History Workshop, DiGRA and FDG Joint International Conference, Dundee, August 1–6, 2016. Young, Bryan-Mitchell. “The Disappearance and Reappearance and Disappearance of the Player in Videogame Advertising.” DiGRA 2007 – Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play, Tokyo, September, 2007: 235–242. Accessed 1 March, 2021. http://www.digra.org/ digital-library/publications/the-disappearance-and-reappearance-and-disappearance-of-theplayer-in-videogame-advertising/.

Section 1: Games and paratexts – a theoretical approach

Regina Seiwald

De-centralising the text: The text–paratext relationship of video games Introduction: Video games as digital texts The aim of this chapter, and, by extension, of this collection, is to answer a question: Why are paratexts so important for video games? This chapter aims at doing so from a mainly theoretical perspective by delving deep into the roots of paratextual studies in general, its articulations and modifications in game studies, and analyses the complexities of the text–paratext relationship of video games. It addresses the relationship between the three core concepts found in the title of this work – history, paratexts, and games – and argues that (1) in and for video games, paratexts and paratextuality are very prominent and important, and (2) that their prominence and importance undermines any notion of a text–paratext hierarchy that has long been seen as valid, but which is more and more perceived as being arbitrary.1 This chapter initially proceeds diachronically by looking at the history of paratext, both as a term and as a concept, before engaging with current manifestations of video game paratextuality (and textuality), both in theory and in practice. In the first part, I will look at the origin of the term paratext, coined by Gérard Genette in the 1980s in reference to literature in its written

 Steven E. Jones, who was amongst the first games scholars to study paratexts, argues that “almost any popular video game [is] always already predominantly paratextual [. . .]. Once you look at today’s games and game-like media entertainments, it’s all paratext, in concentric circles rippling out into the world.” Steven E. Jones, The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies (New York: Routledge, 2008), 43. This idea has been further researched and modified by subsequent scholars, such as Annika Rockenberger, stating that paratexts are “integral parts of the game’s overall conception, its medial and/or conceptual totality” (56), and Daniel Dunne, who proposes seeing the text–paratext relationship as a spectrum rather than a fixed point (281). See Annika Rockenberger, “Video Game Framings,” in Examining Paratextual Theory and its Applications in Digital Culture, ed. Nadine Desrochers and Daniel Apollon (Hershey: IGI Global, 2014), 252–286; Daniel Dunne, “Paratext: The In-Between of Structure and Play,” in Contemporary Research on Intertextuality in Video Games, ed. Christophe Duret and Christian-Marie Pons (Hershey: IGI Global, 2016), 247–296. This idea of proposing video games as conglomerates of paratexts will be further engaged with below. Regina Seiwald, University of Birmingham https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-002

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form and bound as a book,2 and determine which elements of his original definition can still be used in our analysis of video games and which ones are problematic. The second part of this chapter shifts the focus to game studies and engages with the various, often contesting uses of the term paratext in the field to date.3 Throughout this chapter, I will suggest that for video games, paratexts often become more important than the text itself and that the text of a video game is indeed made up of paratexts, thus calling any hierarchy between text and paratext into question, and that their relationship should not be seen as hierarchical but as reciprocal and interdependent. The final part of this chapter also works towards ideas of how the triumvirate of history, paratexts, and games can manifest itself, explored in the subsequent chapters of this book. Setting out these, arguably ambitious, aims already suggests that some kind of definition of text needs to form the cornerstone of any discussion of paratextuality, and it is pertinent to use a definition of text as a foundation upon which video game-specific characteristics of textuality and paratextuality can build. Cultural heritage and history frequently work with “evidence” that is present in the form of tangible artefactuality, such as writings or historical objects. Digital culture poses a challenge to this curatorship due to an inherent lack of physicality, and consequently, the historisation of born-digital texts4 proceeds differently to non-digital texts. Fiona R. Cameron proposes that “digital cultural heritage is currently framed as societal data worth passing on to future generations in two

 Gérard Genette, Palimpsestes: La littérature au second degré (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1982). English translation: Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). Gérard Genette, Seuils (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987). English translation: Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). This chapter uses the English translations.  Jan Švelch proposes “to avoid the reductive term ‘paratext’ in the sense of a category of texts, which implies a rigid textual hierarchy.” As an alternative, he “recommend[s] treating paratextuality as a link between a text and the surrounding socio-historical reality, emphasizing that paratextuality is often accompanied by other (trans)textual qualities.” See Jan Švelch, “Paratextuality in Game Studies: A Theoretical Review and Citation Analysis,” Game Studies 20, no. 2 (2020), accessed May 2, 2021, http://gamestudies.org/2002/articles/jan_svelch. My understanding of the term paratext overlaps with Švelch’s definition of paratextuality and should therefore be understood as a textual characteristic rather than a textual status or an independent genre. I therefore won’t follow Švelch’s terminological separation here but will use “paratext” to denote textual characteristics that link a text and its reader through various discourses, both material and immaterial.  The characteristics of born-digital texts will be further elaborated by Nick Webber, Chapter 4, and Ellen Forget/Alan Galey, Chapter 7, in this collection.

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distinct forms: digitally born and digitalization.”5 Video games fall into the first category because they have only ever had a digital existence, and thus their textuality is not the physical textuality which is often associated with literature, but instead one that is independent from the medium and focuses on an idea of networks and connections between building blocks. Based on this premise, I rely on a definition put forward by Jorge J.E. Gracia that is detached from any association with a specific medium (e.g. literature, performance, art, music, video games, etc.), and one that is not only applicable to text in the narrow sense of the term, namely as something written and consisting of linguistic signs, but any artefact that has been deliberately created. For Gracia, text is “a group of entities, used as signs, which are selected, arranged, and intended by an author in a certain context to convey some specific meaning to an audience.”6 Within the parameters of this definition, video games are clearly texts because they consist of elements that are consciously arranged by the game-maker(s) and the player(s), both of which are the “author” referred to in Gracia’s definition, to create meaning. When we think about a video game, images from the gameworld spring to mind – the character we play or the landscape in which we move –, while we might also remember specific settings in which we play(ed) the game, such as on a carefree evening with our friends or as a big online battle with familiar strangers. These are but a few of the building blocks that form the game and are the weaves that become the text. While some of these building blocks are inherent elements of the game without which it could not exist, others are additions that give the game its unique characteristics. The former tend to be textual elements and the latter paratextual elements, but this chapter will show that any dividing line between them cannot be maintained. The methodological proceedings of the discussion that follows is mainly grounded in a theoretical intervention and provides what is generally understood as a literature review. Besides this retrospective engagement, this chapter also seeks to tease out nuances of individual arguments by illustrating core debates through making recourse to individual games. The games that were chosen as examples do not belong to one specific genre, one specific era, one production class of games (i.e. AAA, AA, indie, etc.), or one geographical area of origin, and instead such parameters have been consciously avoided. This avoidance has the effect of setting the limelight on the paratext and its relationship to the player and the game, and not on the game itself. The reason for this is that making the discussion

 Fiona R. Cameron, The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation (Oxon: Routledge, 2021), 11.  Jorge J.E. Gracia, A Theory of Textuality: The Logic and Epistemology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 4.

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of a paratext dependent on the game would imply a hierarchy in which the game, as text, dominates the paratext. This is a dated appreciation of the text–paratext relationship this chapter wants to work against, most pronouncedly so in its concluding section. Before we can reach this discussion, however, let us return to the origin of theories of paratexts, how they have been and can be used in game studies, and how they need to be modified to meet the requirements of this versatile medium.

Genette’s paratext and what use it is for video games (spoiler: Some use) In the introduction to this chapter, I have laid the foundation for the argument that video games consist of many interlacing elements, which are each necessary in the formation of the final artefact, thus constituting it as texts. These elements are manifold, but broadly fall into two categories. On the one hand, we find those that are born out of software/the digital or that do not have physical materiality in our reality (i.e. we cannot touch them), but might do so within the gameworld. Examples are gameplay mechanisms, a game’s story (as minimal as this may be), its characters, its landscape, and any element in the game-world, e.g. the horse the avatar can ride. On the other hand, we find hardware – technological affordances making a game possible, such as a PC, a console, or a controller. All these elements would not come to life, at least not in the form as intended by the gamemaker(s), without the player, who engages with them and attests a certain degree of meaning to their existence. Put simply, the player is the one who asserts meaning to the physical and non-physical elements by engaging with them. The links between these in-game elements, the hardware, and the player are what we can commonly refer to as paratexts – “accompanying productions”7 that surround a text, such as a video game. According to Genette, the central role of these paratexts is “to present [the text], in the usual sense of this verb, but also in its strongest meaning: to make it present, to assure its presence in the world, its reception and its consumption.”8 Genette thereby places the agency of this presentation with the work itself and not necessarily the author, either of the text or the paratext. For video games, this agency can only ever come into being if the player

 Genette, Paratexts, 1.  Gérard Genette, “Introduction to Paratext,” New Literary History 22, no. 2 (1991): 261. Original emphasis.

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engages with these elements, such as switching on the console or choosing the difficulty level. Paratexts, for Genette, are hence “threshold” zones, in which, following Philippe Lejeune, the reception of a text is initiated and also controlled.9 A paratext is therefore a way into the text, which can be realised in many different forms, regardless of the medium in which this text occurs. Genette framed his arguments in recourse to literature in its book-form, but we can extend it to any other artefact, such as films, artworks, or video games. The form of the paratext can also medially differ from that of the text, and paratexts can be realised as an exciting trailer, which catches our attention and wants us to play the game,10 an appealing cover design, which gives a first taste of the game-world we can expect, or a fantastic new story, which makes us want to walk in somebody else’s shoes for some time. Or it can also be situated further away from the text (if we think about the text–paratext relationship as a spatial one), for example by presenting a completely new way of playing, such as when the VR-headset Oculus Quest first launched in September 2018, granting players an even more immersive experience of the digital universe. This last example shows that a specific paratextual relationship does not necessarily have to frame one artefact in particular, i.e. one specific game, but that in some cases, one paratext can relate to a number of texts.11 Up to this point, I have applied Genette’s baseline definition of paratexts as thresholds between a text and its user to video games without the need for any modification.12 If we look at his theory in more detail, particularly his functional

 Genette, “Introduction to Paratext,” 261.  Two in-depth studies of video game trailers can be found here: Ed Vollans, “The Most Cinematic Game Yet,” Kinephanos 7, no. 1 (2017): 106–130, accessed May 2, 2021, https://www.kinepha nos.ca/2017/the-most-cinematic-game-yet/. Jan Švelch, “Exploring the Myth of the Representative Video Game Trailer,” Kinephanos 7, no. 1 (2017): 7–36, accessed May 2, 2021, https://www.kinepha nos.ca/2017/exploring-the-myth-of-the-representative-video-game-trailer/.  In the world of books, we can observe a similar situation: When the first e-book readers were released, they revolutionised the way we relate to books, how we haptically engage with them, and how we store our library. The e-book reader and VR devices share that they are not paratexts per se, but that they constitute paratextual relationships between an artefact and its user.  The following studies engage with how paratext in game studies departs from Genette’s definition: Dominic Arsenault, Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017). Hans-Joachim Backe, “Between ‘Games as Media’ and ‘Interactive Games,’” Game Studies 17, no. 2 (2017), accessed June 12, 2021, http://gamestudies. org/1702/articles/review_backe. Rockenberger, “Video Game Framings.” Jan Švelch, “‘Footage Not Representative’: Redefining Paratextuality for the Analysis of Official Communication in the Video Game Industry,” in Contemporary Research on Intertextuality in Video Games, ed. Christophe Duret and Christian-Marie Pons (Hershey: IGI Global, 2016), 297–315. Jan Švelch, “Paratexts to

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catalogue of paratexts listed in Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (1997), three core problems become visible: (1) his focus on the author as the authority over the meaning of a text and its paratexts (and Genette is very strict about this criterium),13 (2) the differentiation between peritext, i.e. a paratext spatially and authorially connected to the text, and epitext, i.e. a paratext in a spatial and authorial distance to the text,14 and (3) his suggestion that the paratext is subordinate to the text.15 In consideration of the first problem, we need to unpack further how Genette defines the relationship between the author and a text’s paratexts for books and how this differs for video games. It is not the concept of authorship as such that is problematic in the context of video games, but rather seeing an author as a singular entity. Video games are mostly not “authored” by one person, especially when we consider AAA games, which are often made by large teams, but also indie games are hardly ever made by an individual. Each team member fulfils different roles in the creation of the work, such as script writer, character designer or programmer, and thus they can all be considered as the game’s authors.16 Collectively, they create the game-as-text artefact and the meaning it is designed to communicate. This, however, is only one side of the meaning-production present for video games, while the other is found in the player. As noted in the introduction to this chapter, the player possesses a key role in creating a game’s meaning and, in a sense, brings it to life. This is due to the interactivity and the dialogism video games call for, which makes every play experience unique, resulting in different versions of meaning associated with one single game. Game-texts are therefore less static or fixed than book-texts (which are also not entirely static and monologic, but we leave this debate to narratologists and textuality scholars). This, then, means that a game’s author-role is split between its makers and its players, resulting in various iterations of the game-text depending on the player and the individual play run.

Non-Linear Texts: Paratextuality in Video Game Culture” (PhD diss., Univerzita Karlova, 2017). Švelch, “Paratextuality in Game Studies.”  Genette, Paratexts, 9.  Genette, Paratexts, 5.  Švelch, “Paratextuality in Game Studies.”  Stephanie C. Jennings, “Co-Creation and the Distributed Authorship of Video Games,” in Examining the Evolution of Gaming and Its Impact on Social, Cultural, and Political Perspectives, ed. Keri D. Valentine and Lucas J. Jensen (Hershey: IGI Global, 2016), 125–127. Miłosz Markocki, “Fame or Infamy: The Influence of Let’s Plays on Independent Game Developers,” in Paratextualizing Games: Investigations on the Paraphernalia and Peripheries of Play, ed. Benjamin Beil, Gundolf S. Freyermuth and Hanns Christian Schmidt, Studies of Digital Media Culture, Volume 13 (Bielefeld: transcript, 2021), 240.

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In connection to this unique idea of authorship of video games, we need to address the second problem in more detail, namely that the split between peritexts and epitexts cannot be as neat as Genette would have us believe. Genette distinguishes between two forms of paratexts in terms of “location that can be situated in relation to the location of the text itself: around the text and either within the same volume or at a more respectful (or more prudent) distance.”17 The first group are labelled “peritexts,”18 which, in game-terms, are elements that are connected to the game, such as the opening credits, introductory cut-scenes, game settings (difficulty, brightness, speed, sound, etc.), the cover of the disk sleeve (if we have one), etc. The other elements are “epitexts,”19 which are those that exist in a physical distance to the game, such as game merchandise or speedrun videos. On the one hand, the problematic nature of this categorical distinction has to do with the lack of authority over a video game as text, which Genette claims for books, and which has been countered for games in the previous paragraph. On the other hand, the idea of distance becomes problematic for borndigital media since they do not have the same kind of physical presence as books do and since games reside in the digital universe, the idea of space associated with them is far more dispersed. One game that pushes this idea of lacking localisation to the extreme is Hello Game’s No Man’s Sky (2016).20 The game developers managed to create an endless universe that expands as soon as a player moves to a new area within it, upon which new planets spawn. The game offers its players more than 18 quintillion planets to play on, which each possess their own fauna and flora.21 Due to the vastness of this game universe, the idea of physical distance between individual elements, such as the player’s reality and the gameuniverse or even individual locations within the game, becomes unfathomable, and hence it is also difficult to draw a line between peritexts (are the individual planets peritexts to the game or are they the text?) and epitexts (are the elements developed on these planets by the player epitexts to the game or are they paratexts/texts?). This should not imply that the idea of epitexts in contrast to peritexts does not exist for video games – we might think of developer interviews, wikis22

 Genette, Paratexts, 4. Original emphasis.  Genette, Paratexts, 5.  Genette, Paratexts, 5.  Hello Games, No Man’s Sky (Guildford: Hello Games, 2016).  To be precises, as of 3 June 2021, there are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets to play on. Stan Hogeweg, “No Man’s Sky’s Total Number of Planets Explained,” Gamerant, June 3, 2021, accessed June 30, 2021, https://gamerant.com/no-mans-sky-how-many-planets-explained/.  See Michael Pennington, Chapter 5.

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or fan vids23 here – but that we should take a stringent classification with a pinch of salt. The last point of criticism I want to make towards Genette’s idea of paratext concerns an implied hierarchy between text and paratext. It becomes most pronounced in his argument concerning the “unequal sense of obligation associated with the paratext [which] is felt by the audience and the reader too; no one is bound to read a preface, even if this liberty is not always welcome to the author, and we will see that many notes are only addressed to certain readers.”24 For games, we frequently do not have the same mechanical skipping mechanism as described by Genette here in relation to books because although games require interactivity from the player, they are partly also very static. We might encounter opening cutscenes that cannot be skipped, such as in Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima (2020),25 whose narrative relies on these story-heavy sequences. Or we might need to create an avatar before we can play the game, most prominently found in RPGs such as World of Warcraft (2004).26 For some games, it even happened that the paratext became more important than the text because the text did not exist. In 2014, 7780s Studio released P.T.,27 short for “Playable Teaser,” which should give players a first taste of the forthcoming Silent Hills game. In 2015, however, Konami cancelled Silent Hills, which meant that P.T. – originally designed to be a paratext – became a text in its own right.28 Even before the cancellation, paratexts surrounding P.T. emerged, most notably discussions led by fans in online forums, which shows the multilayeredness of paratextual relationships. This especially comes to the fore if paratexts are themselves highly playful, which undermines any clear distinction between this is the text (game) and this is the paratext (not game).29 Undoubtedly, P.T. is a game because it is ludic and requires a playful engagement from the player, but this does not mean that it cannot be a paratext.

 See E. Charlotte Stevens, Chapter 6.  Genette, “Introduction to Paratext,” 263. Original emphasis.  Sucker Punch, Ghost of Tsushima (San Mateo: Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2020).  Blizzard Entertainment, World of Warcraft (Irvine: Blizzard Entertainment, 2004).  7780s Studio, P.T. (Tokyo: Konami, 2014).  Chloi Rad, “The Messy Timeline of P.T., Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hills Horror Masterpiece,” IGN, January 9, 2019, accessed June 13, 2021, https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/01/09/the-messy-time line-of-pt-hideo-kojimas-silent-hills-horror-masterpiece.  For a detailed discussion of the playful nature of paratexts, see Regina Seiwald, “The Ludic Nature of Paratexts: Playful Material in and Beyond Video Games,” in Paratextualizing Games: Investigations on the Paraphernalia and Peripheries of Play, ed. Benjamin Beil, Gundolf S. Freyermuth and Hanns Christian Schmidt, Studies of Digital Media Culture, Volume 13 (Bielefeld: transcript, 2021), 292–317.

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Starting with Genette’s discussion of paratexts helps us to establish a foundation for research into video game paratexts, but it also shows us that there are many limitations to his theory. This is a sentiment shared by many games scholars, and hence the next section addresses some of the directions paratextual research in game studies has taken over the past two decades.

Paratexts in and for game studies In 2020, Jan Švelch published a large-scale “theoretical review and citation analysis”30 in Game Studies, in which he looked at the critical engagement with paratext (or, to use his more appropriate terminology, paratextuality) as a concept within the discipline. With the advent of game studies as an independent field in 2001,31 he argues, the discussion around paratexts caught fire, but soon spread in various (and often contesting) ways. He proposes in his study to broadly categorise paratextual games scholars into three camps: (1) those that associate with Genette’s “original definition;”32 (2) those that present an “expanded definition,”33 spearheaded by Espen J. Aarseth, Mia Consalvo, and Steven E. Jones; and (3) those that provide a “reduced definition,”34 notably Werner Wolf, David Jara, and Annika Rockenberger. Within this diversification, one theorist, Mia Consalvo, was at the forefront, and according to Švelch, still is so today given that “the expanded version proposed by Mia Consalvo in 2007 [. . .] is used in 70 percent of the 235 analyzed academic texts written in English and published between 1997 and

 Švelch, “Paratextuality in Game Studies.”  Espen J. Aarseth, “Computer Game Studies, Year One,” Game Studies 1, no. 1 (2001), accessed April 30, 2021, http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html.  Jonathan Gray has introduced Genette’s original definition to screen studies but has expanded it to accommodate medium-specific elements, such as trailers. Many of these elements are also central to video games, and hence his study represents a move from the original to the expanded definition. See Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (New York: New York University Press, 2010).  Espen J. Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Mia Consalvo, Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007). Jones, The Meaning of Video Games.  Werner Wolf, “Introduction: Frames, Framings, and Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media,” in Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media, ed. Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), 1–40. David Jara, “A Closer Look at the (Rule-)Books: Framings and Paratexts in Tabletop Role-playing Games,” International Journal of Role-Playing 4 (2013): 39–54. Rockenberger, “Video Game Framings.”

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2019.”35 This impressive number would initially suggest that consensus regarding what video game paratexts are and what functions they fulfil exists within the research community. However, as the discussion in this chapter will show, other reasons have led to the broad acceptance of Consalvo’s definition of paratext, while other, more nuanced perspectives on the term and concept are still only at the periphery of paratextual research. I now want to take Švelch’s categorisation further and discuss how the three groups of paratextual scholars respond to Genette’s problematic focus on authorship, his distinction between peritexts and epitexts as well as his subordination of paratexts to the text. The previous section of this chapter closed with the proposition that we can use Genette as a basis, but we need to evolve from his idea of a fixed text, one singular author as well as authority and hierarchy. Many games researchers, particularly those that can be identified with the expanded definition, have largely ignored Genette’s emphasis on authorship. One reason for this is that they frequently mix paratextuality with other forms of “transtextuality,”36 namely intertextuality, metatextuality, architextuality, and hypertextuality.37 The effect is that anything becomes a paratext, while nuances of textual relationships become obsolete. Aarseth, for example, has included elements such as magazines and comments by players in his list of paratexts,38 but if we put these into relation with Genette’s discussion of transtextuality, it soon becomes clear that many of the elements he labels paratexts are actually metatexts because they are (critical) comments on the text that are authored by someone who was not involved in the game-making process, i.e. who is not the game’s creator. Peter Lunenfeld has conceptualised this in his argument that within the digital media universe, “it is impossible to distinguish [the paratext] and the text,”39 thereby blending all of Genette’s transtextual elements into one.40 Similarly, Consalvo proposes that “a television show, its reviews, cast profiles, promos airing before new episodes, and the like”41 are all paratexts despite the different kinds of relationships they each build with the text. This, then, also calls the division between text and paratext into question, and she continues to radicalise this point by asking: “Is the division

 Švelch, “Paratextuality in Game Studies.”  Genette, “Palimpsests,” 1.  Genette, “Palimpsests,” 1–7.  Aarseth, Cybertext, 117.  Peter Lunenfeld, “Unpublished Business,” in The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on Media, ed. Peter Lunenfeld (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), 14.  Lunenfeld, “Unpublished Business,” 15.  Consalvo, Cheating, 20.

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between [primary texts and those peripherally related to them] useful?”42 We can, however, only abandon this division if we also abandon any idea of authorship and authority over the text because if we do not make an idea of text dependent on an idea of an author or multiple authors, the text becomes fluid and moves between its core and its periphery. This allows for various interpretations which unavoidably come into existence due to the numerous possibilities of how to play a specific game. A similar appreciation of authorship for games is found in Jones, who proposes that a claim of validity often associated with authorship is irrelevant for games because their texts always differ.43 Jonathan Gray has made this explicit by presenting “the triumvirate of Text, Audience, and Industry as the Big Three of media practice,” with “paratexts fill[ing] the space between them, conditioning passages and trajectories that criss-cross the mediascape, and variously negotiating or determining interactions among the three.”44 The question of authorship of the text and its paratexts therefore becomes irrelevant because “industry and audiences create vast amounts of paratexts,”45 shifting the focus away from the creation of a work to its meaning. While some games scholars thus either consciously ignore the author or contend that this role does not matter for video games, it is used by others to distinguish between paratexts and metatextual phenomena. Annika Rockenberger utilises concepts surrounding the author to explicate how paratexts function in relation to video games, but she makes a very important differentiation: rather than talking about authority, she proposes the idea of “authorisation,” i.e. the author’s willingness to release a text “into the wild.”46 That way, authorship is neutral, non-hierarchical, and seen as the textual source. In recourse to Genette, Rockenberger also further defines the textuality of the paratext in the context of intentionality. She argues that if the text is associated with authorisation, the same applies to the paratext, which should, however, not mean that the paratext needs to be produced as such, i.e. as an addition or extension to the text, but that the textual status of the paratext need not be fixed.47 Something can be a paratext  Consalvo, Cheating, 20. This idea has been further developed in a subsequent essay, in which Consalvo argues that paratexts can become texts, undermining the text–paratexts hierarchy. Mia Consalvo, “When Paratexts become Texts: De-Centering the Game-As-Text,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34, no. 2 (2017): 177–183. doi:10.1080/15295036.2017.1304648.  Jones, The Meaning of Video Games, 8; 35.  Gray, Show Sold Separately, 23.  Gray, Show Sold Separately, 23.  Annika Rockenberger, “‘Paratext’ und Neue Medien: Probleme und Perspektiven eines Begriffstransfers,” Philologie im Netz 76 (2016): 25–26, accessed May 28, 2021. http://web.fu-berlin.de/ phin/phin76/p76t2.htm/.  Rockenberger, “‘Paratext’ und Neue Medien,” 26.

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to a text, but simultaneously a text, while temporarily something that was a paratext can become a text and something that was a text become a paratext.48 The game P.T. discussed above exemplifies this. Rockenberger uses this concept of authorisation as the basis for her argument that a paratext, according to Genette, is thus authorised by the author, while it is the reader’s choice to ignore the author’s perspective.49 It is through this process of fanning out Genette’s concept of authorship that we can distinguish between paratexts and other forms of transtextuality. Rockenberger is not the only critic who uses authorship to differentiate between forms of transtextuality. Dominic Arsenault cautions his readers against an inflationary use of the term paratext because “applying the ‘paratext’ label across the board might make us lose sight of the specific practices”50 associated with them. This argument is explored in relation to game magazines in the US, which brings to the fore that there is a marked difference between authorial paratexts and epitexts not authorised by the game’s creator. This means that the concept of authorship becomes crucial in the distinction between “official” and “unofficial” paratexts, as for example in Švelch and Krobová’s study of fanworks, using authorship as a key marker to distinguish between texts and paratexts.51 The last few paragraphs have focused on authorship and authority, but they have also implicitly suggested that there is a difference between the kinds of paratexts we have, namely peritexts and epitexts. Peritexts are often authored by the game’s creators in the broadest sense (including marketing teams), while epitexts can be authored by anyone. Jones has defined peritexts as places in which “the world of make-believe crosses into the real world to jarring effect,”52 thus attributing a vital function to peritexts in the process of inviting players into the game’s fictive universe. However, Jones also calls the division between the text and its paratexts into question, arguing that “the formerly limited role of the paratext, to serve as a threshold or transactional space between the text and the world, has now moved to the foreground, has become the essence of the text.”53 This would suggest that the function he attributed to the peritext in the previous quotation would make it the text itself to the effect that the problematic nature of the expanded definition once again comes to the fore. While for Jones, peritexts

 I want to reiterate here that something can simultaneously be a text and a paratext.  Genette, Paratexts, 10–11; 389. Rockenberger, “‘Paratext’ und Neue Medien,” 26–27.  Arsenault, Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware, 69.  Jan Švelch and Tereza Krobová, “Who is a Note-Worthy Fan? Featuring Players in the Official Facebook Communication of Mainstream Video Games,” Replay: The Polish Journal of Game Studies 3, no. 1 (2016): 81–100. doi:10.18778/2391-8551.03.05.  Jones, The Meaning of Video Games, 41.  Jones, The Meaning of Video Games, 34.

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are thus problematic, Arsenault sees more issues with peripheral paratexts: “When we get into epitext, the limits of Genette’s approach are immediately felt because he focused his efforts on the authorial paratext.”54 Genette does not make entirely clear what an epitext is and where its outer border are. If we look at games, we are confronted with the same problem, and one that is again connected to the fine lines between transtextual elements. Due to a lack of precise definitions,55 and the impossibility and impracticability to provide a taxonomy here, it is therefore more prudent for the researcher to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a given text is a peritext or an epitext, or whether this distinction is needed. The factors that come into play are physical distance to the text, authorship, relevance (i.e. is the paratext necessary for the text to exist), and playfulness. Based on these criteria, choosing a character is a peritext (physically connected to the game, authored by the game’s creators, relevant to the game, and playful), while a soft toy character is more likely to be seen as an epitext (physical distance to the game, not relevant to the game, but potentially authorised by the game’s creators and playful).56 In any case, the distinction between peritext and epitext can be seen as a spectrum. While these features might help us to decide if a text is a peritext or an epitext, they might mix paratexts and other transtextual elements. The researcher indeed has to decide whether there is any value in distinguishing between these textual forms in the study they conduct and if so, what it is. The final aspect of paratextual research in game studies that will be addressed in this chapter is the subordination of paratexts to the text, which frequently has been assumed implicitly or explicitly in previous studies. It suggests that a paratext is dependent on the text it frames and thus its textual status is seen as “lesser” due

 Arsenault, Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware, 70.  While precise definitions of what a peritext and what an epitext are do not exist, critics have suggested processes that allow us to determine the relationships between a text and its periphery. Werner Wolf’s proposition of looking at artefacts in terms of “frames” is one approach to this, and he distinguishes between the frame of the artwork, generic frames, and the frame of fictionality that come into play for video games and other media. See Wolf, “Introduction,” 13–14. Another helpful study that can be applied to video games has been presented by Ellen McCracken, who applied and modified Genette’s distinction between peritexts and epitexts to electronic literature on Kindles and iPads. See Ellen McCracken, “Expanding Genette’s Epitext/ Peritext Model for Transitional Electronic Literature: Centrifugal and Centripetal Vectors on Kindles and iPads,” Narrative 21 (2013): 105–124. doi:10.1353/nar.2013.0005.  Gavin Stewart suggests that for online work, we can think of paratexts as off-site, on-site, and in-file, thus proposing a spatial perspective on paratexts. Gavin Stewart, “The Paratexts of Inanimate Alice,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into Media Technologies 16, no. 1 (2010): 57–74. doi:10.1177/1354856509347709.

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to an inherent lack of independence. However, any notion of subordination explicitly dismisses the cultural importance of paratextual elements as a whole and Jones has proposed that paratexts for games are as important as the text itself: “For video games, paratext is integral to the experience of play, manifest in something as familiar as interface conventions, or in gamer community interaction. The space of play is not impermeable, hermetically sealed.”57 A hierarchy between the text and the paratext would suggest that the text is an entity that is closed and exists independently, and one that is not in need of external influences such as reception/ play. Jones, however, makes clear that especially for games, this argument cannot be maintained because they only exist in the act of playing and thus through player engagement. In an interview with Robert Brookey, Jonathan Gray has asserted that “paratexts are intrinsic parts of the text as social and cultural unit,”58 meaning that the text–paratext relationship should not be seen as a connection between two hermetically sealed entities, but that this relationship can overlap, turn, merge, or split. We can therefore still distinguish between the game-as-text and the not-gameas-paratext, but it is important to remember that video game paratexts often heavily depend on paratexts (e.g. creating an avatar or setting the level of difficulty), without which the text could not exist. At the same time, paratexts can be playful, thus utilising a core characteristic of the text they frame.59 Indeed, this feature in particular shows that the division between the text and its paratexts is not always clear and never stable, both temporally and spatially, with texts becoming paratexts and paratexts becoming texts.

Conclusion and outlook: History, paratexts, and games At the beginning of this chapter, I asked a question which I hope to have answered (or at least laid the foundation for an answer): Why are paratexts so important for video games? Paratexts make up vital parts of the game as a text and help us shape the experiences we have with them to make every encounter unique. This notion has been addressed in recourse to Genette’s original definition of paratext and its modification and adaptation in game studies by focusing

 Jones, The Meaning of Video Games, 14.  Robert Brookey and Jonathan Gray, “‘Not Merely Para’: Continuing Steps in Paratextual Research,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34, no. 2 (2017): 102. doi:10.1080/15295036.2017. 1312472.  Seiwald, “The Ludic Nature of Paratexts.”

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on three core elements: (1) authorship and authority, (2) the distinction between peritexts and epitexts, and (3) the hierarchy between the text and its paratexts. For the first point, it has been made clear that for video games, we need to reconsider a singular idea of authorship and instead see it as a term associated with the collective that makes a game, creating the textual material the player utilises. Rockenberger’s idea of authorisation is a very useful one because it includes a notion of usability of the text. This revised perspective on authorship for games has also come in handy in the discussion of peritexts and epitexts, and it has been argued that Genette’s original proposition, namely using authorship to decide whether something is a peritext or an epitext, does not work for games. Instead, we can look at this differentiation as a spectrum of paratexts that is spatially located either closer to or further away from the text. Authorship, however, should not be absolutely dismissed here because there are differences between paratexts produced by the game makers, such as trailers, and those made by others, such as speedrun videos. What needs to be emphasised is that authorship is not the only characteristic that distinguishes a peritext and an epitext. The consideration of these two aspects of paratexts has led to a larger observation, namely the problematic nature of the text–paratext relationship. Genette has proposed his classification of paratext as something unalterable, but it has been shown that for video games, a large degree of mutability regarding the status of texts exists: texts can become paratexts, paratexts can become texts, and paratexts can have other paratexts. These statuses can change over time and in relation to various texts, meaning that while an element might be a paratext to another text, it can also be a text in its own right with its own paratexts attached to it. As you can see, paratexts are a complex (but fun) thing. Essentially, the aim of this chapter was therefore not to catalogue potential paratexts connected to games, but instead to look at the history of the term in literature and how this can be applied to games. It should help the reader to approach a game with an awareness of its surroundings and how individual elements affect our perception of a game and the world it presents. Despite its heavily theoretical nature, I nonetheless hope that its ostensive explorations become applicable to individual case studies. The chapters in this collection will use some of the ideas presented here and expand them further, showing what we can do with video game paratexts, particularly in relation to history.

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References 7780s Studio. P.T. Tokyo: Konami, 2014. Aarseth, Espen J. “Computer Game Studies, Year One.” Game Studies 1, no. 1 (2001). Accessed April 30, 2021. http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html. Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Arsenault, Dominic. Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017. Backe, Hans-Joachim. “Between ‘Games as Media’ and ‘Interactive Games’.” Game Studies 17, no. 2 (2017). Accessed June 12, 2021. http://gamestudies.org/1702/articles/review_backe. Blizzard Entertainment. World of Warcraft. Irvine: Blizzard Entertainment, 2004. Brookey, Robert, and Jonathan Gray. “‘Not Merely Para’: Continuing Steps in Paratextual Research.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34, no. 2 (2017): 101–110. doi:10.1080/ 15295036.2017.1312472. Cameron, Fiona R. The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation. Oxon: Routledge, 2021. Consalvo, Mia. Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007. Consalvo, Mia. “When Paratexts become Texts: De-Centering the Game-As-Text.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34, no. 2 (2017): 177–183. doi:10.1080/15295036.2017.1304648. Dunne, Daniel. “Paratext: The In-Between of Structure and Play.” In Contemporary Research on Intertextuality in Video Games, edited by Christophe Duret and Christian-Marie Pons, 247–296. Hershey: IGI Global, 2016. Genette, Gérard. “Introduction to Paratext.” New Literary History 22, no. 2 (1991): 261–272. Genette, Gérard. Palimpsestes: La littérature au second degré. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1982. Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Translated by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Genette, Gérard. Seuils. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987. Gracia, Jorge J.E. A Theory of Textuality: The Logic and Epistemology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Gray, Jonathan. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press, 2010. Hello Games. No Man’s Sky. Guildford: Hello Games, 2016. Hogeweg, Stan. “No Man’s Sky’s Total Number of Planets Explained.” Gamerant, June 3, 2021. Accessed June 30, 2021. https://gamerant.com/no-mans-sky-how-many-planets-explained/. Jara, David. “A Closer Look at the (Rule-)Books: Framings and Paratexts in Tabletop Role-playing Games.” International Journal of Role-Playing 4 (2013): 39–54. Jennings, Stephanie C. “Co-Creation and the Distributed Authorship of Video Games.” In Examining the Evolution of Gaming and Its Impact on Social, Cultural, and Political Perspectives, edited by Keri D. Valentine and Lucas J. Jensen, 123–146. Hershey: IGI Global, 2016. Jones, Steven E. The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies. New York: Routledge, 2008. Lunenfeld, Peter. “Unpublished Business.” In The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on Media, edited by Peter Lunenfeld, 6–23. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.

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Markocki, Miłosz. “Fame or Infamy: The Influence of Let’s Plays on Independent Game Developers.” In Paratextualizing Games: Investigations on the Paraphernalia and Peripheries of Play, edited by Benjamin Beil, Gundolf S. Freyermuth, and Hanns Christian Schmidt, 237–255. Studies of Digital Media Culture, Volume 13. Bielefeld: transcript, 2021. McCracken, Ellen. “Expanding Genette’s Epitext/Peritext Model for Transitional Electronic Literature: Centrifugal and Centripetal Vectors on Kindles and iPads.” Narrative 21 (2013): 105–124. doi:10.1353/nar.2013.0005. Rad, Chloi. “The Messy Timeline of P.T., Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hills Horror Masterpiece.” IGN, January 9, 2019. Accessed June 13, 2021. https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/01/09/the-messytimeline-of-pt-hideo-kojimas-silent-hills-horror-masterpiece. Rockenberger, Annika. “‘Paratext’ und Neue Medien: Probleme und Perspektiven eines Begriffstransfers.” Philologie im Netz 76 (2016): 20–60. Accessed May 28, 2021. http://web.fuberlin.de/phin/phin76/p76t2.htm. Rockenberger, Annika. “Video Game Framings.” In Examining Paratextual Theory and its Applications in Digital Culture, edited by Nadine Desrochers and Daniel Apollon, 252–286. Hershey: IGI Global, 2014. Seiwald, Regina. “The Ludic Nature of Paratexts: Playful Material in and Beyond Video Games.” In Paratextualizing Games: Investigations on the Paraphernalia and Peripheries of Play, edited by Benjamin Beil, Gundolf S. Freyermuth and Hanns Christian Schmidt, 292–317. Studies of Digital Media Culture, Volume 13. Bielefeld: transcript, 2021. Stewart, Gavin. “The Paratexts of Inanimate Alice.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into Media Technologies 16, no. 1 (2010): 57–74. doi:10.1177/1354856509347709. Sucker Punch. Ghost of Tsushima. San Mateo: Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2020. Švelch, Jan. “‘Footage Not Representative’: Redefining Paratextuality for the Analysis of Official Communication in the Video Game Industry.” In Contemporary Research on Intertextuality in Video Games, edited by Christophe Duret and Christian-Marie Pons, 297–315. Hershey: IGI Global, 2016. Švelch, Jan. “Exploring the Myth of the Representative Video Game Trailer.” Kinephanos 7, no. 1 (2017): 7–36. Accessed May 2, 2021. https://www.kinephanos.ca/2017/exploring-the-myth-of-therepresentative-video-game-trailer/. Švelch, Jan. “Paratexts to Non-Linear Texts: Paratextuality in Video Game Culture.” PhD diss., Univerzita Karlova, 2017. Švelch, Jan. “Paratextuality in Game Studies: A Theoretical Review and Citation Analysis.” Game Studies 20, no. 2 (2020). Accessed May 2, 2021. http://gamestudies.org/2002/articles/jan_svelch. Švelch, Jan, and Tereza Krobová. “Who is a Note-Worthy Fan? Featuring Players in the Official Facebook Communication of Mainstream Video Games.” Replay: The Polish Journal of Game Studies 3, no. 1 (2016): 81–100. doi:10.18778/2391-8551.03.05. Vollans, Ed. “The Most Cinematic Game Yet.” Kinephanos 7, no. 1 (2017): 106–130. Accessed May 2, 2021. https://www.kinephanos.ca/2017/the-most-cinematic-game-yet/. Wolf, Werner. “Introduction: Frames, Framings, and Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media.” In Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media, edited by Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf, 1–40. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.

Esther Wright

Paratexts, “authenticity,” and the margins of digital (game) history The field of historical game studies has, for the most part, been necessarily preoccupied with understanding how the formal or representational aspects of video games function as a new kind of digital history and make arguments about the past. At this point in the development of the field, we are not at a loss for possible frameworks we might use to analyse our objects of study. But what so often gets left out of our methodological toolkit is detailed, dedicated consideration of paratexts. Maybe they are, ironically, viewed as too ancillary or peripheral. This isn’t helped by the fact that there are definitional problems with the terminology we use. An implicitly hierarchical relationship between different kinds of content can sometimes emerge because of the privileged position and centralisation of a game itself – the text – over paratextual content which is “not it.”1 For example, while Adam Chapman’s seminal framework for historical game analysis recognised that paratexts were important to consider, this point was proposed as a mere addendum to the extensive (game)textual analysis the framework allowed for.2 This isn’t to say that paratexts haven’t been considered at all. Increasingly, researchers have explored the role of promotional materials and discourse, branding, game design principles, and a whole manner of different kinds of material we might call “paratexts,” and their influence on our perception of a game’s historical representation.3 But just as we once had little consensus about what to

 Martin Barker, “Speaking of ‘Paratexts’: A Theoretical Revisitation,” Journal of Fandom Studies 5, no. 3 (2017): 235–249; Keith M. Johnston, “Researching Historical Promotional Materials: Towards a New Methodology,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 39, no. 4 (2019), 1–20; Mia Consalvo, “When Paratexts Become Texts: De-Centering the Game-as-Text,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34, no. 2 (2017): 177–183. See Regina Seiwald, Chapter 1.  Adam Chapman, Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 269.  Emil Lundedal Hammar, “Counter-Hegemonic Commemorative Play: Marginalized Pasts and the Politics of Memory in the Digital Game Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry,” Rethinking History 21, no. 3 (3 July 2017): 372–395; Tom Apperley, “Counterfactual Communities: Strategy Games, Paratexts and the Player’s Experience of History,” Open Library of Humanities 4, no. 1 (2018), doi:10.16995/olh.286; Pieter J. B. J. Van Den Heede, “‘Experience the Second World War like Never before!’ Game Paratextuality between Transnational Branding and Informal Learning,” Journal for the Study of Education and Development 43, no. 3 (2020), 1–46; Ylva Grufstedt, Shaping the Esther Wright, Cardiff University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-003

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do with historical video games, we largely seem to be now in the same position with paratexts – a problem that books like this seek to address. So, what do we do with paratexts, and why bother in the first place? One clear justification for taking paratexts seriously is made plain when we turn our attention to a troublesome concept so often applied to historical games: authenticity.4 As a term or label, it lacks any stable meaning. Like beauty, authenticity is often considered to be “in the eye of the beholder.”5 In playing (or analysing) any particular historical game, different people might come to wildly different conclusions about the extent to which a game is “historically authentic,” or its equally difficult and nebulous relation, “historically accurate.”6 Such is the nature of historiographical discourse and debate, anyway. Yet, even so, the perception that a game has an authentic quality usually implicitly equates to value. It is therefore a quality that game developers, publishers, and marketers want to ensure that players perceive and invest in. The game itself – open to interpretation as it is – is not enough; is too vulnerable to competing perceptions. Thus, developers go to great lengths attempting to influence these perceptions, and they do so using paratexts of all kinds. That is all to say that paratexts are of vital importance to our understanding of the way video games, and their creators, construct and make arguments about and afford experiences of the past. Our methodological toolkit is incomplete without them. Analysing them can help us to understand the game elements developers and/or players consider to be authentic or valuable, the context in which that argument is being made, and how. Through paratexts, players may be encouraged to view the past in a certain way, one that conforms to a specific historical

Past: Counterfactual History and Game Design Practice in Digital Strategy Games (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022).  Andrew. J. Salvati and Jonathan M. Bullinger, “Selective Authenticity and the Playable Past,” in Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History, ed. Matthew Wilhelm Kapell and Andrew B. R. Elliott (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 153–168; Chris Kempshall, The First World War in Computer Games (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Adrienne Shaw, “The Tyranny of Realism: Historical Accuracy and Politics of Representation in Assassin’s Creed III,” Loading . . . The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association 9, no. 14 (2015): 4–24; Esther Wright, Rockstar Games and American History: Promotional Materials and the Construction of Authenticity (De Gruyter, 2022).  Barbara Cueto and Bas Hendrikx, “Introduction,” in Authenticity? Observations and Artistic Strategies in the Post-Digital Age, ed. Barbara Cueto and Bas Hendrikx (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2017), 12.  Tara Jane Copplestone, “But That’s Not Accurate: The Differing Perceptions of Accuracy in Cultural-Heritage Videogames between Creators, Consumers and Critics,” Rethinking History 21, no. 3 (2016): 415–438.

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interpretation of past events. As a result, these sources also offer us valuable insight into a developer’s historical interpretations, as well as their historiographical position – that is, where they fit within the broader, complex landscape of consensus and debate amongst both historians and the public about the way things were (and are). On the other hand, players themselves, in various paratextual spaces, might either validate or reject a developer’s arguments about the past, and a game’s “authentic” experience of it.7 In this sense, paratexts might be used by various stakeholders to perform different functions: to harness and attempt to shape meaning, perhaps even weaponise and warp popular memory of the past. They can offer insight into the status and currency of certain historical events and figures in a contemporary context. Historical game analysis requires paying attention to the foundations upon which game companies develop their games, and we can do that from the outside. Looking for and at paratexts might allow us to see how they perform and consolidate their own brand identity and simultaneously construct claims about their games’ historical qualities and offerings. We also need to understand how these interpretations have been influenced by pre-existing formations of historical knowledge, popular memory and popular culture. We can do so by tracing the way the “developer-historian,”8 to adopt Chapman’s term, uses their own kinds of citations and attributions in the paratextual surround they construct. But there are also challenges with this kind of work, and we need to get to grips with them. This includes the challenges that are unique to the study of historical games, and those that have much broader implications for historical practice and the use of digital source materials. In this chapter, I want to reflect on some of the difficulties and benefits of incorporating paratexts into the study of historical video games, some methodological considerations and issues, and potential frameworks for understanding how various paratexts stake claims for authenticity. In doing so, I explore my own research experience in historical game studies, and my position as a historian whose work sits (sometimes uncomfortably) at the intersection between different fields. But first, I will explore some of the ways in which consideration of paratextual materials allies with wider, longstanding concerns of the discipline of history, how they can help us to reflect on future directions for work in this area, as well as our broader understandings of the nature of history itself.

 See, for example, Apperley, “Counterfactual Communities.”  Chapman, Digital Games as History.

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The challenges of (game) history Historical research, in the most traditional sense, is rooted in the location and interpretation of archival sources. Consideration is given to their provenance, archival positioning, and preservation, as well as their meaning in and of themselves, and as part of wider historiographical discourse. In the case of game history, however, few formalised, dedicated archives (as we traditionally understand them) for paratextual materials exist, part of the challenge of any project such as this. Even so, projects that map and analyse historical video game promotion are, in principle, a strikingly similar undertaking to more traditional historical methods and approaches. For a start, lots of materials we might consider paratext are physical (box art and collectible editions, merchandise, posters, billboards, magazine features, etc.). Many more of them are born-digital (trailers, reviews, digital artwork and promotional images, developer interviews, and more). Whichever form they might take, there will always be certain issues and challenges in studying materials like these which are, by their very definition, ephemeral, and conversations about ephemerality in media studies are well established.9 Compounding this, preservation initiatives for video game history are ongoing. Priorities are far from fixed, and central challenges not yet overcome. Questions are still being asked (by lots of different stakeholders) about what should even be preserved in the first place, by whom, and why.10 In a recent White Paper, James Newman and Iain Simons argued that there is an urgent need to “audit and map current preservation and exhibition activity”11 that relates to the history of video games. As they argue, “[t]his audit exercise

 Paul Grainge, ed., Ephemeral Media: Transitory Screen Cultures from Television to YouTube (London: British Film Institute, 2011); Virginia Crisp and Gabriel Menotti Gonring, eds., Besides the Screen: Moving Images through Distribution, Promotion and Curation (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015).  Newman, Best Before; James Newman, “Saving (and Re-Saving) Videogames: Rethinking Emulation for Preservation, Exhibition and Interpretation,” International Journal of Creative Media Research 1, no. 1 (2019); Foteini Aravani, “Play’s the Thing: Keeping Old Games Alive,” Museum of London (blog), 7 April 2016, https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/plays-thing-keepingold-games-alive; Lynda Clark, Giulia Carla Rossi and Stella Wisdom, “Archiving Interactive Narratives at the British Library,” in Interactive Storytelling: 13th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ed. Anne-Gwenn Bosser, David E. Millard, and Charlie Hargood (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020), 300–313; Lissa Holloway-Attaway, “Interview with Stella Wisdom, Digital Curator at the British Library,” Gamevironments 14 (2021): 230–256.  James Newman and Iain Simons, “Game Over? Curating, Preserving and Exhibiting Videogames: A White Paper,” White Paper, 2018, 7, https://thebgi.uk/gameoverwhitepaper/.

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should act as a catalyst for new collaborations across and between projects, institutions and private collections.”12 They also identify the need to “further develop and raise awareness of preservation-friendly game development practices,”13 enabling companies and partner organisations to put “pipelines” and plans in place to future-proof the preservation of materials related to games history. There are serious challenges to be overcome in this regard, not only because “[n]o studio freely distributes valuable copyrighted materials or willingly shares intricate development process details that could result in stronger competition,”14 but because of the aforementioned lack of consensus about what might need to be shared, collected, and preserved for the future anyway. These efforts need to encompass the preservation of materials beyond hardware and software, and a range of different sources that might in future help us understand the context and processes of development and play by video game audiences and communities.15 Collating such materials can therefore be a haphazard process in terms of both the sources available to us, but also how we delineate the research. As with all historical research, issues of selectivity and availability can influence the basis of the conclusions we might come to. But these are not just questions that media, game, and paratext studies scholars have been grappling with. They have their own particular variation and urgency for the most traditional of historical sources and our future use of them. Increasingly, explorations of the so-called “digital turn” are moving toward the forefront of the discipline of history. This involves moving beyond a very conventional conception of what “sources,” “archives,” and “methods” might be, and who is in a position to preserve and access them. It also involves acceptance that for the recent past at least, historians are likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of source material available to them, fundamentally altering how we might access and interpret it.16

 Newman and Simons “Game Over?”; see also James Newman and Iain Simons, “Time Extend! The Future of Curating, Preserving and Exhibiting Videogames,” White Paper (Videogame Heritage Society, 2020), https://vhs.thenvm.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/TIME-EXTEND.pdf.  Newman and Simons, “Game Over?,” 8.  Eric Kaltman, “Attending to Process and Data: A Research Alignment for Historical Videogame Production Artifacts and Their Archives,” ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories 2, no. 2 (2020), https://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/article/view/117.  Alana Staiti, “Video Game History Beyond Video Games: A Curator’s Appeal,” ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories 1, no. 1 (2019), http://www.romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/arti cle/view/64; Kaltman, “Attending to Process and Data.”  Ian Milligan, “Lost in the Infinite Archive: The Promise and Pitfalls of Web Archives,” International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 10, no. 1 (2016): 78–94; Ian Milligan, “Mining the

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Work by scholars on the digitisation of source collections and archives, the use of born-digital17 sources and computer processing in historical research, and the unique challenges and considerations of digital source preservation are not new (or at least, not to some historians, and definitely not to archivists, librarians, and information technologists).18 Yet at times, the discussion around these issues of “digital history” displays a certain kind of forgetfulness,19 or worse, an unwillingness to engage with their serious consequences for the practice of history itself.20 As Adam Crymble writes, “no discipline has invested more energy and thought into making its sources and evidence publicly available, or in engaging publics through digital mediums, or transforming their pedagogic practices with the help of technology.”21 Yet there is still plenty of scepticism about “the digital” from some quarters of the historical profession. And by and large, “the stereotypical historian remains resolutely tied to scholarly traditions–dust in the archives rather than bytes in the computer’s memory.”22 Coupled with this is a general lack of consensus over what we mean when we say digital history, digital humanities, digital methods, and so on. The very proliferation of terms, and academics conflicting forms of self-identification, is testament to this.23 Moreover, the semiadoption of these sources and methods has led to the creation and use of “shortcuts that enable ignorance as well as knowledge,” while this “new topography of information has systemic blind spots.”24 Thus, even while they increasingly make use of digitised or born-digital collections to facilitate what is an otherwise timeconsuming, costly, and labour-intensive research process, the reluctance of many historians to fully recognise this and/or embrace the use of digital technologies

‘Internet Graveyard’: Rethinking the Historians’ Toolkit,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 23, no. 2 (2012): 21–64.  See Regina Seiwald, Chapter 1.  C. Annemieke Romein et al., “State of the Field: Digital History,” History 105, no. 365 (2020): 291–312.  Adam Crymble, Technology and the Historian: Transformations in the Digital Age (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2021), 1–10; 18–45; Ian Milligan, History in the Age of Abundance? How the Web Is Transforming Historical Research (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2019).  Tim Hitchcock, “Confronting the Digital: Or How Academic History Writing Lost the Plot,” Cultural and Social History 10, no. 1 (2013): 11–12.  Crymble, Technology and the Historian, 1.  Crymble, Technology and the Historian, 1.  For one overview, see Crymble, Technology and the Historian, 5–8.  Lara Putnam, “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast,” American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (2016): 379.

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and media for communicating research has fostered an artificial sense that only very certain scholars are “digital historians.” We are therefore confronted by a problem – at the cross-section of historical practice and the study of digital games and their paratexts – that unintentionally conspires to prevent the development of mindset and method to overcome these challenges. If we are wedded to the idea that sources can only be found amid the “dust,” and histories can only be properly written, it is more difficult to train future historians of media to confront the vast swathes of born-digital materials they will need to in future. I am not, however, saying that there isn’t excellent and vital work being done in physical archives by historians of games, and those who study history in games, and that wonderful collection and preservation work isn’t being done all over the world: from The Strong Museum of Play (Rochester, NY), The Centre for the History of Critical Play (California State University, Long Beach), the National Video Game Museum (Sheffield, UK) and the Videogame Heritage Society (VHS), The British Library, and Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies. Rather, it is also important to recognise that digital technologies are changing the way we conceive of, understand, and define “the archive,” as well as the way many materials relevant to the history of games might be accessed by both researchers and students.25 There is something to be said then for “treating as remarkable that which has become, almost overnight, quotidian;”26 the fact that for many of us “living in the digital age means we take it for granted.”27 For those of us with a presence on social media and who are part of “the discourse” around games that happens there (for better or worse), or those who follow news and criticism websites or individual developers for updates, it is relatively simple to both take for granted and be overwhelmed by the amount of information that we read or skip on a daily basis, all of which could be used (in one way or another) for study. More worryingly, born-digital sources, as historians like Roy Rosenzweig have persuasively argued, are actually more fragile than physical materials.28 Make no mistake: I do not exempt myself from this. The shifting nature of these sources and their ephemerality are at least some of the reasons why attempting to

 For recent discussion of (and response to) this, see Daniel J. Story et al., “History’s Future in the Age of the Internet,” The American Historical Review 125, no. 4 (2020): 1337–1346; Ian Milligan, “How Can We Be Ready to Study History in the Age of Abundance? A Response,” American Historical Review 125, no. 4 (2020): 1348–1349.  Putnam, “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable, 379.  Toni Weller, “Introduction: History in the Digital Age,” 2.  Roy Rosenzweig, “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era,” The American Historical Review 108, no. 3 (2003): 736.

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create a methodology for this kind of work is fraught with complications, and at times necessitates a flexible and ad hoc approach to finding sources. Locating and trying to understand these materials at least five, if not nearly ten years removed from their creation and publication does of course influence our ability to comment on the possible, let alone actual meanings of these promotional materials for those who consumed them at the time.29 Realistically though, this is something we can never truly know one way or another and has never been a fatal stumbling block for the practice of history and the historian’s use of evidence. It is, rather, one of the reasons for discourse and debate itself. It is still possible to comment on the kind of “horizon of expectation” a company has attempted to create and manage, a term from reception studies that Steven Jones applied to video game pre-release materials in his early work on games and (para)textual analysis.30 Keeping certain methodological challenges in mind, we can still explore and interpret the contours of a game’s paratextual “field” or “threshold,”31 what materials or interventions that field broadly consists of, and what image it appears a developer or publisher sought to construct for an imagined audience. This doesn’t mean we are exempt from certain serious epistemological questions and concerns. When things have disappeared or been lost, how can you truly immerse yourself in sources that allow you to talk about a developer’s “brand” with any degree of certainty? The nature of these brands can shift, can contain multitudes that mean different things to different people, and can ultimately mean nothing when and if players become disgruntled with the product or “service” a company is providing. Equally, how are we to find and comment on promotional campaigns (digital or physical) that have lost their context, content, or disappeared altogether?

Methodological reflections Beginning my PhD in a history department in 2015, my initial goal was to write about the representation of American history in video games. Narrowing that  These kinds of issues around the collection and interpretation of ephemeral materials are explored, for example, in Jonathan Gray, “The Politics of Paratextual Ephemeralia,” in The Politics of Ephemeral Digital Media: Permanence and Obsolescence in Paratexts, ed. Sara Pesce and Paolo Noto (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 32–44; See also Švelch, “Footage Not Representative.”  Steven E. Jones, The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies (New York: Routledge, 2008).  Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation.

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scope led me to a more specific focus on Rockstar Games, as a company perhaps best known for their staunch, longstanding commitment to creating digital representations of America for the last 20-something years. My initial, overarching research question was deceptively broad: How do Rockstar Games represent American History in their titles? Textual analysis of Rockstar’s explicitly “historical” titles like Red Dead Redemption (2010) and L.A. Noire (2011) was a given. But it soon became clear that this wouldn’t tell the whole (hi)story. As much as my work is about these games, it isn’t just about them. My concerns and questions about historical authenticity – the negotiation of player perception, rather than a stable, static quality of a game – required a broader focus than merely the analysis and interpretation of two games-as-texts, and what they seemed to be saying or showing about America’s past. What became key was to explore what their developer seemed to be trying to say through them – or rather, around them and about them. Very often, Rockstar were also actively trying to say their games were “authentic,” as I will explore below. In retrospect, locating and analysing paratexts as part of my source base seemed intuitive, not something I saw as a distinct or innovative part of my methodology. Nor did it seem to be something particularly controversial. It made sense to me to try and glean as much information as there was out there about these games, to understand the complex and conflicting arguments they were making about America’s past in many potential discursive spaces – and indeed, who exactly was making them, when, and where. Besides, looking at paratexts was something that media scholars were doing already.32 Moreover, as far back as E.H. Carr’s What is History? (1961), a central aspect of historiographical research has been to “study the historian before you study the facts.”33 Understanding why Rockstar were so keen to stake claims for their games’ authenticity required contextualising them within the company’s own history of developing games. Rockstar’s games have long been inspired by and referenced both American history and American popular culture (epitomised most notoriously in and through Grand Theft Auto). Ultimately then, a vital part of the research (and arguably, any research project into historical game development) required finding out more about a game company’s approach: exactly how the company had tried to self-actualise their own brand identity and history over the previous two decades and communicate this to fans; and in turn, how Rockstar

 Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (New York: NYU Press, 2010); Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York and London: New York University Press, 2015); Martin Barker, “News, Reviews, Clues, Interviews and Other Ancillary Materials –– A Critique and Research Proposal,” Scope, 2004.  E.H. Carr, What is History? (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 23.

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were perceived as a company and their games received. Obvious as it might sound, so much of understanding what Rockstar’s games were saying and doing needed this context: who was saying these things, and why. Here, brand identity itself becomes a paratext that might shape a player’s expectations and experience.34 Knowing about Rockstar’s previous titles and the genres or themes they are associated with, their reputation for courting controversy, and perceptions that their games cast a “satirical” eye over America were all key to unpacking their reference base. Brand identity can help us understand, at least in part, why particular perspectives and aspects of the past were being highlighted and promoted (and others marginalised) in paratexts designed to sell their games. Because of the aforementioned issues of game preservation and born-digital sources, my methodology took shape precisely because I was limited to what was left behind: what was still accessible, public, and catalogued by Rockstar’s own online presence, or what I could find still available on gaming media and news sites. This was not by any means straightforward. The materials I collated were at the time only being “preserved” by Rockstar themselves (as a quasi-archive of their own brand history on their official website, or the website of their parent company, Take-Two Interactive). While there exists a deluge of corporate communication that wasn’t strictly relevant, there were also certain bits of information and sources that Rockstar and/or Take-Two published themselves that I couldn’t find. What (still) remains is a selection of digital sources: trailers, blogs, promotional images, gameplay videos, and official websites which all, in different ways, tried to shape player expectations. I also tracked down developer interviews and features published by various gaming and media news sites, which were still available through their own online repositories of their past. Equally a problematic source base, there was of course no way that I managed to locate every possible article, feature, or developer interview that made its way into the gaming press (not least because most of my sources were taken from digital journalism, rather than physical publications). For one, the digital newspaper archive Lexis doesn’t catalogue all the myriad online gaming sites that could have published such exclusives, though using it to search did pick up conventional, mainstream features found in the pages of The Guardian, for example. As a methodological tool, it was never going to provide a complete picture of the discourse surrounding the release of these games. And while creative Googling is probably not something many historians would openly admit to, manually searching for game titles and features through sites like IGN, Kotaku, or Gamespot

 See also Leora Hadas, Authorship as Promotional Discourse in the Screen Industries: Selling Genius (London and New York: Routledge, 2020).

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worked to find key features. Some features were cited as sources in important game studies works. Like the conventional approach of the historian trawling through footnotes to find another researcher’s evidence, these intertextual references became, in effect, an archive of a lost archive. That is, they were often memorialising a trail of sources which, since publication, has disappeared. It was sometimes possible to track down those digital sources which had been preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (or otherwise, through more creative Googling). But many of them were, by 2015, defunct. Websites had been reformatted or taken down, as sources gone with them, reinforcing the vulnerable and fleeting nature of their digital existence. The main “archive,” insofar as we might call it that, became the Newswire section of Rockstar’s official website. This was (and still is) a digital space for company-to-fan communication, where information about upcoming releases and relevant events is posted for players who want to be in-the-know. Around the time of the release of Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, and other games like Max Payne 3 in the period between 2009 and 2013, the Newswire hosted a wealth of different kinds of content pre-empting the games, managing expectations for them, and preloading players with things Rockstar wanted them to know about context and content.35 Fortunately, drawing players’ attention to key developer interviews and favourable reviews was a key part of Rockstar’s promotional strategy. As a result, there I found clues about articles that Rockstar themselves were keen to direct players to amongst the rest of the company’s internal promotional output.36 For example, a Newswire post titled “All the Pretty Horses: The Technology Behind Red Dead Redemption’s Digital Steeds” suggested that players “check out” an interview with Gamespot, which explored how the company developed the technology behind the game’s principal means of transportation.37 The link in

 Esther Wright, “Marketing Authenticity: Rockstar Games and the Use of Cinema in Video Game Promotion,” Kinephanos: Journal of Media Studies and Popular Culture 7, no. 1 (2013): 131–164.  For example, Rockstar Games, “Red Dead Redemption Previews from IGN, MTV and More: ‘Gorgeous, Expansive’ . . . ‘Awesome’,” Rockstar Newswire (blog), December 15, 2009, accessed June 12, 2022, https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/75o94113a8481k/red-dead-redemption-pre views-from-ign-mtv-and-more-gorgeous-expa.html; Rockstar Games, “‘A New Era for Interactive Entertainment’ – Latest L.A. Noire Previews from The New York Times, The Guardian and More,” Rockstar Newswire (blog), May 9, 2011, accessed June 12, 2022, https://www.rockstargames.com/news wire/article/1748koo9okkk83/a-new-era-for-interactive-entertainment-latest-la-noire-previews.html.  Rockstar Games, “All the Pretty Horses: The Technology behind Red Dead Redemption’s Digital Steeds,” Rockstar Newswire (blog), May 11, 2010, accessed June 12, 2022, https://www.rockstar games.com/newswire/article/5481/all-the-pretty-horses-the-technology-behind-red-dead-redemp tions.html.

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the post you can still view on the Newswire no longer works, but it originally directed players to an interview between Gamespot staff and Rockstar San Diego’s art director Josh Bass, in which the latter explicitly historicised Rockstar’s decision to make horses such a fundamental inclusion in the game.38 Likewise for L.A. Noire, a developer interview with Rockstar’s former VP of Development Jeronimo Barrera and Team Bondi’s studio head Brendan McNamara was published by The Daily Telegraph, and featured on the Newswire. As a source, it is a similarly instructive interview in which these key personnel offered insight into the game’s development and its historical resonances (some of which was directly reposted in the Newswire article), making clear attempts to manage expectations for these games’ authenticity.39 Given the cultural (and cinematic) foundations of these games (firmly rooted as they are in the Western and film noir genres), these sources allow for a study of the way Rockstar had overtly tried to draw on the pre-existing cultural cachet of cinema, and production processes employed by the creative industries, to create a “discourse of cinematic authenticity” around them.40 The Newswire seemed to function as a site through which marketers fans were attempting to engineer “extensive feedback loops” between developer and player for different purposes,41 but within which the ultimate goal seemed to be the management of perceptions of Rockstar’s games as deeply “cinematic” (and therefore quality, “authentic”) experiences. Nonetheless, it was implicitly also creating its own snapshot in time, or perhaps an archival trace of brand performance for, and through, these games. But inextricably intertwined with this promotional discourse was another kind of content, more historical (or historiographical) in apparent intention. Across the Newswire presence for Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire, posts appeared that were designed to offer players insight into Rockstar’s research process and advised them on the “true” and “real” historical inspirations behind the games they would soon be able to play. Explicit claims about their authenticity, and thus the value of the gameplay experiences they would offer, were a key feature of these posts – selling franchises which were (then) unproven properties for Rockstar. But they were

 Gamespot Staff, “Breaking in the Digital Horses of Red Dead Redemption,” Gamespot, May 10, 2010, accessed June 12, 2022, https://www.gamespot.com/articles/breaking-in-the-digital-horses-ofred-dead-redemption/1100-6261863/.  Rockstar Games, “‘Creating a New Genre of Videogames:’ The Daily Telegraph Interviews Rockstar & Team Bondi on L.A. Noire,” Rockstar Newswire (blog), January 10, 2011, accessed June 12, 2022, https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/9k124883o85187/creating-a-new-genre-of-vid eogames-the-daily-telegraph-interview.html.  Wright, “Marketing Authenticity.”  Jones, The Meaning of Video Games, 10–11.

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also proof of Rockstar’s role as historian, evidence of the company’s research labour, creative vision, and indeed, their interpretation of the past – or at least, what they wanted players to know about it. It appeared to be the creation of another kind of feedback loop, in which Rockstar tried to tell players what the “true history” of these periods was – what it included, and by extension excluded – and set their own limits on what players could expect of an “authentic” game about the turn of the twentieth century West, or postwar Los Angeles. The selection of this historical evidence – composed of links to digitised primary sources like contemporary newspaper articles, as well as historiographical sources like academic papers and Wikipedia pages, and other sorts of online information fans could navigate to and read for themselves – was chosen especially because it backed up the image of the past that Rockstar were offering in the games, and what they were arguing about their histories.42 Attending to these sources became a process of researching what Rockstar were saying about the past, as developer-historian (and why it seemed like it was being said). Jones’ analysis of the pre-release marketing and discussion around Spore, and about what we are “led to expect” from games because of the way they are marketed, discussed, debated and anticipated before they are even released,43 was a similar undertaking. However, there was one key difference: Jones hadn’t played Spore when he wrote the chapter, which was very much the point. Studying games, and their promotion, almost ten years after the fact is not the same as studying a “horizon of expectation” without actually knowing what the product will become when released. I had played Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire before I even had a notion that studying them was in my future. However, when I first did so I was not as invested as an avid Rockstar fan might have been – especially those who may have followed the Newswire for exclusive updates and information before their release. Later, as a researcher, I was playing/analysing the games and what they argued alongside looking for promotional paratexts. My process was a constant act of comparison and of interweaving the one site of meaning with the other, as contemporaries rather than the actual chronology of their appearance. It is certainly a different “horizon of expectation,” albeit an unavoidable one. A key challenge with the sources I found, especially on Rockstar’s website, was that in their current form they didn’t appear as they would have when first created. Originally, some of the posts had featured polls to gauge player interaction and interest with certain topics (e.g., their favourite Western films). These

 Wright, Rockstar Games and American History.  Jones, The Meaning of Video Games, 150.

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were no longer active or displaying properly five-plus years later. A brimming comment section below posts where fans could themselves “sound off” and express opinions had also disappeared when the Rockstar Social Club as a communication channel seemed to have been integrated into the Newswire at some point in 2016. After this point, the format of the website itself changed significantly. Some of the original look of these pages (and the site generally) was available through the Internet Archive, but it was sporadic at best. Links to trailers or images had rotten, or external hyperlinked pages no longer existed. It was a process of looking at an incomplete picture and trying to flesh out what could or should have been there at the time. But even so, it was still a lot of source material. Ultimately, what they amount to is a clear narrative, composed by Rockstar, intended to tell readers about the past, and how the company interprets and rewrites their own American history. It also creates an archive of Rockstar’s own history as a company, and their branded communication. These sources are key to understanding Rockstar’s process of “doing history” as well as selling history, how developers actively embody the role of developer-historian while doing so, and how the needs of a company’s brand identity underpin both. With this in mind, I want to propose a way of conceptualising the interrelated ways in which discourses of history are mobilised in paratextual materials; and indeed, how these historical narratives are designed to foster perceptions of authenticity. Many paratextual sources created by game companies like Rockstar espouse different historical access points, which we might categorise as follows: History of, History in, and History around. A good illustration of these levels is one particular blog post, which appeared in May 2011. It was designed to connect the landmarks players would explore in L.A. Noire (to unlock a specific achievement/trophy) to their real-world counterparts. The blog post begins by drawing players’ attention to this optional gameplay task, and that it requires them to “traverse L.A. to discover” specific locations that hold some particular historical significance for Rockstar, and for L.A. Noire’s historical world. These are: Pershing Square, Los Angeles Public Library, Musso & Frank Grill, the Roosevelt Hotel, and the crumbling ruins of the set for D.W. Griffith’s epic historical film Intolerance (1916). Each of these locations is given a short explanatory paragraph that overviews aspects of its history and significance, insofar as it is relevant to the game. The posts are replete with hyperlinks away to Wikipedia pages, images, and other sources of historical reference for the player’s further information. And early in the post, prospective players are told that: In the development of the game’s lovingly recreated 1947 Los Angeles, Team Bondi [L.A. Noire’s original co-developer] spent time exhaustively researching Los Angeles right at the source –

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traveling their own gumshoes around real world L.A. to assemble a photologue for research and also mining the city’s historical archives for reference information and invaluable visual assets.44

We might categorise this sort of promotional discourse under the banner of History in – a way through which the developer gives guidance to the player on the kind of historical anchor points and subject matter they will find in the game itself. They also perform the role of historian, extol the efforts of their research labour, and try to ensure that the player knows of the care taken to make the game just right, as historically authentic (or even accurate) as possible. The post also highlights the previous “digital appearance” of parts of Los Angeles in older Rockstar Games: for example, the depiction of Pershing Square in Midnight Club: Los Angeles (2008) and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (the latter as a fictional “homage” to, rather than direct replication of). In this way, Rockstar’s previous titles are woven into the promotional narrative of this new game – a still unproven property and co-production with an external development studio – to ensure that the player knows that they have previous experience of doing so, and thereby, make implicit claims about being a safe pair of hands. History of, then, represents references made in paratextual spaces to a company’s previous products, as a way of creation expectations for “authenticity” (and quality) by association with brand image. This also hearkens back to a beloved franchise, creating the kind of intertextual link we find in abundance, and we might on the other hand term History around. What I mean by this is the ways in which promotional discourse makes intertextual connections out to other cultural reference points. In Rockstar’s case, this often means cinema and American pop culture, but also other events and media texts that expand out the possible range of reference or entry points to their games – or what Barbara Klinger termed “digressions,” ways of dispersing a text through promotion into an assortment of different “capitalizable elements” that might attract an audience.45 The same post thus linked players away to a paratextual promotional event organised by Rockstar, a “Los Angeles Noire Weekend” in 2011. The involved fans, the gaming press, “LA-areas friends” in the creative industries, and musicians, attended a series of game previews at the “historic Roosevelt hotel,” which the original post noted was one of the key landmarks players could visit in the game. The weekend also included sightseeing

 Rockstar Games, “L.A. Noire’s Los Angeles Landmarks,” Rockstar Newswire (blog), May 16, 2011, accessed June 12, 2022, https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/89k8a5545aa398/lanoires-los-angeles-landmarks.html.  Barbara Klinger, “Digressions at the Cinema: Reception and Mass Culture,” Cinema Journal 28, no. 4 (1989): 3–19.

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trips to “historically relevant” locations around the city (such as those associated with the Black Dahlia murder of Elizabeth Short that the game uses as a backbone for its homicide cases).46 Within this one post, we see how the curation of these discourses of historical authenticity split a game’s historical features, touchstones, and affordances across different levels. They involve potential players in the construction of a game’s historical authenticity and its relationship to a real past (and present). What I am describing is an after-the-fact study of a rich paratextual network of digital and “real world” events and communications, intended to immerse fans in these games’ historical worlds around the time of their release. This is not something that is simple or unproblematic to be analysing and describing, academically, ten years after the fact. Putting aside the fact that looking as a scholar is always already different to looking as a player, to what extent is this an actual study of the “horizon of expectation,” of what I already knew what to expect from the games? But in this way, too, the training of a historian is innately preparation for this kind of work – historians always work, and offer interpretations, from the perspective of their present situation and experience. The announcement of Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2016 meant something quite different. I set out to map and collect everything I could as time went on – not kidding myself that I could catch it all, but keenly aware of my own laments about what had inevitably already been lost by not having been there at the time in 2009/2010 when its predecessor was being promoted. Delays in the release schedule made this initially doable. But when promotion really ramped up in the months leading up to its release in October 2018, there was a flood of content across Rockstar’s website, Newswire, social media channels, in the press. There were different waves of previews and features – pre-release reviews, developer interviews, final release reviews. It was exhausting, and hard, and mainly just impossible. But at this point, I was still approaching Red Dead Redemption 2, like most fans at that time, aware of the Rockstar brand, deeply aware of the historical world they had created through Red Dead Redemption, and therefore with expectations that were being actively shaped and managed by every new piece of information that Rockstar were sharing as the curtain was nudged back everincreasingly before release day. Even still, it was never going to be an “objective” look at something. I was looking with purpose, and researchers are never untainted by their own research

 Rockstar Games, “A Los Angeles Noire Weekend Recap,” Rockstar Newswire (blog), April 22, 2011, accessed June 12, 2022, https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/k49a5887k883k2/alos-angeles-noire-weekend-recap.html.

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expectations. So my studying of Rockstar’s promotion of Red Dead Redemption 2, and later the game itself, was a process of charting the unique and common factors between the Red Dead games and their promotional surrounds, not as a fan seeking to have my expectations fulfilled, but as a researcher looking for something different: a way to trace and connect the overarching progression and development (as well as consistency) of Rockstar’s interpretation and arguments about the history of the American West, a decade apart. Not all of what I expected or predicted because of my work on Rockstar so far came to pass, in ways that surprised (and disappointed) me. But in this way, I was able to test out two different methods for studying historical games alongside the promotional paratexts that accompany them and attempt to manage and shape their potential resonance. Both had challenges and required different considerations. And neither are (nor could arguably be) unproblematic ways of analysing the way historical games represent the past through different textual levels and spaces. But we have to try.

What next? With this chapter, I haven’t meant to suggest that this is the only way such a study of historical video game paratexts could be done. What could be said about “Rockstar Games and American History” might have been fundamentally different had I, for example, interviewed developers and marketers themselves about their perceptions of the same questions, and their concerns and motives. Had it even been possible in the first place, it would have been a qualitatively different project than studying the public-facing manifestations of a developer’s brand and their promotional communication, the actual labour it took to develop and promote the games still hidden for the most part. Different approaches might be replicated that take into account how fans react to and make their own paratexts (as other chapters in this book have explored), because the meanings developers do (or do not) intend are almost certainly not as simply just “received” and accepted by players themselves. Historical game studies needs more work on player perceptions anyway, in addition to the work that’s already been done.47

 For example, Copplestone, “‘But That’s Not Accurate’.” Kevin O’Neill and Bill Feenstra, “‘Honestly, I Would Stick with the Books’: Young Adults’ Ideas About a Videogame as a Source of Historical Knowledge,” Game Studies 16, 2 (December 2016), http://gamestudies.org/1602/articles/ oneilfeenstra. Sian Beavers, “The Informal Learning of History with Digital Games” (The Open

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With all this in mind, my own work to map out a new project that surveys, interprets, and makes arguments about historical video game promotion beyond a defined company is a daunting task. What games? And how to locate the spaces that surrounded them (if they still exist and are accessible at all)? Archives of promotional ephemera, understanding how the industry, academics, museums, archives and libraries, and other stakeholders can work together to preserve these kinds of materials. Initiatives and institutions like those mentioned above have already started the groundwork on this. But despite their broad inseparability, we need to keep researching and carving out a space for particularly historical games within the broader history of games – and indeed, the broader concerns of digital history as a discipline – if we are to continue studying video games’ historical resonances at all.48

References Apperley, Tom. “Counterfactual Communities: Strategy Games, Paratexts and the Player’s Experience of History.” Open Library of Humanities 4, no. 1 (2018): 1–22. Aravani, Foteini. “Play’s the Thing: Keeping Old Games Alive.” Museum of London (blog). Published April 7, 2016. Accessed June 2, 2022. https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/plays-thing -keeping-old-games-alive. Barker, Martin. “News, Reviews, Clues, Interviews and Other Ancillary Materials –– A Critique and Research Proposal.” Scope (2004). Barker, Martin. “Speaking of ‘Paratexts’: A Theoretical Revisitation.” Journal of Fandom Studies 5, no. 3 (2017): 235–249. Beavers, Sian. “The Informal Learning of History with Digital Games.” PhD diss., The Open University, 2020, https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0001111f. Carr, E.H. What is History? London: Penguin Books, 1990. Chapman, Adam. Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Chapman, Adam. “The Histories of/in Games.” ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories 1, no. 1 (2019), http://www.romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/article/view/70. Clark, Lynda, Giulia Carla Rossi, and Stella Wisdom, “Archiving Interactive Narratives at the British Library.” In Interactive Storytelling: 13th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Edited by Anne-Gwenn Bosser, David E. Millard, and Charlie Hargood, 300–313. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020.

University, 2020), https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0001111f; Robert Houghton, “History Games for Boys? Gender, Genre and the Self-Perceived Impact of Historical Games on Undergraduate Historians,” Gamevironments 14 (2021): 1–49.  Adam Chapman, “The Histories of/in Games,” ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories 1, no. 1 (2019), http://www.romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/article/view/70.

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Crisp, Virginia, and Gabriel Menotti Gonring, eds. Besides the Screen: Moving Images through Distribution, Promotion and Curation. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Consalvo, Mia. “When Paratexts Become Texts: De-Centering the Game-as-Text.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34, no. 2 (2017): 177–183. Copplestone, Tara Jane. “But That’s Not Accurate: The Differing Perceptions of Accuracy in CulturalHeritage Videogames between Creators, Consumers and Critics.” Rethinking History 21, no. 3 (2017): 415–438. Crymble, Adam. Technology and the Historian: Transformations in the Digital Age. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2021. Cueto, Barbara, and Bas Hendrikx. “Introduction.” In Authenticity? Observations and Artistic Strategies in the Post-Digital Age, edited by Barbara Cueto and Bas Hendrikx, 10–16. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2017. Gamespot Staff. “Breaking in the Digital Horses of Red Dead Redemption.” Gamespot. May 11, 2010. Accessed July 3, 2022. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/breaking-in-the-digital-horses-of-red -dead-redemption/1100-6261863/. Grainge, Paul, ed. Ephemeral Media: Transitory Screen Cultures from Television to YouTube. London: British Film Institute, 2011. Gray, Jonathan. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press, 2010. Gray, Jonathan. “The Politics of Paratextual Ephemeralia.” In The Politics of Ephemeral Digital Media: Permanence and Obsolescence in Paratexts, edited by Sara Pesce and Paolo Noto, 32–44. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Grufstedt, Ylva. Shaping the Past: Counterfactual History and Game Design Practice in Digital Strategy Games. De Gruyter, 2022. Hadas, Leora. Authorship as Promotional Discourse in the Screen Industries: Selling Genuis. London and New York: Routledge, 2020. Hammar, Emil Lundedal. “Counter-Hegemonic Commemorative Play: Marginalized Pasts and the Politics of Memory in the Digital Game Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry.” Rethinking History 21, no. 3 (2017): 372–395. Hitchcock, Tim. “Confronting the Digital: Or How Academic History Writing Lost the Plot.” Cultural and Social History 10, no. 1 (2013): 9–23. Holloway-Attaway, Lissa. “Interview with Stella Wisdom, Digital Curator at the British Library.” Gamevironments 14 (2021): 230–256. Houghton, Robert. “History Games for Boys? Gender, Genre and the Self-Perceived Impact of Historical Games on Undergraduate Historians.” Gamevironments 14 (2021): 1–49. Johnston, Keith M. “Researching Historical Promotional Materials: Towards a New Methodology.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 39, no. 4 (2019): 1–20. Jones, Steven E. The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies. New York: Routledge, 2008. Kaltman, Eric. “Attending to Process and Data A Research Alignment for Historical Videogame Production Artifacts and Their Archives” ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories 2, no. 2 (2020). https://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/article/view/117. Kempshall, Chris. The First World War in Computer Games. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Klinger, Barbara. “Digressions at the Cinema: Reception and Mass Culture.” Cinema Journal 28, no. 4 (1989): 3–19.

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Milligan, Ian. History in the Age of Abundance? How the Web Is Transforming Historical Research. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. Milligan, Ian. “How Can We Be Ready to Study History in the Age of Abundance? A Response.” American Historical Review 125, no. 4 (2020): 1348–1349. Milligan, Ian. “Lost in the Infinite Archive: The Promise and Pitfalls of Web Archives.” International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 10, no. 1 (2016): 78–94. Milligan, Ian. “Mining the ‘Internet Graveyard’: Rethinking the Historians’ Toolkit.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 23, no. 2 (2012): 21–64. Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York and London: New York University Press, 2015. Newman, James, and Iain Simons. “Game Over? Curating, Preserving and Exhibiting Videogames: A White Paper.” White Paper, 2018, 7, https://thebgi.uk/gameoverwhitepaper/. Newman, James. “Saving (and Re-Saving) Videogames: Rethinking Emulation for Preservation, Exhibition and Interpretation.” International Journal of Creative Media Research 1, no. 1 (2019). Newman, James, and Iain Simons. “Time Extend! The Future of Curating, Preserving and Exhibiting Videogames.” White Paper (Videogame Heritage Society, 2020), https://vhs.thenvm.org/wpcontent/uploads/2020/02/TIME-EXTEND.pdf. O’Neill, Kevin, and Bill Feenstra. “‘Honestly, I Would Stick with the Books’”: Young Adults’ Ideas About a Videogame as a Source of Historical Knowledge.” Game Studies 16, no. 2 (2016). http://gamestudies.org/1602/articles/oneilfeenstra. Putnam, Lara. “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast.” American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (2016). Rockstar Games. “All the Pretty Horses: The Technology behind Red Dead Redemption’s Digital Steeds.” Rockstar Newswire (blog), 11 May 2010, accessed June 12, 2022, https://www.rockstar games.com/newswire/article/5481/all-the-pretty-horses-the-technology-behind-red-deadredemptions.html. Rockstar Games. “‘A New Era for Interactive Entertainment’ – Latest L.A. Noire Previews from The New York Times, The Guardian and More.” Rockstar Newswire (blog). May 9, 2011. Accessed June 12, 2022. https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/1748koo9okkk83/a-new-erafor-interactive-entertainment-latest-la-noire-previews.html. Rockstar Games. “A Los Angeles Noire Weekend Recap.” Rockstar Newswire (blog). April 22, 2011. Accessed June 12, 2022. https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/k49a5887k883k2/alos-angeles-noire-weekend-recap.html. Rockstar Games. “‘Creating a New Genre of Videogames:’ The Daily Telegraph Interviews Rockstar & Team Bondi on L.A. Noire.” Rockstar Newswire (blog). January 10, 2011. Accessed June 12, 2022. https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/9k124883o85187/creating-a-new-genre-ofvideogames-the-daily-telegraph-interview.html. Rockstar Games. “L.A. Noire’s Los Angeles Landmarks.” Rockstar Newswire (blog). May 16, 2011. Accessed June 12, 2022. https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/89k8a5545aa398/lanoires-los-angeles-landmarks.html. Rockstar Games. “Red Dead Redemption Previews from IGN, MTV and More: ‘GorgeousExpansive’ . . . ‘Awesome’.” Rockstar Newswire (blog). December 15, 2009. Accessed June 12, 2022. https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/75o94113a8481k/red-dead-redemptionpreviews-from-ign-mtv-and-more-gorgeous-expa.html. Romein, C. Annemieke, Max Kemman, Julie M. Birkholz, James Baker, Michel De GruijterAlbert Meroño‐Peñuela, Thorsten Ries, Ruben Ros, and Stefania Scagliola. “State of the Field: Digital History.” History 105, no. 365 (2020): 291–312.

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Rosenzweig, Roy. “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era.” The American Historical Review 108, no. 3 (2003): 735–762. Salvati, Andrew. J., and Jonathan M. Bullinger. “Selective Authenticity and the Playable Past.” In Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History, edited by Matthew Wilhelm Kapell and Andrew B.R. Elliott, 153–168. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Shaw, Adrienne. “The Tyranny of Realism: Historical Accuracy and Politics of Representation in Assassin’s Creed III.” Loading . . . The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association 9, no. 14 (2015): 4–24. Staiti, Alana. “Video Game History Beyond Video Games: A Curator’s Appeal.” ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories 1, no. 1 (2019), http://www.romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/article/view/ 64. Story Daniel J., et al. “History’s Future in the Age of the Internet.” The American Historical Review 125, no. 4 (2020): 1337–1346. Van Den Heede, Pieter J. B. J. “‘Experience the Second World War like Never before!’ Game Paratextuality between Transnational Branding and Informal Learning.” Journal for the Study of Education and Development 43, no. 3 (2020): 1–46. Wright, Esther. “Marketing Authenticity: Rockstar Games and the Use of Cinema in Video Game Promotion.” Kinephanos: Journal of Media Studies and Popular Culture 7, no. 1 (2017): 131–164. Wright, Esther. Rockstar Games and American History: Promotional Materials and the Construction of Authenticity. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022.

Section 2: History as game paratext and games as historical paratexts

Iain Donald, Andrew James Reid

Account, accuracy, and authenticity: A framework for analysing historical narrative in games Introduction From nineteenth-century pioneering across the Oregon Trail, to the arrival of the Mongolian Empire to Tsushima Island, historical settings continue to inspire game designers and find critical and commercial success. The popularity of games provides a platform in which to engage large audiences in events, stories, and perspectives of history through means of nuanced interaction, high-fidelity graphics, and sophisticated narrative design. Despite these benefits, there is a growing, critical concern surrounding the portrayal of historical narratives in interactive media, and the impact that poorly conceived depictions of history can have on the audiences who choose to play such games. A factor of this critique is the lack of tools and methods to analyse the “historiography” of existing games as seen in other forms of media and text. This chapter presents the 3A Framework (3AF), a theoretical and conceptual model for analysing games-as-text from the perspective of historical narrative. The framework considers: the objective game features that appear within the game and game narrative (Account); current understanding and critical perspective on historical narrative and detail related to the game’s content (Accuracy); and what the comparison between the game’s account and the identified historical discourse contributes to the historical perspective (Authenticity). Initially applied to Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) and its reflection of the declining Wild West,1 the authors continue their application of the 3AF with a case study of the historical narrative, memorialisation and interpretation of the events of World War One through Valiant Hearts: The Great War (2014). This essay aims to contribute to the notion that games are cultural artefacts that communicate historical narrative through its content and the context in which the game has been produced. The game’s production – time and place, authorship, and purpose, among other considerations – plays a significant role in  Iain Donald and Andrew J. Reid, “The Wild West: Accuracy, Authenticity and Gameplay in Red Dead Redemption 2,” Media Education Journal 66 (2020): 15–23. Iain Donald, Edinburgh Napier University Andrew James Reid, Abertay University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-004

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forming the historical narrative. Furthermore, the 3AF seeks to encourage practitioners engaged in historical narrative – historians, educators, game developers, media analysts – to approach game-based reflections of history through the lens of players. This considers the way in which game aesthetics and simulations inform players’ understanding of historical narratives, particularly where the player’s initial understanding of history is limited and the consequential impact this has on their perspective of history. The past has been a rich source of inspiration for video games as popular entertainment: from those that history inspired to create educational games such as The Oregon Trail (1974) to more recent offerings creating photorealistic simulations of past worlds like in Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). Whilst the improvements in real-time graphics are the most obvious technological advancement, game developers have sought to add increasingly realistic gameplay mechanics. These include features such as destructible environments, unit movement and combat systems, and cinematographic designs like camera shakes and piercing audio. Just as developers have embraced history for inspiration, they have helped layer the complexity in how players view these virtual worlds. Players experience marketing campaigns that stress characters, events and narratives that are inspired by true historical accounts; that cite accuracy and praise authenticity without ever explaining these terms. When we consider the sales of the most popular series in contrast to other media, we increasingly need frameworks that can critique historical games that are open, accessible and easy to use. As Chapman, Foka and Westin (2016) state, “measuring popularity through only market statistics ignores important nuancing, differing and contextualising social, geographical and cultural aspects of the role of games in contemporary life.”2

Existing historical analysis frameworks Various frameworks have been developed for analysing games broadly. Konzack described a methodological framework for analysing games identifying “seven different layers of the computer game: hardware, program code, functionality, game play, meaning, referentiality, and socio-culture.”3 This framework has influenced

 Adam Chapman, Anna Foka and Jonathan Westin, “Introduction: What is Historical Game Studies?” Rethinking History 21, no. 3 (2017): 358–371.  Lars Konzack, “Computer Game Criticism: A Method for Computer Game Analysis,” in Proceedings from the Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference, Tampere, Finland, June 6–8, 2002.

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multiple game design and game analysis frameworks analysing core game components.4 Other specific frameworks have been proposed to examine specific types of games for education,5 serious games,6 or wider attempts to understand gameplay through the classification of games.7 Further frameworks have subsequently been developed to examine historical games. Elliot and Kapell posited that games are similar to other forms of historical research.8 Through the process of selection, assembly, and presentation, history is framed based on factual selection and construction to form a narrative. Games are therefore no different from other popular media that use history as a vehicle for narrative be that novels, plays, film or television. Chapman proposed a framework for the study of historical games, through the concept of the “(hi)story-play-space” with an emphasis on game creators as the “developer-historian” and game players as “player-historian.”9 Developer-historians undertake research, interpret, write,

 Espen Aarseth, “Playing Research: Methodological Approaches to Game Analysis,” Proceedings from the 5th International Digital Arts & Culture Conference, May, Melbourne, Australia, May 28–29, 2003; Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek, “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research,” in Workshop on Challenges in Game AI at Game Developers Conference 2004, San Jose, CA., March 22–26, 2004. 1–4; Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, “Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals” (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003); Tracy Fullerton, Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 3rd ed. (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2014); Jesse Schell, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses (Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann, 2008); Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), ix.  See Alan Amory, “Game Object Model Version II: A Theoretical Framework for Educational Game Development,” Educational Technology Research and Development 55, no. 1 (2007): 51–77; Wim Westera, Rob J. Nadolski, Hans G.K. Hummel and Iwan G.J.H. Wopereis, “Serious Games for Higher Education: A Framework for Reducing Design Complexity,” Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 24, no. 5 (2008): 420–432.  Amri Yusoff et al., “A Conceptual Framework for Serious Games,” in Proceedings of the 2009 Ninth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), Riga, Latvia, July 15–17, 2009, 21–23; Iza Marfisi-Schottman, Sébastien George and Franck Tarpin-Bernard, “Tools and Methods to Efficiently Designing Serious Games,” in Proceedings from the 2010 Fourth European Conference on Games Based Learning (ECGBL), Aarhus University, Copenhagen, October 21–22, 2010, 226–234.  Damien Djaouti et al., “A Gameplay Definition through Videogame Classification,” International Journal of Computer Games Technology (2008): 1–7.  Andrew B.R. Elliott and Matthew W. Kapell, “Introduction: To Build a Past that Will ‘Stand the Test of Time’: Discovering Historical Facts, Assembling Historical Narratives,” in Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History, ed. Matthew W. Kapell and Andrew B. R. Elliott (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), 31–32.  Adam Chapman, Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice (New York: Routledge, 2016).

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and present the historical narrative through their lens so that a game represents the past. How the players engage with those interpretations and what they choose to interact with form the player-historian narrative. McCall has argued for the need to holistically explore game dynamics, and the relationships between the core components – the player character, game world, game elements10 – and has developed the Historical Problem Space framework.11 These frameworks place significance on the meaning-making derived from how developers create a version of history through their own historical research, how developers engage with that record, and how form shapes content.12 The inherently interdisciplinary nature and complexity of game development where multi-faceted knowledge across different disciplines is required to work together has been increasingly explored in recent years.13 Although core disciplines in games studios are often siloed into art, audio, code, design, and production within each there are further categories that are less opaque: for example, the role of design may be preceded by the terms such as “mission,” “level,” and “world.” Each of these may blend with other core disciplines in code, art or audio. Indeed, to create complex software for broad audiences where commercial factors affect the deadlines often requires additional discipline knowledge in education, business, psychology, software engineering, and the wider arts. This results in multiple disciplines collaborating, building, and creating both the game (and the paratextual relationships) must work seamlessly together to create a believable virtual world for the player. From the initial product reveals, marketing previews and reviews through to the user experience there is the establishment of paratextual components. In a historical game, these relationships are challenged by preconceived

 Jeremiah McCall, “Historical Simulations as Problem Spaces: Criticisms and Classroom Use,” The Journal of Digital Humanities 1, no. 2 (2012), http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-2/histori cal-simulations-as-problem-spaces-by-jeremiah-mccall/; Jeremiah McCall, “Navigating the Problem Space: The Medium of Simulation Games in the Teaching of History,” The History Teacher 46, no. 1 (2012): 9–28.  Jeremiah McCall, “The Historical Problem Space Framework: Games as a Historical Medium,” Game Studies 20, no. 3 (2020), http://gamestudies.org/2003/articles/mccall.  Chapman, Foka and Westin, “Introduction: What is Historical Game Studies?”.  For an understanding of the complexity and interdisciplinarity of game production see Casey O’Donnell, Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014); Jason Schreier, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made (New York: Harper, 2017); Jason Schreier, Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2021); Jennifer R. Whitson, Bart Simon and Felan Parker “The Missing Producer: Rethinking Indie Cultural Production in Terms of Entrepreneurship, Relational Labour, and Sustainability,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 24, no. 2: 606–627.

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notions of what the audience understands of history and what they regard are the historical facts. If we want to understand the developer-historian and the playerhistorian, we need to bring in wider aspects of game analysis and build towards frameworks and methodologies that consider these wider disciplinary challenges and knowledge gaps. The framework proposed here argues that games need to be analysed both as games and as text – in the same way that evidence and sources are analysed contextually (as events) and empirically (as texts). Analysis of games-as-games focuses on their development, production, and authorship: through the design process, content pipelines, iterative development to the marketing, release and product lifecycle, each aspect of the development process has an impact upon the game that players play. These do not work in isolation but shape the analysis of games-as-text where emphasis can be placed on the content and commentary. The proposed framework aims to build on previous work with emphasis on understanding games contextually (as developed artefacts with influence and inspiration) and empirically (through analysis of their designed components and contents).

The 3A framework The 3A Framework (3AF) is a theoretical model for analysing historical games, or more explicitly the historical narrative presented within the game. The 3AF (Figure 1) analyses objective game features in three areas: Account, Accuracy, and Authenticity.14 Embedded in each is an emphasis on how game development – and decisions made by developers during a game’s production – can shape the historical perspective for the player.

Account Video games are containers of information and designed actions that are constructed in a particular way to deliver an intended experience. In video games that include historical narrative, developers present an interpretation of events based on research, development, and situated meaning within the context of a game as an entertainment product. This is what the authors refer to as the “Account”: the objective, observable content within a game that can be interacted with, interpreted, or

 Donald and Reid, “The Wild West.”

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Figure 1: 3A Framework.

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understood through a historical lens. When looking at the Account in video games, one must be able to identify game components that inherently carry historical value. According to Fullerton, game components can be categorised into three layers: “formal elements,” dramatic elements,” and “dynamic elements.”15 “Formal elements” describe the governance of the game’s play systems. Rules establish the boundary lines with which players engage in play. Resources provide a framing with which to guide player activity within a game: examples include time limits that encourage actions to be completed under pressure, while currency creates a tiered system based on the availability of actions or items within a given game. The interface describes a visual or graphical display that players use to interact with the game’s systems. Goals and objectives attribute purpose to the player’s actions and investment in the game, while outcomes explain what conditions the player needs to meet to progress as well as how the game ends. “Dramatic elements” relates to game components with aesthetic properties, designed to evoke certain responses from the player. Stories present a sequence of significant events to capture the player’s attention. Characters serve as agents to the story and events of the game and display contextual relationships with the player. The game’s setting positions the player within appropriate environments and scenarios related to the events of the game. Audio-visual stimuli – such as sound effects and visual feedback – seek to enhance the player’s experience by building atmosphere and drawing attention to certain elements of the play system. “Dynamic elements” is an emergent feature of games. This relates to the unpredictability of play and how the player perceives the game experience. For example, strategies emerge through players interpreting and manipulating the game’s rules, objectives and interactions to achieve an end goal. Player agency and interpretation of the game are established through the game’s narrative, characters, and setting which contribute to the perspective in which players experience the game. The game’s user interface – with elements of graphic design and visual feedback – prompts interactions from the player resulting from perception, instruction, and developed knowledge of the game’s systems.

Accuracy Historical accuracy is a fiercely debated concept, particularly in areas where history has been communicated through oral tradition: for example, in indigenous

 Fullerton, “Game Design Workshop.”

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cultures that did not have writing systems to complement their oral traditions.16 Scholars have been critical and sceptical of the authenticity of oral traditions given the unavailability of – and difficulty to assess – evidence to “prove” historical truth.17 Postmodernists approach historical accuracy with an acknowledgement that truth and literality are just one dimension of historical narratives.18 The authors refer to “Accuracy” from a postmodern perspective: that is, to question not only the accuracy of the content of the video game, but also to consider the wider questions surrounding the context of the game’s development, interpretation, and presentation of historical narratives. In understanding the Accuracy of games, the authors distinguish the design and creation of game components into two categories: “historical fact” and “literary truth.” “Historical fact” can be defined as a sense of affirmation in an event, object, scenario, or contribution that has been recorded through a persisting statement resulting from credible analysis.19 Discourse on historical fact and its application to digital media suggests a congruence between “facts” (as indisputable and evidenced knowledge) and “probabilities” (where firm knowledge cannot be ascertained).20 Games based on historical narrative have a duty and potential to acknowledge and represent such historiographical perspectives, values, and voices. For example, Kempshall acknowledges the way in which games have broadened the perspective of World War One beyond British experiences on the Western Front and explored those experiences from other allied nations but questions the extent to which

 Robin Law, “Oral Tradition as History,” in Writing and Africa, ed. Mpalive-Hangson Msiska and Paul Hyland (Abingdon, PA.: Taylor & Francis, 2017), 159–173.  Jan Vansina, “Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology” (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1973).  Kaya Yilmaz, “Postmodernism and its Challenge to the Discipline of History: Implications for History Education,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 42, no. 7 (2010): 779–795.  Carl L. Becker, “What are Historical Facts?” The Western Political Quarterly 8, no. 3 (1955): 327–340.  For discourse on historical fact, see Michael M. Postan, Fact and Relevance: Essays on Historical Method (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971); Rolf Torstendahl, “Fact, Truth, and Text: The Quest for a Firm Basis for Historical Knowledge Around 1900,” History and Theory 42 (2003): 305–331; Salvatore Italia, “Autopsy of a Historical Fact,” Social Epistemology 32, no. 3 (2018): 209–217. For application to digital media, see Marcia Landy, The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media (London: The Athlone Press, 2001); Sara Roegiers and Frederik Truyen, “History is 3D: Presenting a Framework for Meaningful Historical Representations in Digital Media,” in New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage, ed. Yehuda E. Kalay, Thomas Kvan and Janice Affleck (Abingdon, PA: Taylor & Francis, 2007), 67–77.

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games can continue to be used to push the boundaries on historical understanding of such events and phenomena.21 “Literary truth” is referred to as an acceptance of “truth in some sense”22 which exists independently from historical truth or, indeed, the reality of the world.23 Rabinowitz describes literary works as experiences of “imitations” consisting of what is “real” (in the context of the “material reality” of the literature in relation to real-world events, objects, and locations) and how it is “interpreted” (taken from a variety of audience perspectives).24 Galloway also creates a distinction between these two qualities and how games inherit existing debates in media that reflect reality or exist in a distinct space of semantics and meaning. Relevant to this is “canon,” defined as an authoritative construct based on perceived knowledge and interpretation, yet in some cases these can be complex in volume and purpose. In this context, canon in games as literary works pertains to what is relevant to the game’s content rather than historical accuracy: terms such as “creative license” and “based on true events” provide a foundation for fictional truths to be portrayed without being bound to historical fact.25 In particular, gaps in history provide fertile ground for literary canons to emerge from a deficiency in historical knowledge and contribute to wider discourse on the matter: for example, the creation of a fictional language in Far Cry Primal (2016) as a theoretical representation of the Proto-Indo-European language where no direct records of the language are known.26 The authors extend these views by also considering the root and nature of the game’s development, their authorship of the game, and their perspective on history. From games of global war and conflict developed from a Western perspective27 to interpretations of local heritage and underrepresented  Chris Kempshall, “War Collaborators: Documentary and Historical Sources in First World War Computer Games,” First World War Studies 11 (2020): 1–20.  Albert W. Levi, “Literary Truth,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 24, no. 3 (1966): 373–382.  Peter Lamarque and Stein H. Olsen, Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).  Peter J. Rabinowitz, “Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences,” Critical Inquiry 4, no. 1 (1977): 121–141.  Alexander R. Galloway, “Social Realism in Gaming,” Game Studies 4, no. 1 (2004).  See University of Kentucky. “UK Linguists Imagine Ancient Languages for Video Game, Far Cry Primal by Ubisoft,” NewsWise, March 2, 2016, accessed November 6, 2021, https://www.news wise.com/articles/uk-linguists-imagine-ancient-languages-for-video-game-far-cry-primal-by-ubi soft2; Catriona Pickard, “Archaeology et al: an Indo-European Study” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2018).  Vit Šisler, “Digital Arabs: Representation in Video Games,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 11, no. 2 (2008): 203–220; Matthew T. Payne, Playing War: Military Video Games after 9/11 (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2016).

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cultures,28 games in these categories – as mass-consumed media – influence the perceived and interpreted accuracy of historical narratives.

Authenticity In comparison to accuracy, historical authenticity is a more nebulous concept to define, and a consensus on the definition or characteristics of “authenticity” is yet to be reached.29 The authors propose that – where accuracy is concerned with the alignment and precise reflection of specific real-world events – authenticity may have more to do with how it “feels” in relation to personal, communal, and collective memory. Knowledge, perceptions, and understandings of historical events are formed based on our cultural identity: such is the case when exploring the events of drone warfare in Pakistan where perspectives can include the future of military technologies in Western countries,30 the psychological impact on drone pilots,31 and the ethics and morality of drone warfare.32 These events and their place in history will feel authentic based on the experiences of specific audiences interacting with the game as well as the relationship of the developers to the subject matter in creating such an experience. If authenticity – from a historical perspective – is focused on the creation of a space or world in which the actors, environment, time period, language, and sense of being feels genuine, then there are parallels to be made between this concept and the game design theory of “immersion.”33 Immersion in gaming aims to create

 See Stephanie de Smale, Martijn J. L. Kors and Alyea M. Sandovar, “The Case of This War of Mine: A Production Studies Perspective on Moral Game Design,” Games and Culture 14, no. 4 (2017): 387–409; Peter K. Williams, “An Analysis of the Ethnographic Significance of the Iñupiaq Video Game Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna)” (Masters diss., Florida State University Libraries, 2018).  See Philip F. Xie and Geoffrey Wall. “Visitors’ Perceptions of Authenticity at Cultural Attractions in Hainan, China,” International Journal of Tourism Research 4, no. 5 (2002): 353–366; Juan G. Brida, Marta Disegna and Raffaele Scuderi, “The Visitors’ Perception of Authenticity at the Museums: Archaeology versus Modern Art,” Current Issues in Tourism 17, no. 6 (2012): 518–538.  Carrie E. Anderson, “Games of Drones: The Uneasy Future of the Soldier-Hero in Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” Surveillance & Society 12, no. 3 (2014): 360–376.  Tobi Smethurst and Stef Craps, “Towards an Understanding of Drone Fiction,” Journal of War & Culture Studies 12, no. 1 (2019): 85–102.  Malath Abbas, Joseph DeLappe, Tom Demajo, and Albert Elwin, “Killbox,” in Proceedings from CHI ’16 Extended Abstracts, San Jose, CA., May 7–12, 2016. 3812–3815.  See Emily Brown and Paul Cairns, “A Grounded Investigation of Game Immersion,” in Proceedings from CHI EA ’04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Vienna,

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a sense in which the player feels invested and accepting of their (virtual) environment, regardless of how it reflects history. Games adopt real-world themes and events as a basis to create a space that feels authentic in and of itself: examples include the use of film, traditional art, and the history of the declining Wild West in designing Red Dead Redemption 2.34 The value that these types of games offer to historical debate and discourse is not diminished, in a similar way that the oftscorned 1995 film Braveheart stimulated discussion, debate, and analysis of Scotland’s history and identity, and the role that media plays in the socio-cultural acceptance and formation of collective memory.35 This is where the authors place greater emphasis on the value and outcome of analysing historical narratives in games: not simply to observe in-game content and its reflective accuracy on a particular event, but the authenticity of the game as a historical commentary on the portrayed historical narrative. The authors propose five judgment-based characteristics for Authenticity: these are “perception,” “believability,” “reflection,” “continuity,” and “limitations.” “Perception” describes the way historical phenomena are understood or interpreted based on presented evidence. If we consider authenticity to be an ongoing, reflexive process36 in which the understanding and appreciation of history is not a singular activity, then it can be argued that the perception of historical authenticity relates to theories of ongoing knowledge development. Perception, therefore, may be interconnected to concepts of “assimilation” – where new knowledge is gained – and “accommodation” – where existing knowledge is restructured in order to build new meaning.37 As new works (such as video games), evidence, and discourse on a given historical matter emerge, perceptions of the

Austria, April 24–29, 2004. 1297–1300; Laura Ermi and Frans Mäyrä, “Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analyzing Immersion,” in Worlds in Play: International Perspectives on Digital Games Research, ed. Suzanne De Castell and Jennifer Jenson (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007), 37–53; Gordon Calleja, “In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation” (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011).  See Arthur Gies, “The Painted World of Red Dead Redemption 2,” Polygon, December 14, 2018, accessed November 3, 2021, https://www.polygon.com/red-dead-redemption/2018/10/26/18024982/ red-dead-redemption-2-art-inspiration-landscape-paintings; Andrew Westerside and Jussi Holopainen, “Sites of Play: Locating Gameplace in Red Dead Redemption 2,” in Proceedings of Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) 2019, Kyoto, Japan, August 6–10, 2019.  See Tim Edensor, “Reading Braveheart: Representing and Contesting Scottish Identity,” Scottish Affairs 21, no. 1 (1997): 135–158; Colin McArthur, “Brigadoon, Braveheart, and the Scots: Scotland in Hollywood Cinema” (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003).  Brida, Disegna and Scuderi, “The Visitors’ Perception of Authenticity at the Museums.”  Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder, The Psychology of the Child, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1972).

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subject continue to evolve and become informed by new information or perspectives. Consequently, video games hold an inherent value in contributing to ongoing debates around perceptions of historical events, time periods, and collective memory. “Believability” is the notion that an experience feels “real” irrespective of its accuracy in depicting real-world events. In tourism research, the concept of “staged authenticity”38 centres around creating a believable experience that is far removed from the source of the event, time period, or tradition.39 Bjorkelo contextualises this similar feeling of realism in media resulting from its “verisimilitude” which explains its ability to “create an authentic and truthful version of our perceived reality.”40 Believable virtual spaces are the result of designing immersive experiences that players can invest in. Believability does not necessarily equate to historical accuracy: Red Dead Redemption 2 is based on records and accounts of the declining wild frontier in the early twentieth century, yet there is little historical accuracy in relation to real-world events.41 “Reflection” concerns the extent to which content within a game mimics the real-world events that it depicts. Technologies and simulations have been at the forefront of discourse surrounding historical preservation and the delineation between simulative and authentic historical fact.42 Yet, while historical narratives continue to serve as inspiration, stimulate emotional responses, and arouse curiosity, they also provide a foundation for which to create compelling narratives in games.43 The reflectiveness of history in games depicting war shows varying degrees of accuracy. For example, where some game-based re-enactments of World War Two are containers of hyperrealism and media tropes,44 other games – such as the Brothers in Arms series – seek to communicate the complexities and

 Deam MacCannell, “Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings,” American Journal of Sociology 79, no. 3 (1973): 589–603.  Deepak Chhabra, Robert Healy and Erin Sills, “Staged Authenticity and Heritage Tourism,” Annals of Tourism Research 30, no. 3 (2003): 702–719.  Kristian A. Bjorkelo, “‘It feels Real to Me’: Transgressive Realism in This War of Mine,” in Transgression in Games and Play, ed. Kristine Jørgensen and Faltin Karlsen (Boston: MIT Press, 2018), 169–185.  Donald and Reid, “The Wild West.”  David Lowenthal, “Criteria of Authenticity,” in Conference on Authenticity in Relation to the World Heritage Convention, ed. Knut E. Larsen and Nils Marstein (Bergen: Tapir Publishers, 1994), 121–135.  John Fea, Why Study History? Reflecting on the Importance of the Past (Ada: Baker Academic, 2013).  Eva Kingsepp, “Fighting Hyperreality With Hyperreality: History and Death in World War II Digital Games,” Games and Culture 2, no. 4 (2007): 366–375.

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realities of war: in this instance, with historical motifs and events surrounding DDay interwoven into the game’s design.45 “Continuity” – where the past is represented by historical errors – is an important characteristic in historical representation and preservation of social identity46 and indigenous aesthetics.47 Continuity errors can be the result of misinterpretation, where a lack of knowledge or understanding of the subject matter contributes to misrepresentation; pursuing “liminoids,” self-contained simulations that follow historical events in transformational circumstances;48 or, “historical negationism,” where conscious efforts are made to create a distortion in the way in which historical events are told, interpreted, and remembered.49 Inconsistencies such as anachronisms appear within games regularly (whether intentional or otherwise) and result in a dissonance to historical authenticity: for example, Call of Duty: Black Ops – set in the late-1960s – presents US Marines with name tapes on their uniform (introduced in 1992) and allies fast-roping into combat (first used in 1982 during the Falklands War). Finally, “limitations” refer to the deficiencies of the game’s depiction of history. Limitations can exist based on socio-cultural implications such as the development and production of the game. For example, the depiction of World War One in Battlefield 1 – a game developed in Sweden and published by an American company – received backlash from player communities for including soldiers from ethnic minority backgrounds within the game, despite the recognised role of soldiers of colour on war fronts in Europe and Asia. Quiroga refers to this limitation as the creation of the “white mythic space,”50 where depictions of World  Brian Rejack, “Toward a Virtual Reenactment of History: Video Game and the Recreation of the Past,” Rethinking History 11, no. 3 (2007): 411–425.  See Jenny Roth, Michaela Huber, Annkatrin Juenger and James H. Liu, “It’s About Valence: Historical Continuity or Historical Discontinuity as a Threat to Social Identity,” Journal of Social and Political Psychology 5, no. 2 (2017): 320–341; Gilad Hirschberger, “Collective Trauma and the Social Construction of Meaning,” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg. 2018.01441.  Steven Leuthold, Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art, Media, and Identity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998).  See Victor Turner, Liminal to Liminoid, In Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology (New York: Rice University, 1974); Sun-ha Hong, “When Life Mattered: The Politics of the Real in Video Games’ Reappropriation of History, Myth, and Ritual,” Games and Culture 10, no. 1 (2015): 35–56.  Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones, History in a Post-Truth World: Theory and Praxis (Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2021).  Stefan A. Quiroga, “Race, Battlefield 1 and the White Mythic Space of the First World War,” Alicante Journal of English Studies 31 (2018): 187–193; for mythic space, see Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Frontier Myth in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Macmillan, 1992).

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War One as a pseudo-historical event involving exclusively white, Western males dominates. Bias, incomplete research, and errors of judgment within game development are examples of limitations that can impact historical authenticity.

Case study of 3A framework The authors propose the 3A Framework as a method for constructing case study analyses on historical narratives. Previously applied to the representation and characterisation of the declining Wild West in Red Dead Redemption 2,51 the authors now apply the framework to events and collective memory surrounding Ubisoft’s Valiant Hearts.

Memorialisation of World War One Valiant Hearts: The Great War Valiant Hearts: The Great War (2014) is a 2D animated comic book adventure, mixing exploration, action and puzzles. In contrast with other World War One games released during the centennial period, such as Verdun (2014) and Battlefield 1 (2016) the game eschews First-Person Shooter mechanics and detailed 3D models for a narrative based around “crossed destinies and of a broken love in a world torn apart.”52 The player follows the lives of five intricately-connected characters: a French war veteran named Emile; his German son-in-law, Karl; an American called Freddie; a Belgian nurse, Anna, and a Doberman Pinscher called Walt. Against the backdrop of the war, stories unfold of friendship, love, duty, and sacrifice, challenging what it means for the characters to retain their humanity. The developers described the goal of the game as to “help people remember this war”: due to personal connections, the developers stressed their responsibility not just to create a game that was fun but one that emphasised emotion.53 These are both examples of paratexts that exist around the development but outside of the game itself.

 Donald and Reid, “The Wild West.”  Ubisoft, Valiant Hearts: The Great War | Ubisoft (UK), accessed February 22, 2022, https:// www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/valiant-hearts.  See Richard Taylor, “E3: WWI Letters Inspire Video Game,” BBC News, June 13, 2014, accessed October 26, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-27826762.

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Account Within Valiant Hearts, the game components that inherently carry the historical value are portrayed through the lens of the characters. Although Ubisoft placed significant emphasis that the game was inspired by real letters from the war, the narrative is entirely fictional. The emphasis on “real” letters is another example of how the paratextual relationships influence the concept, development and marketing. It takes the player through various historical locations, aligns with the timeline of the war, and allows focus on key events of the conflict. The game account melds different historical elements (through the characters, various collectibles, and game environment) with interwoven and interlocking stories. Facts about the war are presented through information points and were the result of a partnership with the official French board for the commemoration of the centenary, Mission du Centenaire, and the documentary series, Apocalypse, World War I. The “formal elements” of Valiant Hearts are largely set by the game engine, gameplay systems and the core design. The game was designed for the UbiArt engine, best known for its use in the reboot of the Rayman series. The gameplay systems revolve around solving puzzles and violence is mostly eschewed as a mechanic. The core design allows the player to learn about key events as they relate to the narrative and a freedom to opt into additional historical elements through choice. The “dramatic elements” – especially in relation to the aesthetic properties – are cleverly designed to make the fictional narrative feel personal and evoke empathy and reverence. With a more linear narrative, the “dynamic elements” of Valiant Hearts focus less on the unpredictability of play and more on the emergent experience of the player, particularly in allowing them to collect items of historical note while avoiding didactic communication. Take, for example, the reference to the Garhwal Rifles in Chapter 1: the Information Point introduces to the player both the Battle of Neuve-Chapelle and the Garhwal Rifles as an example of the colonial troops both Britain and France used. Yet within the gameplay, the player can collect a Khukuri [sic] knife as one of several historical items. The player is told that the knife was used by the Ghurkhas [sic], a British unit of colonial troops, but the connection between the Khukuri and the Garwhal Rifles is never made explicit. The player might choose to research more outside of the game, but within the game, information is both provided and seeded for the player to choose what they wish to know more about; this mechanic is consistent throughout the game.

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Accuracy Valiant Hearts was developed with a view to the centennial commemoration of the First World War. Whilst the comic-book aesthetic may have reduced audience perceptions of what “accuracy” might look like in the game, there was an awareness from the developer that the game had to present the war accurately and had to align both with the historical record and the expectations of the centennial. France established the Mission du Centenaire in 2012 to prepare and deliver the commemorative program for the centenary. Ubisoft Montpellier had to work towards creating a game with the backdrop of national remembrance policy and activity. Kempshall54 and Chapman55 have both previously explored why First World War-themed games have never been as fully embraced by developers compared to other conflicts. Games have followed the popular (mis)perception that the Second World War is regarded as “a good war” and provides less ambiguity about the causes and often ignores the brutality of total war. For developers, the glorification of World War Two within popular history was often an easier “sell” to publishers and players alike. In contrast, the popular perception that World War One was futile was much harder to create entertainment around and perhaps required a different, more reverent approach. Valiant Hearts follows the historical record, and the stories are presented through an accurate timeline of the events, such as the bombardment of Reims, the use of chemical weapons at the Second Battle of Ypres, the significance of Fort Douaumont and the Verdun offensive, the inclusion of tanks at the Somme, and the extensive mine warfare at Vauquois. It also explores other challenging aspects of the war for reflection, such as the Mutiny after the Nivelle Offensive. The fictional story weaves itself through the historical record supported by the use of Information Points attached to collectible items. Whereas the fiction is supported using diary entries that reinforce the history, it melds a “literary truth” throughout the game narrative. In-game, the very first message states that the game is “Freely inspired by the events unfolding on the Western front between 1914 and 1918.” It then presents the political background and machinations at the outset of war before moving into the characters’ narrative. To the player, the “creative license” statement is presented before the historical record and before the introduction of the fictional story, but together these set an expectation that the game

 Chris Kempshall, “Pixel Lions – the Image of the Soldier in First World War Computer Games,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no. 4 (2015): 656–672. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/01439685.2015.1096665.  Adam Chapman, “It’s Hard to Play in the Trenches: World War I, Collective Memory and Videogames,” Game Studies 16, no. 2 (2016), http://gamestudies.org/1602/articles/chapman.

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is based around history. This is an aspect that Ubisoft further emphasised in the game’s marketing. When the game was first revealed in September 2013, the paratextual relationship between the trailer and the game is emphasised through the opening text stating the game was “Inspired by Letters from the First World War.” This is reasserted through interviews, where the developers referenced the influence and emotional connections that family letters had in providing inspiration.56 These aspects of the games’ marketing, further demonstrate how the paratextual relationships extend throughout the development lifecycle. The “texts” serve not just as inspiration or as marketing but as core pillars for the game’s design and development. The emotional link is important to connect the account and accuracy to reinforce authenticity.

Authenticity Scholars have considered authenticity within Valiant Hearts in different contexts, such as for the game’s commemorative character and claims of a truthful representation57 and for the portrayal of soldiers of the First World War.58 The combination of Valiant Hearts’ fictional character-driven narrative, comic book aesthetics and puzzle mechanics belie the seriousness with which the game treats the subject of the First World War. Although the game focuses on non-violent gameplay, it does not shy away from the violence, horror, and futility of the war. The player is not presented with the typical “Hero’s Journey” and nor is the portrayal of the conflict glorified or sanitised. Instead, the game reflects the backdrop of the national centennial commemorations and the continued reverence with which the war is regarded by the participating nations; it does manage to be critical of certain aspects of the war (representing this through themes of love, loss, vengeance, and injustice) yet without coming to terms with the imperial pasts or the enduring myths (national and global) of the conflict. Reflective of many national commemoration activities, loss and futility were filtered through patriotic lenses that the war was worth

 Stefan L., “Guillaume Cerda On The Letters And Emotions That Inspired Valiant Hearts,” The Sixth Axis, May 15, 2014, accessed October 22, 2021, https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2014/05/15/guil laume-cerda-on-the-letters-and-emotions-that-inspired-valiant-hearts/.  Razvan Rughiniș and Stefania Matei, “Play to Remember: The Rhetoric of Time in Memorial Video Games,” in Proceedings from International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Los Angeles, CA, August 2–7, 2015, 628–639.  Chris Kempshell, “Pixel Lions – the Image of the Soldier in First World War Computer Games,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no. 4 (2015): 656–672.

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the horrendous cost. In terms of authenticity, the game does this well without being overtly anti-war. The authenticity in Valiant Hearts is inherently playful. Developers invite the player to engage with their curated representations and players choose to engage with the history. Valiant Hearts does this through making the collectible “Historical Items” optional for the player but more covertly through the narrative. The characters are endearing, eschewing a single hero for characters that demonstrate the complexity of the war. Like any game that deals with history and conflict, there are challenges, such as the somewhat problematic representations of some of the German soldiers. In particular, the cartoonish villainy of the main antagonist, Baron Von Dorf, has led to understandable criticism, though it is worth stating that the game is similarly critical both in its visual style and representation of the political machinations or French Officers. The story requires a villain, and the over-the-top representation helps to create a playful separation of accuracy and authenticity: Von Dorf is not real but feels like an appropriate villain for the game where various historical persons have been suggested as influences for both the name (Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf) and visual style (August von Mackensen). The influences of “real” characters, vehicles, weapons, and other items are integral to most games but often hidden from the player. Where game elements are not made transparent to the player, they are often described as “Easter Eggs” to be found and discovered by playing. An example appears at the end of the Vimy Ridge level: the developers chose to have the smoke materialise in the shape of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. No reference is provided to the player, but it is a game element that adds to the authenticity for those that knew or would choose to find out about the battle. It can also be regarded as a paratext that allows the player to connect the game to reality. Another example of paratextual usage is in how Ubisoft asked their community to share family First World War memorabilia for some to be included in the game: combining with the official partners, the developers embedded authenticity through each action that the player could engage with. The result is a game that arguably feels more real than most photorealistic alternatives, in spite of its obvious fictional narrative, 2D-cartoon stylings and puzzle-based mechanics.

Discussion and future work The 3A Framework has emerged from existing game studies frameworks, through the work of Chapman and McCall with the aim of creating an approach that allows the application of the framework to a range of games. The framework has

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been applied to a commercial game – on which the focus of this chapter has been – but also built around the development of games. The framework was developed out of a need for an adaptable framework that can apply a reasonable critique and understanding of game development. One of the significant challenges of understanding the decisions made by the “Developer-Historian” is that game development itself is complicated. Inherently interdisciplinary, understanding game development adds several layers of complexity in understanding decisions made that affect the game. Not all features in a game are planned or sufficiently well-implemented but the artefact that remains cannot reveal decisions made by the development team. Without paratexts – such as the trailer or developer interviews – to provide additional context, design choices and their rationale would be left to speculation. Design decisions are not always transparent to the player, and players do not always appreciate the levels of detail and nuances of game development. Paratexts perform a vital role in understanding developer inspiration, implementation, and intent in the game design. Focusing on how historical games are presented to the player through Account, Accuracy, and Authenticity provides a framework that can be applied to a wide range of historical games. For example, popular sports games and franchises have incorporated past and present athletes to allow video game players to build their fantasy teams. They consider present and historic athletes’ statistics and characteristics, along with accurate representations of team badges, kits, and stadiums. These are presented with elements that foster an authenticity such as simulated game-length time, player contracts, or injuries. One of the integral challenges of creating and playing historical games lies in the blending of the intangible (authenticity, realism, and historical accuracy) with the tangible (characters, environments, and gameplay mechanics). The tangible elements need to be robust enough for a medium that is still primarily about entertainment without infringing upon the world, so the player is taken outside of it. For developers, the emphasis on sense-pleasure and immersion may require playing with the history. For the player, the developer must provide enough Account, Accuracy and Authenticity to create a believable world. We need a framework that places an emphasis not just on how developers approach narrative design, and how games are directly and indirectly influenced by other media, but how game aesthetics and mechanics can be used (or even misused) to create immersive and engaging experiences. We need a framework to consider where games succeed and fail at authenticity or realism, how historical games and interactive media can engage with wider narratives, and how historical and cultural sensitivity can play an essential role in providing new research and creative opportunities.

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Ermi, Laura, and Frans Mäyrä. “Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analyzing Immersion.” In Worlds in Play: International Perspectives on Digital Games Research, edited by Suzanne De Castell and Jennifer Jenson, 37–53. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007. Fea, John. Why Study History?: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past. Ada: Baker Academic, 2013. Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games (Third Edition). Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2014. Galloway, Alexander R. “Social Realism in Gaming.” Game Studies 4, no. 1 (2004). Gies, Arthur. “The Painted World of Red Dead Redemption 2.” Polygon, December 14, 2018. Accessed November 3, 2021. https://www.polygon.com/red-dead-redemption/2018/10/26/18024982/reddead-redemption-2-art-inspiration-landscape-paintings. Gudonis, Marius, and Benjamin T. Jones. History in a Post-Truth World: Theory and Praxis. Abingdon, PA: Taylor & Francis, 2021. Harris, Wendell V. “Canonicity.” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 106, no. 1 (1991): 110–121. Harvie, Steven. “The Paratext of Video Games.” First Person Scholar, July 17, 2017. Accessed November 3, 2021. http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/the-paratext-of-video-games/. Hirschberger, Gilad. “Collective Trauma and the Social Construction of Meaning.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01441. Hong, Sun-ha. “When Life Mattered: The Politics of the Real in Video Games’ Reappropriation of History, Myth, and Ritual.” Games and Culture 10, no. 1 (2015): 35–56. Hunicke, Robin, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek. “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research.” In Workshop on Challenges in Game AI at Game Developers Conference 2004, March 22–26, 2004, San Jose, CA., 1–4. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press, 2004. Italia, Salvatore. “Autopsy of a Historical Fact.” Social Epistemology 32, no. 3 (2018): 209–217. Kempshall, Chris. “Pixel Lions – The Image of the Soldier in First World War Computer Games.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no. 4 (2015): 656–672. Kempshall, Chris. “War Collaborators: Documentary and Historical Sources in First World War Computer Games.” First World War Studies 11 (2020): 1–20. Kermode, Frank. “Institutional Control of Interpretation.” Salmagundi 43 (1979): 72–86. Kingsepp, Eva. “Fighting Hyperreality With Hyperreality: History and Death in World War II Digital Games.” Games and Culture 2, no. 4 (2007): 366–375. Konzack, Lars. “Computer Game Criticism: A Method for Computer Game Analysis.” In Proceedings from the Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference, Tampere, Finland, June 6–8, 2002. http://www.digra.org/digital-library/forums/1-cgdc/. Koster, Raph. Theory of Fun for Game Design. Scottsdale, AZ: Paraglyph Press, 2005. L., Stefan. “Guillaume Cerda On The Letters And Emotions That Inspired Valiant Hearts.” The Sixth Axis, May 15, 2014. Accessed October 22, 2021. https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2014/05/15/guil laume-cerda-on-the-letters-and-emotions-that-inspired-valiant-hearts/. Lamarque, Peter, and Stein H. Olsen. Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Landy, Marcia. The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media. London: The Athlone Press, 2001. Law, Robin. “Oral Tradition as History.” In Writing and Africa, eds. Mpalive-Hangson Msiska and Paul Hyland, 159–173. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2017. Leuthold, Steven. Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art, Media, and Identity. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. Levi, Albert W. “Literary Truth.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 24, no. 3 (1966): 373–382.

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Lowenthal, David. “Criteria of Authenticity.” In Conference on Authenticity in Relation to the World Heritage Convention, eds. Knut E. Larsen and Nils Marstein, 121–135. Bergen: Tapir Publishers, 1994. M2H and Blackmill Games. Verdun. M2H. PC. 2014. MacCannell, Dean. “Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings.” American Journal of Sociology 79, no. 3 (1973): 589–603. Marfisi-Schottman, Iza, Sébastien George, and Franck Tarpin-Bernard. “Tools and Methods to Efficiently Designing Serious Games.” In Proceedings from the 2010 Fourth European Conference on Games Based Learning (ECGBL), October 21–22, 2010, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, 226–234. Academic Conferences Limited, 2010. McArthur, Colin. Brigadoon, Braveheart, and the Scots: Scotland in Hollywood Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003. McCall, Jeremiah. “Historical Simulations as Problem Spaces: Criticisms and Classroom Use.” The Journal of Digital Humanities 1, no. 2 (2012). http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-2/historicalsimulations-as-problem-spaces-by-jeremiah-mccall/. McCall, Jeremiah. “Navigating the Problem Space: The Medium of Simulation Games in the Teaching of History.” The History Teacher 46, no. 1 (2012): 9–28. McCall, Jeremiah. “The Historical Problem Space Framework: Games as a Historical Medium.” Game Studies 20, no. 3 (2020), http://gamestudies.org/2003/articles/mccall Mukherjee, Souvik. Video Games and Storytelling: Reading Games and Playing Books. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. O’Donnell, Casey. Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014. Payne, Matthew T. Playing War: Military Video Games after 9/11. New York: New York University Press, 2016. Piaget, Jean, and Bärbel Inhelder. The Psychology of the Child. Second Edition. New York: Basic Books, 1972. Pickard, Catriona. “Archaeology et al: An Indo-European Study.” PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2018. Postan, Michael M. Fact and Relevance: Essays on Historical Method. London: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Quiroga, Stefan A. “Race, Battlefield 1 and the White Mythic Space of the First World War.” Alicante Journal of English Studies 31 (2018): 187–193. Rabinowitz, Peter J. “Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences.” Critical Inquiry 4, no. 1 (1977): 121–141. Rawitsch, Don, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger. The Oregon Trail. Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium. PC. 1974. Rejack, Brian. “Toward a Virtual Reenactment of History: Video Games and the Recreation of the Past.” Rethinking History 11, no. 3 (2007): 411–425. Roegiers, Sara, and Frederik Truyen. “History is 3D: Presenting a Framework for Meaningful Historical Representations in Digital Media.” In New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage, edited by Yehuda E. Kalay, Thomas Kvan and Janice Affleck, 67–77. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2007. Roth, Jenny, Michaela Huber, Annkatrin Juenger, and James H. Liu. “It’s About Valence: Historical Continuity or Historical Discontinuity as a Threat to Social Identity.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology 5, no. 2 (2017): 320–341.

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Rughiniș, Razvan, and Stefania Matei. “Play to Remember: The Rhetoric of Time in Memorial Video Games.” In Proceedings from International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction August 2–7, 2015, Los Angeles, CA., 628–639. Cham: Springer, 2015. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Schell, Jesse. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann, 2008. Schreier, Jason. Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games are Made. New York: Harper, 2017. Schreier, Jason. Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry. Grand Central Publishing, 2021. Šisler, Vit. “Digital Arabs: Representation in Video Games.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 11, no. 2 (2008): 203–220. Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Frontier Myth in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Macmillan, 1992. de Smale, Stephanie, Martijn J. L. Kors, and Alyea M. Sandovar. “The Case of This War of Mine: A Production Studies Perspective on Moral Game Design.” Games and Culture 14, no. 4 (2017): 387–409. Smethurst, Tobi, and Stef Craps. “Towards an Understanding of Drone Fiction.” Journal of War & Culture Studies 12, no. 1 (2019): 85–102. Solum, Lawrence B. “The Fixation Thesis: The Role of Historical Fact in Original Meaning.” Notre Dame Law Review 91, no. 1 (2015): 1–78. Švelch, Jan. “Beyond Paratexts, Towards Paratextuality: A Case for Granular Analysis of Video Game Paratextuality.” In Proceedings from Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) 2018, July 25–28, 2018, Turin, Italy, http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/DIGRA_2018_paper_ 157.pdf Švelch, Jan. “Paratextuality in Game Studies: A Theoretical Review and Citation Analysis.” Game Studies 20, no. 2 (2020), http://gamestudies.org/2002/articles/jan_svelch. Taylor, Richard. “E3: WWI Letters Inspire Video Game.” BBC News, June 13, 2014. Accessed October 26, 2021. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-27826762. Torstendahl, Rolf. “Fact, Truth, and Text: The Quest for a Firm Basis for Historical Knowledge Around 1900.” History and Theory 42 (2003): 305–331. Turner, Victor. Liminal to liminoid, In Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology. New York: Rice University, 1974. Ubisoft. “Valiant Hearts: The Great War® | Ubisoft (UK).” Accessed February 22, 2022. https://www. ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/valiant-hearts. Ubisoft Montpellier. Valiant Hearts: The Great War. Ubisoft. PC. 2014. Ubisoft Montreal. Far Cry Primal. Ubisoft. PC. 2016. Ubisoft Quebec. Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. Ubisoft. PC. 2015. University of Kentucky. “UK Linguists Imagine Ancient Languages for Video Game, Far Cry Primal by Ubisoft.” NewsWise, March 2, 2016. Accessed November 6, 2021. https://www.newswise.com/ar ticles/uk-linguists-imagine-ancient-languages-for-video-game-far-cry-primal-by-ubisoft2. Vansina, Jan. Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology. Piscataway: Transaction Publishers, 1973. Westera, Wim, Rob J. Nadolski, Hans G. K. Hummel, and Iwan G. J. H. Wopereis. “Serious Games for Higher Education: A Framework for Reducing Design Complexity.” Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 24, no. 5 (2008): 420–432.

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Westerside, Andrew, and Jussi Holopainen. “Sites of Play: Locating Gameplace in Red Dead Redemption 2.” In Proceedings of Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) 2019, August 6–10, 2019, Kyoto, Japan. http://www.digra.org/digital-library/forums/digra-19/. Whitson, Jennifer R., Bart Simon, and Felan Parker. “The Missing Producer: Rethinking Indie Cultural Production in Terms of Entrepreneurship, Relational Labour, and Sustainability.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 24, no. 2 (2021): 606–627. Williams, Peter K. “An Analysis of the Ethnographic Significance of the Iñupiaq Video Game Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna).” Masters dissertation, Florida State University Libraries, 2018. Xie, Philip F., and Geoffrey Wall. “Visitors’ Perceptions of Authenticity at Cultural Attractions in Hainan, China.” International Journal of Tourism Research 4, no. 5 (2002): 353–366. Yilmaz, Kaya. “Postmodernism and its Challenge to the Discipline of History: Implications for History Education.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 42, no. 7 (2010): 779–795. Yusoff, Amri, Richard Crowder, Lester Gilbert, and Gary Wills. “A Conceptual Framework for Serious Games.” In Proceedings of the 2009 Ninth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), July 15–17, 2009, Riga, Latvia, 21–23. Washington: IEEE Computer Society, 2009.

Nick Webber

The past as (para)text – relating histories of game experience to games as texts Then, out of nowhere, the biggest dragon we’d ever seen shows up and takes out our warrior in one swipe. Within a few seconds, without any chance to react, we were all dead. Word spread fairly quickly across the server about what was going on, but at that moment it was one of the most startling things I’d ever seen in a game.1

This quote is drawn from a series of blog posts written in 2012 by one EverQuest player, about their experiences in the game around a decade beforehand. Posted publicly on the gaming community site Giant Bomb, they are, or are concerned with, things we might variously refer to as memory, history, fanwork or lore. There are eight posts in the sequence, followed by a ninth post from 2014 inviting others to add their own recollections. This call attracted 75 responses, demonstrating a reasonable level of interest and engagement. Such attempts to capture historical records of past gaming experiences are not unusual, nor are they limited to EverQuest. Rather, these activities can be seen in some form around a range of games, both online and off.2 I use the term “historical” to describe them, which sets them immediately into a relationship with the past, and I use “history” to mean a variety of discourse about the past, following the interpretation of historiographers and literary theorists such as Keith Jenkins, Hayden White, and Alun Munslow.3 The question that concerns me in this chapter, however, is not whether or not these practices can be thought of

 Marino, “Tales from Norrath: Don’t Wake the Dragon,” Giant Bomb, September 14, 2012, accessed May 10, 2022, https://www.giantbomb.com/profile/marino/blog/tales-from-norrath-dontwake-the-dragon/96306/.  I have written extensively about these practices elsewhere, both as sole author and in collaboration. See, for example, Nick Webber, “EVE Online as History,” in Internet Spaceships are Serious Business: An EVE Online Reader, ed. Marcus Carter, Kelly Bergstrom and Darryl Woodford (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 189–209; “Table Talk: Archives of Role-Playing’s Personal Pasts,” Analog Game Studies 2019 Role-Playing Game Summit special issue (2019), https://analogga mestudies.org/2019/12/archives-of-role-playings-personal-pasts/; Nick Webber and E. Charlotte Stevens, “History, Fandom, and Online Game Communities,” in Historia Ludens: The Playing Historian, ed. Alexander von Lünen et al. (New York and London: Routledge, 2020), 189–203.  Keith Jenkins, Re-thinking History, 3rd ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 2003); Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973) and The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Nick Webber, Birmingham City University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-005

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as history. Here, I am concerned with how we can understand accounts like these, along with other, player-produced historical materials, in terms of paratextuality. At the heart of such an enquiry are a broader set of questions about, firstly, the relationship between these accounts and their originating games, and between these accounts, the past and other histories; and secondly, about the textuality, and authorship, of games, history and the past.

Paratextuality In reflecting on these issues, I am sensitive to recent interventions by Martin Barker and by Jan Švelch, which encourage us to think more carefully about paratext as a concept.4 They note the imprecision with which paratext is often used, reminding us that Gérard Genette warned against “rashly proclaiming that ‘all is paratext’,”5 and offer redefinitions of paratext to respond to this proliferation of usage, and to the employment of the term in relation to a diversity of texts far beyond Genette’s codex book model. Notably, both authors move away from the word “paratext” itself, preferring terminology which expresses paratextuality as a quality rather than a label. Barker proposes the idea of “ancillary or paratextual [A/P] materials” which exist “because of and in relation” to “works,” which are themselves complex and “quite formed,” “long past being simply ‘texts’.”6 Švelch identifies and critiques three different conceptions of the paratext, which he describes as “original,” “expanded” and “reduced,” before rejecting “paratext” in favour of “paratextuality,” “as a quality of a cultural artifact that grounds it within a socio-historical reality while acknowledging that the same element can also exhibit other qualities.”7 Barker and Švelch also remind us of key ideas from Genette’s original formulation, around authorship and hierarchy.

Historical Representation (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Alun Munslow, Narrative and History, 2nd ed. (London: Red Globe Press, 2019).  Martin Barker, “Speaking of ‘Paratexts’: A Theoretical Revisitation,” Journal of Fandom Studies 5, no. 3 (2017), doi:10.1386/jfs.5.3.235_1; Jan Švelch, “Paratexts to Non-Linear Media Texts: Paratextuality in Video Game Culture” (PhD diss., Charles University, Prague, 2017) and “Paratextuality in Game Studies: A Theoretical Review and Citation Analysis,” Game Studies 20, no. 2 (2020), http://gamestudies.org/2002/articles/jan_svelch.  Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 407.  Barker, “Speaking of ‘Paratexts’,” 242. Original emphasis.  Švelch, “Paratextuality in Game Studies.”

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These observations are persuasive, and in what follows I emphasise conceptions of paratextuality rather than paratexts as such. I am unconvinced that paratextuality is a quality of a cultural artefact in itself, however, and so my emphasis falls on Barker’s observation that paratextuality exists in relation: there is no paratextuality in isolation. I focus, therefore, on the qualities of the relationships “between” cultural artefacts and/or texts, including parts of texts in which paratextual relations are constructed internally.8 Taken alongside attention to authorship, this approach addresses concerns expressed by Švelch that paratextuality is often conflated with other forms of transtextuality (such as metatextuality).9 In addition, it also gives us greater flexibility to recognise that multiple instances of paratextuality may occur between texts; that paratextual relationships may flow both ways between texts; and that paratextual relationships are not necessarily permanent, being subject to fluctuation and change. Indeed, Mia Consalvo draws our attention to “situations when games themselves become paratexts – supporting texts – to other more central media artifacts,” which “demonstrates their contingent nature in the realm of meaning making – and the contingent placement of any such text.”10

Gaming remnants and the afterlife of game experience The excerpt which opens this chapter represents just one form of the myriad remnants of game experiences. The experience of a game “at play” is, for many scholars, ephemeral – as Jaakko Stenros observes of analogue roleplaying games, “the moment they end, at the point of completion, they cease to exist.”11 Yet when a game ends – is completed, set aside, or paused and not resumed – traces of it remain. For roleplaying games, these include, as Stenros indicates, “memories of the game from their character’s point-of-view, in addition to an assortment of props and costumes (live action role-playing games), character sheet and notes

 Švelch, “Paratexts to Non-Linear Media Texts,” 49–50.  See, for example, Švelch, “Paratextuality in Game Studies.” See Regina Seiwald, Chapter 1.  Mia Consalvo, “When Paratexts become Texts: De-centering the Game-as-text,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34, no. 2 (2017): 6, doi: 10.1080/15295036.2017.1304648.  Stenros in Anders Drachen et al., “Role-Playing Games: The State of Knowledge,” Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory. Proceedings of DiGRA 2009 (Brunel University, 2009), 3, http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/09287.23528.pdf.

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(table-top role-playing games, freeform).”12 In respect of digital games, Souvik Mukherjee identifies “player diaries, After Action Reports, “Let’s Play” video recordings and a series of related sources such as reviews, previews, message-board posts, screenshots and trailers” as amongst the diverse range of materials in which the “so-called ‘disappearing’ game narrative” is recorded and preserved.13 For Mukherjee, these remnants constitute paratexts, building on the “expanded” definition (per Švelch) advanced in game studies by Mia Consalvo and Steven E. Jones amongst others, and elsewhere notably by Jonathan Gray.14 They are essential to the experience of video game stories and a primary means through which game narrative might be accessed, analysed and understood.15 They are also temporally situated16 historical texts, with a fluid position within (trans)textual relations and the process of meaning making. Much as their value is often understood to lie in their capacity to “capture,” “record,” “preserve” or otherwise stand as witness to a moment of play, these remnants have lives of their own. Their presence in archives and collections is called for17 and made reality.18 They are cited (for example, in historical work), published and republished (by players and developers alike), and updated, amended and reworked, to correct errors or for new purposes. Sometimes they are even (re)incorporated into a game text to create new experiences, for example through a New Game+ feature.

Textuality and games There is, then, a significant diversity of gaming remnants, and of relationships with and between those remnants. I refer to these interrelationships as transtextual, as they exist between and in relation to artefacts which I would consider

 Stenros in Drachen et al., “Role-Playing Games,” 3.  Souvik Mukherjee, Video Games and Storytelling: Reading Games and Playing Books (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 104.  Mia Consalvo, Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2007) and “When Paratexts Become Texts;” Steven E. Jones, The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies (New York and London: Routledge, 2008); Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (New York: New York University Press, 2010).  Mukherjee, Video Games, 118.  Genette, Paratexts, 4: “the date of its appearance and, if need be, its disappearance (when?).”  Carolyn Jong, quoted in Mukherjee, Video Games, 114. See also James Newman, Best Before: Video Games, Supersession and Obsolescence (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 154–158.  Webber, “Table Talk.”

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texts, based on a broad interpretation of the idea of textuality. As Barker notes,19 Genette’s own definition of text is rather sparse – “a more or less lengthy sequence of verbal utterances more or less containing meaning”20 – and subsequent interpretations of textuality often expand the concept into something more appropriate to the contemporary media environment. Nick Couldry, for example, defines the text as “a complex of interrelated meanings which its readers tend to interpret as a discrete, unified whole,”21 a perspective further nuanced when “reading is no longer exclusively related to the process of decoding letters or interpreting static images, but it is also linked with an invitation (or challenge) to assemble, play, activate, download or install.”22 Establishing games themselves as texts would therefore seem straightforward, but this has not been uncontroversial in game studies, where textuality was understood as linked to narratology in early discussions in the field.23 As with paratextuality, conceptions of game textuality build on ideas applied to printed texts, extending them into the digital space through ideas such as “cybertext,” “machinic text” and “cryptotexts, endotexts, and spatiotexts.”24 While games are now quite widely seen as texts, the specific nature of game textuality is debated. The nature of this textuality is important here for a number of reasons, not least as it should be clear exactly “what kind of text” the paratextual relationships of these remnants point towards. What exactly is a game text? In Mukherjee’s analysis, paratextuality is constructed in relation to an “ephemeral text, which the player plays out and changes with each gameplay,” a “configurative,” “experiential” and ultimately “‘disappearing’ game narrative.” It is this narrative which paratexts such as After Action Reports record.25 The implication that narrative might represent the limits of the textuality of games is echoed in Espen Aarseth’s claim that “games are not ‘textual’ or at least not primarily textual [. . .] a central ‘text’ does not exist – merely context.” For Aarseth, games consist of three aspects:

 Barker, “Speaking of ‘Paratexts’,” 240.  Gérard Genette, “Introduction to the Paratext,” trans. Marie Maclean, New Literary History 22, no. 2 (1991): 261.  Nick Couldry, Inside Culture: Re-imagining the Method of Cultural Studies (London: Sage, 2000), 70–71.  Daniela Côrtes Maduro, preface to Digital Media and Textuality: From Creation to Archiving, ed. Daniela Côrtes Maduro (Bremen: Transcript, 2017), 9.  Mukherjee, Video Games, 5–6; Švelch, “Paratexts to Non-Linear Media Texts,” 2–3.  Espen Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Mukherjee, Video Games; John Aycock and Patrick Finn, “Uncivil Engineering: A Textual Divide in Game Studies,” Game Studies 19, no. 3 (2019), http://gamestudies. org/1903/articles/aycockfinn.  Mukherjee, Video Games, 103–4.

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rules, a material/semiotic system, and gameplay: “of these three, the semiotic system is the most coincidental to the game.”26 Thus games “can exist without actual, current players, as material and conceptual game objects (‘texts’).”27 The sense of the game text as the inert, stable, or “static” conception of a game is visible elsewhere in older game studies literature,28 but more recent work recognises that many games – particularly sandbox games – are in fact texts “in flux,” “constantly being updated and transformed through updates, patches, and ongoing development.”29 Furthermore, many writers see players as a core component of the game-as-text. Clara Fernández-Vara, for example, insists that “the player is a necessary part of the text: [. . .] the game is not really a complete text without a player who interprets its rules and interacts with it.”30 Similarly, Tae-Jin Yoon and Hyejung Cheon observe that “the game text is never complete; gamers attempt to produce the completed form of text from the semistructured text.”31 This adoption of a Barthesian conception of text as something which “exists only when caught up in a discourse” and which “is experienced only in an activity, in a production” connects directly with the idea of players as cocreators of video games, something particularly common in discussions of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft, and in respect of fan practices more generally.32

 Espen Aarseth, “Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation,” in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004), 47–8.  Espen Aarseth, “I Fought the Law: Transgressive Play and The Implied Player”, Situated Play, Proceedings of DiGRA 2007 Conference (University of Tokyo, 2007), 130, http://www.digra.org/wpcontent/uploads/digital-library/07313.03489.pdf.  See for example Consalvo, Cheating, 21.  Marcus Carter, “Emitexts and Paratexts: Propaganda in EVE Online,” Games and Culture 10, no. 4 (2015): 315, doi:10.1177/1555412014558089.  Clara Fernández-Vara, Introduction to Game Analysis, 2nd ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 2019), 7.  Tae-Jin Yoon and Hyejung Cheon, “Game playing as transnational cultural practice: A case study of Chinese gamers and Korean MMORPGs,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 17, no. 5 (2014): 471, doi:10.1177/1367877913505172.  Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 57–58. On productive players and fandom, see for example T.L. Taylor, Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2006), 125–50, 155–156 and Hannah Wirman, “On Productivity and Game Fandom,” Transformative Works and Cultures 3 (2009), doi:10.3983/twc.2009.0145.

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(Para)Textuality and the past If game texts are dynamic, then, given their textuality is shaped by further development and by player interpretation, paratextual relations with these texts will necessarily be complex and themselves dynamic. In addition, further complexities arise when we consider that game remnants are not only texts, but also a form of history. When discussing paratextuality, scholars have tended to concern themselves with text A having a paratextual relationship to text B, with all of the implications of hierarchy that entails. Yet it is of course possible that text A can simultaneously be paratextual to texts X, Y and Z. This not only challenges the notion of hierarchy somewhat – if a text shapes our experience of a number of other texts, it would be difficult to understand it as subordinate to them – but also invites questions of just how paratextuality functions. How do relationships with multiple textual “authorities” shape paratextuality across those texts? To pick up on Genette’s “airlock” analogy,33 what happens when the airlock leads to more than one place? Does this matter? This is of concern with respect to game remnants because their relationship is not only with a game text, however defined, but also with a past game experience (which may, or may not, be the same thing). As historical discourse, they relate to the past, again in a potentially paratextual manner. The textuality of history has been extensively discussed over several decades: for example, in the title of her collected essays, Gabrielle Spiegel refers to history as The Past as Text.34 This textuality emerges from “the unavailability of a full and authentic past, a lived material existence, that has not already been mediated by the surviving texts of the society in question.”35 We predominantly experience history through a narrative which is, as Linda Hutcheon notes, “always already textualized, always already interpreted.”36 This postmodernist perspective on historiography does not reject the existence of the past but, given history’s mediated and textualised nature, asks “how we can know real past events today, except through their traces, their texts, the facts we construct and to which we grant meaning.”37 We might ask the same question of past game experiences, with a similar answer.

 Genette, Paratexts, 408.  Gabrielle Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).  Louis Montrose, “Renaissance Literary Studies and the Subject of History,” English Literary Renaissance 16, no. 1 (1986): 8.  Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (New York and London: Routledge, 1988), 143.  Hutcheon, Poetics, 225.

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The idea that, as Spiegel puts it, “history is always a written account of the past that is itself based on the mediatory texts left by the past”38 resonates strongly with Mukherjee’s remarks on After Action Reports, which he refers to as paratexts. Discussing video game narrative as an assemblage, he says: The game narrative itself cannot be analysed as it lasts only as long as the game is being played and is available when each action in the game is performed or played out. The way forward in attempting any analysis of the game’s story is then, to access the game narrative via the paratextual elements of the assemblage.39

The ephemeral nature of the narrative is critical here, but so too is its pastness. Mukherjee adopts a dictionary definition of an After Action Report, which indicates its nature as historical discourse, “a detailed critical summary or analysis of a past event [. . .].”40 Thus, the relationship between the AAR and the game narrative is paratextual, and appears to directly correspond to that between history and the past. The implication of this is that we can consider history to be in a paratextual relationship with the past, and the past itself to be a text, a position which Hutcheon sees as “semiotic idealism.”41 Certainly, the idea is challenging, and of course Mukherjee is concerned here with narrative specifically, which we might already see as a form of textualisation, and thus mediation, of game events. As I note above, in many perspectives the game text goes beyond narrative to incorporate the player, and the remnants under discussion here are of players’ experiences in relation to, and as part of, this text. The nature of this as a discussion connected to cultural experience evokes Clifford Geertz’ thinking about the textuality of cultural forms, “as imaginative works built out of social materials.”42 The Balinese cockfight, the centrepiece of one of Geertz’ best-known essays, can be understood as a space where aspects of the cultural ethos and private sensibilities of the Balinese are “spelled out externally in a collective text [. . .] the two are near enough

 Spiegel, Past as Text, 48.  Mukherjee, Video Games, 118.  Mukherjee, Video Games, 110. Here, AARs have much in common with related outcomes from analogue games, including battle reports, dramatisations, and early forms of “actual play” – see Jon Peterson, Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-Playing Games (San Diego: Unreason Press, 2012) and Evan Torner, “Actual Play Reports: Forge Theory and the Forums,” in Watch Us Roll: Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop Role-Playing Games, ed. Shelley Jones (Jefferson: McFarland, 2021), 20–31.  Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism, second edition (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 78.  Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 449.

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alike to be articulated in the symbolics of a single such text.”43 Importantly, the value and meaning in this text are experienced through a series of repeated events which reproduce a similar cultural experience: Enacted and re-enacted, so far without end, the cockfight enables the Balinese, as, read and reread, Macbeth enables us, to see a dimension of his own subjectivity. As he watches fight after fight [. . .] he grows familiar with it and what it has to say to him.44

The textuality of cultural texts, and the experience of them, would thus seem to be constructed over time, through the repetition of practice and process, and ways of doing and being. Is this sufficient, though, to pass through the “barrier” which separates the past from history’s textualisation of it? From Geertz’ own later comments on text and the “text analogy,” he considered the process of textualisation to be about “the fixation of meaning from the flow of events,” as with the inscription into text of the meaning of a speech event described by Paul Ricoeur.45 As Geertz points out, this is what history does in relation to “what happened,” implying that the inscription of meaning is temporally distant from the event once again. In some regards, a sense of distance is integral to our thinking about history, certainly in academic terms. Critical distance, the quality which has long underpinned many of history’s problematic claims to “truth” and “objectivity,” situates historical work in both metatextual and intertextual terms in relation to other texts, but makes no argument for paratextuality. And while some game remnants may appear to establish critical distance through elapsed time – the opening quotation of this chapter describes events from a decade before, and there is an entire genre of blog posts about the rediscovery of old character sheets – they generally depend upon memory along with direct experience to establish their authority, as I explain below. However, there is something in the consideration of memories as textual in themselves due to “the conditions that language itself imposes on thought [. . .] In Jacques Derrida’s words, writing actually ‘founds memory’.”46 Memory sits outside the past, then, as something which can create only texts; like history, it

 Geertz, Interpretation, 449.  Geertz, Interpretation, 451–452.  Clifford Geertz, “Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought,” The American Scholar 49, no. 2 (1980), 175; and see Paul Ricoeur, “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text,” New Literary History 5, no. 1 (1973): 93.  Peter Middleton and Tim Woods, Literatures of Memory: History, Time, and Space in Postwar Writing (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 6, citing Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 228.

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cannot reproduce events.47 Yet history, in the broad discursive sense, may serve as the paratextual threshold and facilitator of our access to memory, even where (especially where) it does not critically address it. History’s paratextual relations, therefore, are with the texts that have gone before it, shaped by the progress of time and loss which brings it ever closer to the event horizon of the inaccessible past. Thus, history may claim paratextual (and meta – and intertextual) relationships with texts now lost, something commonplace in medieval historical writing, for example. Its paratextual connections thus flicker and fade across time, as citation becomes preservation. Similarly, history’s paratextuality with respect to memory is shaped by the process of remembering and forgetting. The cultural dissonance of particular histories speaks to the need to know about the “main” text, to see history in relation to the political discourse within which it is produced, and the cultural-historical context of its production. This again makes an argument for its paratextuality: as Genette suggests, and Švelch reminds us, paratextuality creates a link between a text and its socio-historical reality.48 And the status of all of history’s paratextual relationships are of course subject to conceptions of authorship.

Authorship The limits of the text and its authorship play a central role in defining paratextuality as analytically distinct from other forms of transtextuality. Although many authors are willing to look past this authorship criterion, Švelch rightly reminds us that this is of significant importance in distinguishing between paratexts and metatexts.49 In his original conception, Genette indicated that paratexts were characterised “by an authorial intention and assumption of responsibility,”50 and identified three potential “senders”51 of paratextual messages: the author of the main text (“authorial paratext”); that text’s publisher (“publisher’s paratext”); and a third party whose contribution receives official approval or recognition: what Genette refers to as an “allographic paratext,” and often thinks of in terms of a preface.52  Hutcheon, Poetics, 154.  Genette demonstrates this, for example, through his canal-lock and airlock analogies: Paratexts, 407–408. Švelch explores this in some depth in “Paratexts to Non-Linear Media Texts,” 64–86.  Švelch, “Paratextuality in Game Studies.”  Genette, Paratexts, 3.  Or “addressers:” see Genette, “Introduction to the Paratext,” 266.  Genette, Paratexts, 8–9.

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Transferred to video games, the construction of authorship is considerably more complex than for books, given the collaborative nature of game production, and Švelch proposes six different kinds of paratextuality: “(1) authorial, (2) worker’s, (3) publisher’s, (4) distributor’s, (5) retailer’s, and (6) allographic.”53 Authorship is a concern for our analysis of game textuality even without considering the broader sense of “text” defined by the context of interpretation, and the idea that the player is integral to the game text. Stephanie Jennings refers to the “distributed authorship of video games” as “works” (rather than “texts”) in Barthes’ sense: “the static container of the authored contents.”54 Equally, in his discussion of a game as a literature-machine, Mukherjee conceives of the game text as machinic, with a “wreader” who creates the text through gameplay.55 Acknowledging early game studies ideas that authorship of game narratives is procedural, he sees it “as an ongoing process of interaction between the game and the player.”56 Play not only completes the text, therefore, but is itself an act of authorship. This gives texts produced by players and connected with their game experiences a robust claim to paratextuality, at least with respect to that specific “version” (or playthrough) of the game text.57 The author’s voice in historical writing is often downplayed. Hutcheon notes how history typically attempts to hide the narrator and narrative process from the reader,58 and Michel de Certeau draws our attention to the use of “nous” (“we”) which “makes it possible to write ‘without a subject of writing’” as Philippe Carrard observes. According to de Certeau, “‘we’ stages a social contract ‘among ourselves,’ in which a plural subject ‘utters’ the discourse.” Thus, a “place” opens up where that discourse can “originate without being reduced to it.”59 However, contemporary

 Švelch, “Paratexts to Non-Linear Media Texts,” 77.  Stephanie Jennings, “Co-Creation and the Distributed Authorship of Video Games,” in Examining the Evolution of Gaming and Its Impact on Social, Cultural, and Political Perspectives, ed. Keri Duncan Valentine and Lucas John Jensen (Hershey: IGI Global, 2016), 124. https://www.igi-global. com/chapter/co-creation-and-the-distributed-authorship-of-video-games/157619.  Mukherjee, Video Games, 48–72.  Mukherjee, Video Games, 149–150.  Although Švelch would disagree: “Paratexts to Non-Linear Media Texts,” 76.  Hutcheon, Poetics, 91–2.  Michel De Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 63; Philippe Carrard, “History as a Kind of Writing: Michel de Certeau and the Poetics of Historiography,” South Atlantic Quarterly 100, no. 2 (2001): 470–471, doi:10.1215/00382876100-2-465. Note that I move between Tom Conley’s 1988 translation and Carrard’s own rendering here as I find the latter reads more clearly in some cases.

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historians still view history as “an act of authorial narrative creation,”60 meaning that the collective sensibility here does not open discussions of historical game experiences to wider claims of authorship and thus of paratextuality. Claims to (historical) authorship are also intimately connected with the idea that history might have a paratextual relationship with memory, and specifically here to the idea that our remnants reference (personal) game experiences.

Authorial complexity With all this said, it seems reasonable to understand our opening epigraph as having a paratextual relationship with EverQuest. Written by a player, about their game experience, it is paratextual to the game text of which their play is part, and of which they are therefore (co-)author. At the same time, this account also constitutes historical discourse with, arguably, a paratextual relationship with the memory of that experience. This paratextuality can help to structure our engagements with, and interest in, this game and that past – the recollection draws us in, encourages us to ask why, and what happened next as it narrates an affecting event in a somewhat nostalgic mode. We begin to see the interaction between the two manifestations of paratextuality shaping one another. The relations of player/author and texts here are, however, comparatively straightforward. Other forms of game remnants pose additional questions. As Sandy Baldwin and Gabriel Tremblay-Gaudette indicate, it is not always clear precisely who is the author of a complex media text.61 They use the example of the performance piece Poems You Should Know, which employs a multiplayer video game – Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – as the basis for a performance of (wellknown) poetry, both written and spoken. This is, admittedly, an unusual case, but there are similarly complex cases in respect of game remnants. Amongst the most striking are those in which a developer or publisher incorporates game remnants authored by players into a game’s textuality. In some respects, this dissolves concerns about direct player authorship in the certainty that these texts now have allographic authority underpinning their paratextual relations. This incorporation happens more or less directly; one of the more direct instances is that of game saves. Sunghee Cho has argued, however, that the action of

 Julia Nitz and Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, “Towards a Historiographic Narratology,” Spiel 30, no. 1 (2011): 2.  Sandy Baldwin and Gabriel Tremblay-Gaudette, “Pwning Gamers, One Text at a Time,” in Maduro, Digital Media and Textuality, 58.

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loading and saving video games is itself a form of player authorship.62 Does a game save thus have an existence independently of the game text, and a paratextual relationship with it, as well as a claim to capture the past of player experience? Or is it simply “part of” the game text? Does the answer to these questions change if that save forms the basis of a New Game+, where it informs a new iteration of the game text – for example in the Dark Souls or Final Fantasy series? How might transtextual relations be understood if that save informs an iteration of a different game text – for example when Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age: Inquisition allow the player to draw in a save game from the previous instalment in the series? It seems reasonable to interpret these relationships as paratextual, but also as increasingly intertextual and ultimately hypertextual. Amongst the most complex situations concern extended texts produced by players, like those mentioned at the outset of the chapter. Player stories and memories emerge from a range of games, but those concerning massively multiplayer online games are among the most visible. This is due in part to their use by game publishers in promotional materials, something particularly pronounced for the game EVE Online.63 Significantly, these promotions foreground these as “historical” player experiences, suggesting that this is important in their value and function as paratexts – history sells. This interaction, between player experiences and stories, and the authorship of CCP Games (EVE’s developer/publisher), was perhaps most apparent at EVE’s tenth anniversary, when CCP ran a competition – True Stories from the First Decade – to encourage players to submit stories of their EVE experiences. The winning story, “The Mittani Sends His Regards: Disbanding Band of Brothers,” was turned into a comic book series by a third-party team, and later published as a graphic novel.64 In addition, videos were produced to promote the competition, and later to historicise it in order to promote the graphic novel, creating an intricate mesh of paratextual, and other transtextual, relationships.65 The specific intermingling of these different roles and responsibilities means that the authorship of the True Stories graphic novel fulfils all three of Genette’s

 Sunghee Cho, “The Effects of Game Saves on Player Story Generation,” Journal of Korea Game Society 9, no. 1 (2009): 16, 19.  See, for example, CCP Games, “Recording History: The Bloodbath of B-R5RB,” YouTube, 20 May 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O56g8KC6CM; CCP Games, “EVE Online – Celebrating 15 Years of EVE”, YouTube, May 6 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKHLFeVMgXY.  Daniel Way et al., EVE True Stories (Milwaukee, OR: Dark Horse Books, 2014).  CCP Games, “True Stories from EVE Online’s First Decade,” YouTube, April 17 2013, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLFVEG9gB20; CCP Games, “True Stories – an EVE Online Comic Book,” YouTube, August 1, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTT0K_u9XyY.

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criteria for paratextual material: its incorporation of EVE’s fictional setting represents the authorship of the game developer; its representation of player experience as a “True Story from New Eden” speaks to player-authorship;66 its orchestration reflects the responsibility and direction of the publisher; and its articulation of a narrative and visual representation of the EVE universe represents an allographic act of authorship by a third-party team sanctioned by the publisher. It is also worth noting, however, that not only did some players dispute this account of events,67 but this was not the only version of this story that was produced. The journalist Andrew Groen wrote a book-length history of EVE’s player conflicts the following year, which told a version of this story.68 However, Groen was neither an EVE player nor was he commissioned by CCP, and his book had the critical distance that the graphic novel lacked. His particular inscription of meaning, therefore, was situated in a significantly different set of transtextual relations from the True Stories project.

Where does this leave us? If we recognise players’ roles as game authors, through their participation in the creation of the text, then all player-generated material is potentially paratextual to the games they play. This is essentially a more specific version of the idea that “any text is potentially and in fact inevitably paratextual,” and that Genette simply decided “to engage with categories of texts that [we]re, in his opinion, somehow more paratextual than others.”69 The significance, however, lies in the direction of the paratextual relationship, and the way that player-created material can structure our engagement with a game text. As I noted earlier in this chapter, it is neither inevitable nor necessary that paratextual relationships are one-way or stable. A consideration of the paratextual qualities of history helps to draw out this contingent nature, even as the dynamic sense of the game text increases the likelihood of change. This fluidity is also important in considering the hierarchical overtones of paratextuality, and the relationship between paratextuality and other forms of

 Frontmatter to Way et al. EVE True Stories. New Eden is the fictional universe in which EVE Online is set.  For further discussion, see Webber, “EVE Online as History,” 201.  Andrew Groen, Empires of EVE: A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online (Chicago: Lightburn Industries, 2015), 214–217.  Švelch, “Paratexts to Non-Linear Media Texts,” 65–66.

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transtextuality. Texts each sit at the centre of a web of transtextual relationships; in some of these they play a subordinate role to a “main” text (to which they direct emphasis and offer a context), even as other texts do the same for them. Texts can have multiple relationships with one another which reflect their own variety, and relationships between historical remnants and game texts can reflect multiple transtextual connections. Any sense of subordinacy must be understood in this context. Even the most critical historical work is not purely metatextual in respect of its object of study (which is itself textualised, as the past comes to us only in textual form). Such fluidity is represented well in another domain of games and history, historical games. There, history – often as part of claims to “accuracy” – is employed in a paratextual mode by game developers, even as the game itself drives players to that history. The relationship of history with the past itself is not generally paratextual, although it might become so in situations where we could conceive of (part of) the past as a text. History’s relationships are ordinarily with textual forms. The expectation that academic history will be critical places emphasis on metatextuality over paratextuality, although a more open sense of historical work as discourse permits more personal, paratextual relations. This perhaps characterises the interplay between the historical and game-orientated aspects of game remnants. As they are experiential in their conception, they represent a direct, personal – potentially affective – relationship with the past and with the game. This seems to offer further support for players’ claims to be co-authors of game texts. To return to Geertz, it is through player action that meaning is inscribed, completing games’ textuality. This meaning is often reinscribed, through further play or through deliberate additional action, in other textual forms, which sit in paratextual relationships both with the game text itself and with the experiential past which these forms capture. Such remnants may prompt players to return to old games, many years later, articulating nostalgia and a desire to revisit the text.

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Webber, Nick. “EVE Online as History.” In Internet Spaceships are Serious Business: An EVE Online Reader, edited by Marcus Carter, Kelly Bergstrom and Darryl Woodford, 189–209. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Webber, Nick. “Table Talk: Archives of Role-Playing’s Personal Pasts.” Analog Game Studies 2019 RolePlaying Game Summit special issue (2019). https://analoggamestudies.org/2019/12/archives-ofrole-playings-personal-pasts/. Webber, Nick and E. Charlotte Stevens. “History, Fandom, and Online Game Communities.” In Historia Ludens: The Playing Historian, edited by Alexander von Lünen, Katherine J. Lewis, Benjamin Litherland and Pat Cullum, 189–203. New York and London: Routledge, 2020. White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. White, Hayden. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Wirman, Hannah. “On Productivity and Game Fandom.” Transformative Works and Cultures 3 (2009). doi:10.3983/twc.2009.0145. Yoon, Tae-Jin and Hyejung Cheon. “Game playing as transnational cultural practice: A case study of Chinese gamers and Korean MMORPGs.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 17, no. 5 (2014): 469–483. doi:10.1177/1367877913505172.

Section 3: Game reception and paratexts

Michael Pennington

Histories of Hearts of Iron IV: Understanding the past(s) through HOI4 Wiki Play is a decisive mode of studying digital games. Twentieth-century literature on play theory forms the foundations of game studies.1 The contemporary discipline situates play as an essential methodology that allows deeper critical insights.2 Yet, as James Newman proclaims, “videogames are disappearing.”3 Digital games exist within commercial contexts that privilege the next product, obscure the medium’s history, and restrict access.4 Physical game hardware degrades, with the digital nature of the medium presenting significant challenges to researchers exposed to the legal and ethical ramifications of using emulation to examine games that are otherwise unobtainable.5 These concerns are exacerbated by industry practices that leave titles stranded on digital storefronts at imminent risk from closure.6 As a consequence, unplayability is a central theme of preservation efforts. Through both the act of play and the systems on which they rely, digital games are intrinsically ephemeral. In the face of this increasing inaccessibility,

 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955); Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games, trans. Meyer Barash (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961); Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997).  Espen Aarseth, “Playing Research: Methodological Approaches to Game Analysis” (paper presented at the Australia DAC Conference, Melbourne, Australia, May 28–29, 2003); Aubrey Anable, Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 3; Adam Chapman, “Is Sid Meier’s Civilization history?” Rethinking History 17, no. 3 (2013), 315.  James Newman, Best Before: Videogames, Supersession and Obsolescence (London: Routledge, 2012), 1.  Newman, Best Before, 36.  James Newman and Iain Simons, “Time Extend: The Future of Curating, Preserving and Exhibiting Videogames: A White Paper” (paper presented at Before It’s Too Late: Saving Video Games, The BFI, London, February 21, 2020).  Chris Scullion, “Revealed: The 138 PlayStation Games that won’t be Available Anywhere after Store Closures,” Videogames Chronicle, April 4, 2021, accessed May 1, 2021, https://www.videoga meschronicle.com/news/revealed-the-138-playstation-games-that-wont-be-available-anywhereafter-store-closures. Michael Pennington, Bath Spa University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-006

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researchers should turn towards paratexts: “[M]aterial surrounding the game, which closely relates to it and connects to the game world.”7 This chapter considers how online wikis – websites where users collaborate to create a database of discoverable content within a game – can be deployed to interrogate the medium without play. By both exploring the content of online wikis, and using an online wiki to conduct historical enquiry, the chapter demonstrates the academic value of online wikis as paratexts, illustrating that it is possible to dually interrogate the history of games and how history can be represented in games through a paratextual resource which is often temporally, spatially, and authorially detached. Accessible to anyone with internet access, online wikis are “highly paratextual,” operating simultaneously as a text-based repository of information within a game and a repository of its production and development.8 There is scarce literature on the usefulness and application of online wikis within game scholarship. Sarah Wanenchak identifies wikis as a useful site where players collaborate to create resources for text-based roleplaying games.9 Research within fan studies also shows how online wikis provide opportunities for fans to preserve and commemorate specific titles or systems.10 Scholars across film and television studies and reception studies consider wikis within discourses on fan participation as exploitative labour, or as the valuable creation of industry textual works.11 However, much research considers

 Regina Seiwald, “The Ludic Nature of Paratexts. Playful Material in and Beyond Video Games,” in Paratextualizing Games: Investigations on the Paraphernalia and Peripheries of Play, eds. Benjamin Beil, Gundolf S. Freyermuth and Hanns Christian Schmidt (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2021), 294.  Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 262.  Sarah Wanenchak, “Tags, Threads, and Frames: Toward a Synthesis of Interaction Ritual and Livejournal Roleplaying,” Game Studies 10, no. 1 (2010), accessed February 18, 2021, http://gamestu dies.org/1001/articles/wanenchak.  Skot Deeming and David Murphy, “Pirates, Platforms and Players: Theorising Post-Consumer Fan Histories through the Sega Dreamcast,” in Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives, ed. Melanie Swalwell, Helen Stuckey and Angela Ndalianis (New York: Routledge, 2017), 79; Victor Navarro–Remesal, “Museums of Failure: Fans as Curators of ‘Bad,’ Unreleased, and ‘Flopped’ Videogames,” in Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives, ed. Melanie Swalwell, Helen Stuckey and Angela Ndalianis (New York: Routledge, 2017), 129; Benjamin Nicoll, “Sega Saturn Fan Sites and the Vernacular Curation of Videogame History,” in Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives, ed. Melanie Swalwell, Helen Stuckey and Angela Ndalianis (New York: Routledge 2017).  Bertha Chin, “Sherlockology and Galactica.tv: Fan Sites as Gifts or Exploited Labor?” Transformative Works and Cultures 15 (2014), accessed September 12, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.3983/twc. 2014.0513; Chris Comerford, “Participatory Toolboxes: Franchise Fan Wikis as Tools of Textual Production,” Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 15, no. 2 (2018): 285–296.

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wikis only in passing, listing them among a wider range of transmedia paratexts that players can consult to learn more about the technical intricacies of digital games.12 Through a textual analysis, the chapter identifies the usefulness of online wikis by examining how multiple aspects of history within the wiki for Hearts of Iron IV (HoIIV), the HOI4 Wiki, are projected to players. Released on 6 June 2016, HoIIV is a Second World War grand strategy PC game developed by Swedish company Paradox Development Studios (PDS) and published by Paradox Interactive (PI). The objective of HoIIV revolves around the conquest and control of territory; starting on 1 January 1936 or 14 August 1939, the player coordinates the military and political destiny of an existing nation from a fixed top-down perspective over a global map. This chapter illustrates how online wikis are valuable resources for historical enquiry on video games, reaffirming the duality of online wikis as conveyers of historical interpretations within digital games and as artefacts that preserve their development history. First, the chapter will situate the HOI4 Wiki as a hybrid construction of collaborative authorship distributed between fans and developers, considering who controls the content that is publicly visible, and outlining how to navigate and reference the resource. Following this discussion, the chapter explores how the HOI4 Wiki exists as a site of documented games history through its archival of patch notes and developer diaries associated with the production of HoIIV. The chapter then examines how the HOI4 Wiki conveys historical interpretation within HoIIV. This analysis encompasses how the wiki translates the computational and textual components of HoIIV’s National Focus Trees (NFTs) – a technology tree structure chronologically charting the period through historical or counterfactual events – into a text-based online format. Through consulting the HOI4 Wiki, it is possible to understand how HoIIV reproduces recognisable historical interpretations on the United Kingdom’s codebreaking efforts during the Second World War. As a paratextual repository that dually documents HoIIV’s production and in-game historical content, the HOI4 Wiki is a valuable resource that expands the scope of materials that researchers can use when studying history in games, and the history of games, without the use of play.

 Jaroslav Švelch, “Should the Monster Play Fair? Reception of Artificial Intelligence in Alien: Isolation,” Game Studies 20, no. 2 (2020), accessed January 30, 2021, http://gamestudies.org/2002/ar ticles/jaroslav_svelch; Theresa Krampe, “No Straight Answers: Queering Hegemonic Masculinity in BioWare’s Mass Effect,” Game Studies 18, no. 2 (2018), accessed February 18, 2021, http://gamestu dies.org/1802/articles/krampe; Timothy Welsh, “(Re)Mastering Dark Souls,” Game Studies 20, no. 4 (2020), accessed February 17, 2021, http://gamestudies.org/2004/articles/welsh.

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Identifying and accounting for the authorship of the HOI4 Wiki Online wikis are partly distinguished through their distinct authorship; it is instructive to consider who controls the publication and modification of content on the HOI4 Wiki. This contribution considers online wikis within a wide spectrum of “fan-made” or “developer-made” paratexts. These classifications build out from Gérard Genette’s distinction between peritext and epitext, and, as similarly seen in analysis on transitional electronic texts, account more precisely for the contemporary authorship structures of digital game content.13 Distinguishing a resource as predominantly “fan-made” or “developer-made” is also a useful consideration within current discourses that surrounding the disputed ownership of popular media content and the potential author-led prohibition of fan fiction.14 Online wikis – alongside material such as online forums, self-reflections, and fan faction – have commonly been the principal preserve of fans, existing as unofficial “fan-made” resources that document the history and content of popular culture products.15 On the wiki-hosting website Fandom, hundreds of thousands of fan-led wikis exist for popular and obscure cultural artefacts.16 In contrast, materials such as behind-the-scenes documentaries, concept art and audio commentaries, social media content, and cinematic or in-game trailers are “developermade” works categorised as material typically produced either by official video game development or marketing structures.17 This broader classification of “fanmade” or “developer-made” paratexts overlaps with John T. Caldwell’s dual identification of “‘top-down’ corporate paratexts,” such as branding promos, and “‘ground-up’ worker paratexts”, such as unauthorised blogs, within professional

 Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 4-5; Ellen McCracken, “Expanding Genette’s Epitext/Peritext Model for Transitional Electronic Literature: Centrifugal and Centripetal Vectors on Kindles and iPads,” Narrative 21, no. 1 (2013), 106.  Judith Fathallah, “Statements and Silence: Fanfic Paratexts for ASOIAF/Game of Thrones,” Continuum 30, no. 1 (2016), 75–88.  Deeming and Murphy, “Pirates, Platforms and Players,” 79.  Fandom, “Explore Wikis,” accessed May 12, 2021, https://www.fandom.com/explore.  René Glas, “Paratextual Play: Unlocking the Nature of Making-of Material of Games,” DiGRA/ FDG ’16 – Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG (2016); 1–2, accessed March 10, 2021, http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/paper_266.pdf; Esther Wright, “Marketing Authenticity: Rockstar Games and the Use of Cinema in Video Game Promotion,” Kinephanos: Journal of Media Studies and Popular Culture 7, no. 1 (2017): 131–164.

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media production cultures.18 Contemporary game preservation research also reflects on the origins of paratextual authorship, distinguishing between who creates certain paratexts.19 The designation of “fan-made” and “developer-made” materials highlights a dividing line between official and unofficial resources within participatory culture and helps to situate who paratexts are created for, who they are created by, and why they are created.20 In its early formation, the HOI4 Wiki was a fan-made resource only. As documented in the “History” section for Paradox Wikis, online wikis associated to PDS titles were first created on 16 February 2012 by “Magne ‘Meneth’ Skyæran” and maintained by a small group of volunteers with no formal relationship with PI.21 As a distinct component of this fan-made resource, the HOI4 Wiki was created on 23 January 2014, and after negotiations between PI and “Meneth”, the company acquired the entire library of PDS online wikis on 18 November 2014.22 PI announced the wiki takeover as “the introduction of an official wiki service” for all titles developed by PDS, including HoIIV.23 According to this announcement, the online wikis offer a continual channel of dialogue between consumers and PDS, providing “an easily accessible and always up to date manual for all our games, that incorporates the changes made up to and including current patches.”24 This public communication adds legitimacy to the online wikis as an official source of knowledge on the content within PDS titles that are also produced in tandem with work conducted by fans. Therefore, in its current state, HOI4 Wiki exists as a hybrid “fan-made” and “developer-made” paratext of collaborative authorship. PI’s official purchase of the previously “fan-made” online wikis creates an interesting collaborative relationship with consumers, illustrating how developers can leverage fans to create paratextual content. Unlike many online wikis which are governed only by fans,

 John T. Caldwell, “Corporate and Worker Ephemera: The Industrial Promotional Surround, Paratexts and Worker Blowback,” in Ephemeral Media: Transitory Screen Culture from Television to YouTube, ed. Paul Grainge (London: BFI Books, 2011), 175–176.  Caylin Smith, Stephen McConnachie and Stuart Burnside, “A Matrix for Video Game Collecting: Presentation at the BFI” (paper presented at Before It’s Too Late: Saving Video Games, The BFI, London, February 25, 2020).  Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2008); Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers (London: Routledge, 2013).  Dauth, “Central: About,” Paradox Wiki, September 29, 2016, accessed April 29, 2021, https://cen tral.paradoxwikis.com/Central:About.  Dauth, “Central: About.”  Castellon, “Announcing the Launch of the Official Paradox Wiki Service,” Paradox Forum, November 18, 2014, accessed April 29, 2021, https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/announc ing-the-launch-of-the-offical-paradox-wiki-service.817542/.  Castellon, “Announcing the Launch of the Official Paradox Wiki Service.”

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PDS employees now moderate and contribute to a range of wikis dedicated to their titles.25 Consequently, while PDS ultimately controls what content is created for the HOI4 Wiki, the moderation and expansion of the website is led by a composite structure of both employees and volunteers from the fan community. This ownership and authorship model of the HOI4 Wiki produces a novel editorial structure consisting of an administration team from PDS, a collection of publicly listed fan volunteer moderators who can “block users, restrict editing of specific pages, roll back edits, delete pages”, and “half-ops”, a “middle-ground between moderators and regular users.”26 This hierarchy of moderators does not restrict who can author content on the HOI4 Wiki; anyone with internet access can make changes in particular circumstances. Through considering the website’s structure as a navigable resource, it is possible to determine who has authored information within the HOI4 Wiki. This identification of authorship is valuable in alleviating methodological concerns on the reliability of the website as a potential academic resource. Each individual page on the HOI4 Wiki is constructed through a similar style to a Wikipedia article, with selected words formatted as hyperlinks: “words that [. . .] alert the reader/viewer that they lead someplace else.”27 Permanent navigation bars containing a series of hyperlinks occupy the top and left sides of the website. Exploring the “Page Information” hyperlink is useful for researchers, presenting the creation date and edit history for specific webpages, alongside noting its “Protection” status; terminology that identifies whether only moderators or any user can make changes. Similarly, the “Recent Changes” hyperlink enables users to examine edits made to any pages to the HOI4 Wiki over a maximum period of thirty days. Within this page, it is possible to identify the date and time that the changes were made, and by whom.28 The “View History” hyperlink on HOI4 Wiki’s top navigation bar represents the most effective way to identify revisions to the wiki and, consequently, changes to the content of HoIIV. The page presents a list of edits made to specific pages on the wiki and identifying their author. Revisions made by registered users are logged by username; changes made by anonymous users are noted by an IP address. This presentation allows researchers to determine the provenance of the information

 Dauth, “Central: About,” Paradox Wiki, September 29, 2016, accessed April 29, 2021. https://cen tral.paradoxwikis.com/Central:About.  Dauth, “Central: About.”  Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: The Free Press, 1997), 56.  HOI4 Wiki, “Recent Changes,” accessed May 13, 2021. https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Special: RecentChanges?.

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contained within the wiki. The wiki’s repository of all its previous webpages impacts on how it can be referenced; through an open presentation of the author and date of any edits, the “View History” log provides the required information for precise academic referencing. For most pages within the HOI4 Wiki the “View History” logs are dominated by developer-approved moderators, ensuring that the wiki’s archival of game content is current. Each entry in the “View History” log also includes a hyperlink that displays an archive of how the page looked on the date they were edited. For researchers, the wiki’s edit logs accessibly reflect on the content of previous iterations of HoIIV. In contrast, attempting to explore the content in older versions of HoIIV through play is a more time-consuming task. Through online storefronts such as Steam, players must redownload individual legacy “beta” versions of PDS titles through reconfiguring the “Properties” folder.29 The “View History” log is a vital repository that documents HoIIV’s evolution and can be read without the need to play the game directly. By openly documenting these changes, HOI4 Wiki allows researchers the opportunity to track edits to the wiki across multiple years, exploring the origins of the game’s present historical contents. The “View History” tab is a highly significant component of the HOI4 Wiki as a paratext, allowing researchers to date the wiki, validate its authorship and authenticity, and view previous iterations of HoIIV without needing to play the game. The combination of the wiki’s model of ownership, the measures by which users can change its contents, and the approaches in which these changes are logged, differentiates the HOI4 Wiki from other online wikis as a definitively collaborative archive maintained by both fans and developers. As HoIIV changes with the release of expansions and additional content, the HOI4 Wiki will also change, consistently providing an accessible central resource for researchers to examine the game’s previous iterations without the utility of play.

The HOI4 Wiki as video game history: Repositories of development material As a collaboratively authored paratext, the HOI4 Wiki allows developers to “outsource” the creation of external content to fans, collectively producing a resource in a pseudo-unofficial partnership between developers and fans that is “designed

 SolSys, “Patches,” HOI4 Wiki, April 17, 2021, accessed April 21, 2021. https://hoi4.paradoxwikis. com/Patches.

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specifically to help orient” newer players.30 This process is particularly instructive when considering HoIIV as an unstable digital game that has changed markedly since its initial release with the introduction of numerous DLC expansions.31 Reflecting this instability, the HOI4 Wiki operates as an external archive of current and past states of HoIIV. Yet simultaneously, the HOI4 Wiki also functions as a paratextual platform to access a collection of developmental materials that document the production of HoIIV, showcasing the changing contents of the title before its official release. Through this purpose, the HOI4 Wiki represents an arena for fans and developers to preserve information about the contemporary construction of digital games.32 The HOI4 Wiki’s significance as a paratextual site of documented game history rests partly in its repository of HoIIV’s patches and patch notes. Often referred to as changelogs or hotfixes, patches and patch notes are technical documents that detail exact changes to a game system.33 There is little differentiation between patches and hotfixes in the wiki; while patches “fix bugs and/or implement balance tweaks,” hotfixes are “very small updates to the game that usually fix only a few bugs and may contain a few changes to the game as well.”34 This acknowledgement of multiple variations of HoIIV demonstrates how video games are not static, but are evolving entities that individually possess different variations and revisions.35 This consideration represents a meaningful complication to scholarship, particularly within citation practices. As Nathan Altice has highlighted, a unified practice of “videogame bibliography” does not exist, with current frameworks inadequately accounting for questions surrounding authorship and materiality.36 The HOI4 Wiki presents a meaningful resource that outlines the exact extent to which HoIIV is just one manifestation of multiple HoIIVs.

 Mittell, Complex TV, 262.  Michael Pennington, “Curated Expressions of Japanese History in Hearts of Iron IV,” Replaying Japan 3, (2021): 103.  Navarro-Remesal, “Museums of Failure.”  Jan Švelch, “‘Footage Not Representative’: Redefining Paratextuality for the Analysis of Official Communication in the Video Game Industry,” in Contemporary Research on Intertextuality in Video Games, eds. Christophe Duret and Christian-Marie Pons (Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2016), 307.  SolSys, “Patches.”  James Newman, “The Game Inspector: A Case Study in Gameplay Preservation,” Kinephanos: Journal of Media Studies and Popular Culture 5, no. 1 (2018): 120–148.  Nathan Altice, I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform (London: MIT Press, 2015), 334–336.

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Patch notes are important contemporary forms of paratext, with recent game studies scholarship focusing on their rhetorical and persuasive properties.37 In this research context, the HOI4 Wiki’s archive of patches presents a definitive list of changes made to HoIIV’s historical content since its release. For example, on the HOI4 Wiki’s page for Patch 1.1, released to the public on 30 June 2016, a contextualising note states: “Removed eng core from state 687-British Guyana.”38 This note on the removal of a “core” is a significant indicator of the game’s changing interpretation of British colonial history. Within HoIIV, “Cores” represent territory that is “considered an integral part of the country”; when the player controls a non-core, the territory will generate “resistance”, an in-game computation that rhetorically measures population resistance to foreign occupation.39 By changing levels of political control within Britishcontrolled overseas territories, HoIIV alters its historical interpretation that the South American territory of Guyana was a central political territory within the United Kingdom. As of the release of Patch 1.1, HoIIV presents a revised historical perspective that considers Guyana as an independent political entity actively resistant against British rule. The game’s evolved interpretation of Guyana follows contemporary research on the historical formation of the nation through colonial occupation by the Dutch throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the British during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before its reconstitution as a British Crown Colony on 18 July 1928, and gaining its independence on 26 May 1966.40 In its existence as a paratext, the HOI4 Wiki’s catalogue of patches valuably chronicles how HoIIV’s historical content has changed during its lifespan, openly detailing the ephemeral process of how playable versions of HoIIV have evolved across the seven years of its release.41 Without using play, it is possible to explore how the wiki’s documentation of patch notes allows players to remain in dialogue with content present in previous iterations of HoIIV and consider how the game’s historical arguments have changed over time. The HOI4 Wiki also contains a substantial archive of the game’s developer diaries. Whereas patch notes provide documentation of changes to a game’s

 Christopher Paul, “Process, Paratexts, and Texts: Rhetorical Analysis in Virtual Worlds,” Journal of Virtual Worlds Research 3, no. 1 (2010): 3–17; Lee Sherlock, “Patching as Design Rhetoric: Tracing and Framing the Delivery of Iterative Content Documentation in Online Games,” in Computer Games and Technical Communication, ed. Jennifer de Winter and Ryan Moeller (London, Routledge, 2014), 157–170.  Solsys, “Patch 1.1”, HOI4 Wiki, July 9, 2017, accessed April 30, 2021, https://hoi4.paradoxwikis. com/Patch_1.1.  Dauth, “State,” HOI4 Wiki, March 8, 2020, accessed April 30, 2021, https://hoi4.paradoxwikis. com/State.  Odeen Ishmael, The Guyana Story: From Earliest Times to Independence (Bloomington: Xlibris, 2013), 350 and 643.  SolSys, “Patches.”

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content, developer diaries are public declarations made by game development teams of what future game content might be and outlining the process of a title’s ongoing development.42 PDS developer diaries are originally posted onto the PI online forums, and unlike the majority of the HOI4 Wiki’s content, the wiki catalogues these pages as external hyperlinks with additional editorial content created specifically for the wiki. On the HOI4 Wiki’s developer diaries page, hyperlinks are curated into small tables that list the title of the developer diary and offer a small description of its content.43 Over a hundred developer diaries for HoIIV have been produced across eight years. Predominantly, they discuss design and content decisions made by the team, providing researchers with an open resource that showcases the game through its development as an unreleased commercial product. The first development diary for HoIIV, written by game director Dan Lind, was published on 7 February 2014 and announced the company’s vision for the title: “aiming to make [. . .] the best WWII strategy game yet with a smoother learning curve and deeper gameplay.”44 Developer diaries are valuable documents which perform two core functions. Firstly, they illustrate insight into a semi-collaborative development process; by making these missives public, the developers can gauge the audience’s reaction to proposed gameplay additions. Secondly, they function as an archive of ephemeral iterations of HoIIV that do not make it to public consumption. Developer diaries are unique paratexts that are partly removed from the HOI4 Wiki. However, through using the HOI4 Wiki as a repository of development information, the developer diaries are formatted into an accessible archive of insightful design material that elucidates upon the production process. For example, the forty-sixth developer diary on 26 February 2016 – just under four months before the game’s public release – presents an “Overview of UK.”45 The developer diary states, “This time *takes a sip of earl grey* we are going to look at United Kingdom [. . .] what really sets them apart is their sprawling colonial empire and the Royal Navy.”46 The tone of this entry, and

 DeadHeat16, “Developer Diaries,” HOI4 Wiki, May 19, 2021, accessed April 30, 2021. https:// hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Developer_diaries.  DeadHeat16, “Developer Diaries.”  podcat, “Hearts of Iron IV – Development Diary 1 – Our Vision,” Paradox Forum, February 7, 2014, accessed May 10, 2021. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/hearts-of-iron-iv-de velopment-diary-1-our-vision.754427/.  Dauth, “Developer Diaries,” HOI4 Wiki, April 24, 2021, accessed April 30, 2021. https://hoi4.para doxwikis.com/Developer_diaries.  Podcat, “Hearts of Iron IV – 46th Development Diary – 26th of February 2016,” Paradox Forum, February 26, 2016, accessed May 1, 2021. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/ hearts-of-iron-iv-46th-development-diary-26th-of-february-2016.910637/.

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the historical interpretation by which Britain is framed, reinforces the historical perspectives of HoIIV through generalised historical references of the British Empire, the nation’s seafaring history, and satirical stereotyping of British tea consumption. This developer diary curates the potential historical content of HoIIV towards a widely considered perception that reinforces the country as possessing the world’s most powerful naval force during this epoch.47 Ultimately, the significant quantity of developer diaries attached to the HOI4 Wiki presents an accessible archive of digital game production and design, demonstrating the utility of the wiki as a consultable artefact of historical insight on video game development practices.

HOI4 Wiki as history in games: The United Kingdom NFT The HOI4 Wiki is an open hub that expresses historical interpretations contained within HoIIV. By primarily utilising the wiki, researchers can study how the game’s textual and systemic properties reflect recognisable perspectives on the Second World War. As argued by Adam Chapman, series such as Call of Duty are “realist” simulations that represent history through the visual fidelity of in-game material culture and environments. In contrast, as a grand strategy title, history in HoIIV is principally conveyed through a web of interrelated text, computation, and game mechanics.48 HoIIV is thus a “conceptual” simulation that allows players to participate in its argument about the Second World War through engaging with its systems and text.49 From this perspective, the HOI4 Wiki’s self-proclamation as a “repository of [. . .] related knowledge” signifies a double meaning.50 Alongside its archival of developmental materials, the wiki also functions as a paratextual artefact that makes historical content within HoIIV consultable without the use of play. This understanding allows researchers to focus on the explicit historical interpretations imbued within HoIIV’s computational and textual frameworks. The game’s NFTs offer a particularly valuable in-game site where its historical interpretations can be interrogated outside of play using the HOI4 Wiki. The NFTs

 Andrew Boyd, The Royal Navy in Eastern Waters: Lynchpin of Victory (Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2017).  Adam Chapman, Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice (New York: Routledge, 2016), 61 and 70.  Chapman, Digital Games as History, 70.  Meneth, “Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki,” HOI4 Wiki, January 24, 2014, accessed April 21, 2021, https:// hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Hearts_of_Iron_4_Wiki.

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are chained, branching technology tree paths that chart historical progression. Through a designed series of interrelated political events from history and alternative history, the NFTs attempt to plot how the period progressed — or might have progressed — and how historical events relate to each other. Functionally, the NFTs exist to improve the player’s economic, military, and political position; progression through designed “national focuses” provides numerical and material bonuses, such as an increase in raw resources used to build military units. While each nation in HoIIV possesses an NFT, only certain nations possess bespoke structures consisting of unique events. For example, upon the initial release of HoIIV, the United Kingdom was one of seven nations to have an exclusive NFT due to its classification as a “major” historical power.51 For the Man the Guns DLC expansion, released on 28 February 2019, additional branches were added to the British NFT to offer more counterfactual history options.52 Studying the British NFT through play would be an inefficient endeavour. The NFTs are interactive, multi-layered documents that contain textual and systemic information in separate tooltips and pop-up boxes that only appear when interacted with. For instance, when considering the British national focus “Limited Rearmament,” the title of the focus is shown at the top of the tooltip, with a small box displaying the focus’s “Completion Time” out of 70 days. Underneath, another textbox conveys if there are any prerequisites needed to enact the focus. A historical description of the focus is also provided; this text demonstrates developer-made historical context to the player, offering them a personal sense that their actions impact upon the simulation and their play-made version of history. The final lines of the textbox convey the systemic effects of completing the focus. In this case, completing the “Limited Rearmament” focus gives the player two additional Building Slots and two Civilian Factories in two geographical regions of Britain. This multitude of textual information is instructive, illustrating to the player how HoIIV’s tangible computations are linked to historical contingencies. In contrast, the HOI4 Wiki streamlines how researchers can access and interpret systemic and textual data within the NFTs. This is achieved through making the contextual layers of the NFT immediately visible in a table format. Through a dedicated page, the HOI4 Wiki presents visual images of the expansive NFT structures alongside the textual and systemic content of individual focuses. This format significantly consolidates the information present in HoIIV’s NFTs. The HOI4 Wiki presents the NFTs in a table format, with four columns of contextual in-game text

 ReAn, “National Focus,” HOI4 Wiki, February 28, 2020, accessed May 1, 2021. https://hoi4.para doxwikis.com/National_focus.  ReAn, “National Focus.”

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that display: the title of the focus; its prerequisites; the systemic effects of completion; historical description. This format makes the contents of the NFTs instantly readable. Instead of needing to access a copy of HoIIV and embark on play as a methodology to read its textual and systemic components, the HOI4 Wiki allows instant access to a complex and multi-layered interactive structure. A textual analysis of the HOI4 Wiki’s archive of the United Kingdom’s NFT is useful in determining the game’s historical interpretations conveyed through computation and text. In this reading, the HOI4 Wiki is “reconstituted by a reader who is [. . .] a demolisher and a constructor” in order to understand how it reflects particular historical perspectives.53 For instance, the “Cryptologic Bomb/Limited Rearmament Branch” on the British NFT is a historical model of economic and industrial events that gives the nation “technology research bonuses, factories and an extra research slot.”54 Through this text, the reader is shown how they will benefit from mimicking British historical efforts in cryptology and rearmament. This sentence is unique to the HOI4 Wiki, presenting original documentation that reinforces how the systems of HoIIV are designed to operate. Similarly, utilising the HOI4 Wiki’s archive of the British NFT, researchers can examine how the text and systemic properties associated to the “Cryptologic Bomb” focus – found at the summit of the British NFT – invoke historical perceptions on the success of British wartime codebreakers such as Alan Turing.55 The historical description for the focus states that “[t]he Poles have been developing a brilliant machine they call the ‘Cryptologic Bomb’ which can break the German Enigma ciphers. We have the resources to develop it further at our Bletchley Park facility.”56 As evidenced in contemporary popular films such as The Imitation Game, this text alludes to a broader, generalised historical understanding of the role of British codebreakers during the Second World War. This text conforms to historical interpretations that situate Allied efforts in decoding German ciphers as contributing the “most to the defeat of the Axis forces.”57 However, it is also significant that HoIIV’s description of British cryptological effects is pan-European, including the

 Jan Van Looy and Jan Baetens, “Introduction: Close Reading Electronic Literature,” in Close Reading New Media: Analyzing Electronic Literature, ed. Jan Van Looy and Jan Baetens (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 9–10.  AkatsukiEmpire, “British National Focus Tree,” HOI4 Wiki, May 20, 2019, accessed 17 April 2021. https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/British_national_focus_tree.  Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book that Inspired the Film The Imitation Game (London: Vintage Publishing, 2014).  AkatsukiEmpire, “British National Focus Tree.”  Martin Sugarman, “Breaking the Codes: Jewish personnel at Bletchley Park,” Jewish Historical Studies 40 (2005): 197.

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decisive impact of earlier Polish codebreaking technologies.58 This perspective symbolises the Swedish developers’ broader European perspective of the conflict, offering an interpretation on the history of codebreaking that eschews a British-centric position and recognises cooperation between nations. The HOI4 Wiki’s list of the systemic effects of enacting the “Cryptologic Bomb” focus also indicates how HoIIV maintains a historical narrative of British codebreaking. The prerequisites of the focus mean that it can only be accessed if the country is at war with Germany, and Poland is not in the Axis.59 These prerequisites conform to a specific historical context of British and Polish cipher experts breaking the German Enigma code during the Second World War.60 The systemic effects of completing the focus also convey the changing nature of HoIIV. Upon completing the focus, if the player has the La Résistance DLC enabled – an additional expansion added to the game on 25 February 202061 – they are given a “+10 Decryption Speed.”62 This computational change impacts upon the “Cryptology” game mechanic that gives the player significant bonuses to military combat dependent on their “Decryption power.”63 However, on previous versions of HoIIV that do not include this DLC, completing the focus provides a 100 percent bonus to researching “Decryption methods and Computing technology” within the separate “Research” technology tree.64 These systemic changes to the simulation are produced through an evolving scope that reflects particular historical interpretations on the effectiveness of the United Kingdom’s cryptological campaign during the Second World War. Consulting the NFTs through the HOI4 Wiki demonstrates to researchers a useful perspective on how digital games textually and systemically reflect specific historical interpretation. The HOI4 Wiki offers a paratextually archived commentary on how history is framed within HoIIV. Without the use of play, and existing outside of the game space, the HOI4 Wiki illustrates how HoIIV’s textual and systemic properties redeploy recognisable and broadly popularised understandings of British history.

 Dermot Turing, X, Y & Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken (Stroud: The History Press, 2018).  AkatsukiEmpire, “British National Focus Tree.”  Richard Aldrich, “Policing the Past: Official History, Secrecy and British Intelligence Since 1945,” The English Historical Review 119, no. 483 (2004): 923.  SolSys, “La Résistance”, HOI4 Wiki, October 15, 2020, accessed April 30, 2021, https://hoi4.para doxwikis.com/La_Résistance.  AkatsukiEmpire, “British National Focus Tree.”  Lillebror, “Intelligence Agency,” HOI4 Wiki, December 30, 2020, accessed April 30, 2021, https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Intelligence_agency#Cryptology.  AkatsukiEmpire, “British National Focus Tree.”

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Conclusion This chapter presents the innate duality of online wikis as paratexts, illustrating how the HOI4 Wiki simultaneously operates as a repository of the production of HoIIV – detailing changes made throughout development in external materials such as patch notes and developer diaries – and as an archive of the game’s evolving historical interpretations. The HOI4 Wiki constitutes a significant paratextual site of digital game history, logging HoIIV’s variations, developments, and histories as a cultural artefact and entertainment product. Through understanding and consulting paratextual materials such as online wikis, researchers can utilise more resources in studying both historical representation in games and the development history of games. The HOI4 Wiki is an accessible, multi-authored paratextual artefact, existing as a semi-formal fan-made and developer-made hybrid archive. This collaborative approach to documenting HoIIV, and its safeguards that identify who creates and moderates content, cast the wiki as a reliable archive for researchers. In particular, through the wiki’s “View history” tab, researchers are given a valuable resource to examine all variations of previous and current content in HoIIV. The HOI4 Wiki is a significant paratextual repository of the game’s production. In its archive of patch notes, the wiki demonstrates the instability of HoIIV; as it evolves with the implementation of additional content, the game’s historical interpretations on British and European colonial history are irrevocably altered. Similarly, the HOI4 Wiki’s log of developer diaries constitutes an instructive resource for considering digital games as commercial products which are developed and reimagined over significant periods of time. Researchers can also use online wikis to effectively interrogate a digital game’s changing historical content. The HOI4 Wiki makes the historical interpretations within HoIIV’s NFTs readable. The chapter offers a brief analysis of how the wiki, in its depiction of the United Kingdom’s NFT, illustrates how HoIIV’s systemic and textual components manifest a broadly recognisable history of the nation. In particular, the contribution demonstrates how the wartime history of British codebreakers is incorporated into both in-game text and computations that present cryptological history through broad contemporary knowledge of its success. Ultimately, from a position that considers the mass disappearance of video games and video game culture,65 the HOI4 Wiki exemplifies the usefulness of online wikis as a transformative paratextual resource. Simultaneously, the wiki performs a dual function, conveying how scholars can both interrogate history in digital games, and the history of digital games. In its existence as an open, accessible

 Newman, Best Before, 1.

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website, scholars can consult the wiki’s diverse repository of material on HoIIV, without ever needing to play the game at all.

References Aarseth, Espen. “Playing Research: Methodological Approaches to Game Analysis.” Paper presented at the Australia DAC Conference, Melbourne, Australia, May 28–29, 2003. AkatsukiEmpire. “British National Focus Tree.” HOI4 Wiki. May 20, 2019. Accessed April 17, 2021. https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/British_national_focus_tree. Aldrich, Richard. “Policing the Past: Official History, Secrecy and British Intelligence Since 1945”. The English Historical Review 119, no. 483 (2004): 922–953. Altice, Nathan. I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform. London: MIT Press, 2015. Anable, Aubrey. Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Boyd, Andrew. The Royal Navy in Eastern Waters: Lynchpin of Victory. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2017. Caillois, Roger. Man, Play and Games. Translated by Meyer Barash. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961. Caldwell, John T. “Corporate and Worker Ephemera: The Industrial Promotional Surround, Paratexts and Worker Blowback.” Ephemeral Media: Transitory Screen Culture from Television to YouTube, edited by Paul Grainge, 175–194. London: BFI Books, 2011. Castellon. “Announcing the launch of the Official Paradox Wiki Service.” Paradox Forum. November 18, 2014. Accessed April 29, 2021. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/an nouncing-the-launch-of-the-offical-paradox-wiki-service.817542/. Chapman, Adam. Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice. New York: Routledge, 2016. Chapman, Adam. “Is Sid Meier’s Civilization History?” Rethinking History 17, no. 3 (2013): 312–332. Chin, Bertha. “Sherlockology and Galactica.tv: Fan Sites as Gifts or Exploited Labor?” Transformative Works and Cultures 15 (2014). Accessed September 12, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3983/ twc.2014.0513. Comerford, Chris. “Participatory Toolboxes: Franchise Fan Wikis as Tools of Textual Production.” Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 15, no. 2 (2018): 285–296. Dauth. “Central: About.” Paradox Wiki. September 29, 2016. Accessed April 29, 2021. https://central. paradoxwikis.com/Central:About. Dauth. “Developer Diaries.” HOI4 Wiki. April 24, 2021. Accessed April 30, 2021. https://hoi4.paradoxwi kis.com/Developer_diaries. Dauth. “State.” HOI4 Wiki. March 8, 2020. Accessed April 30, 2021. https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/ State. DeadHeat16. “Developer Diaries.” HOI4 Wiki. May 19, 2021. Accessed April 30, 2021. https://hoi4.para doxwikis.com/Developer_diaries. Deeming, Skot, and Murphy, David. “Pirates, Platforms and Players: Theorising Post-Consumer Fan Histories through the Sega Dreamcast.” In Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives, edited by Melanie Swalwell, Helen Stuckey and Angela Ndalianis, 75–90. New York: Routledge, 2017.

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Fandom. “Explore Wikis.” Accessed May 12, 2021. https://www.fandom.com/explore. Fathallah, Judith. “Statements and Silence: Fanfic Paratexts for ASOIAF/Game of Thrones.” Continuum 30, no. 1 (2016): 75–88. Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Glas, René. “Paratextual Play: Unlocking the Nature of Making-of Material of Games.” DiGRA/FDG ’16 – Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG (2016): 1–13. Accessed March 10, 2021. http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/paper_266.pdf. Hodges, Andrew. Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book that Inspired the Film The Imitation Game. London: Vintage Publishing, 2014. HOI4 Wiki. “Recent Changes”. Accessed May 13, 2021. https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Special: RecentChanges?. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. Ishmael, Odeen. The Guyana Story: From Earliest Times to Independence. Bloomington: Xlibris, 2013. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2008. Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers. London: Routledge, 2013. Krampe, Theresa. “No Straight Answers: Queering Hegemonic Masculinity in BioWare’s Mass Effect”. Game Studies 18, no. 2 (2018). Accessed February 18, 2021. http://gamestudies.org/1802/articles/ krampe. Lillebror. “Intelligence Agency.” HOI4 Wiki. December 30, 2020. Accessed April 30, 2021. https://hoi4. paradoxwikis.com/Intelligence_agency#Cryptology. McCracken, Ellen. “Expanding Genette’s Epitext/Peritext Model for Transitional Electronic Literature: Centrifugal and Centripetal Vectors on Kindles and iPads.” Narrative 21, no. 1 (2013): 105–124. Meneth. “Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki.” HOI4 Wiki. January 24, 2014. Accessed April 21, 2021. https://hoi4. paradoxwikis.com/Hearts_of_Iron_4_Wiki. Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press, 2015. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Navarro-Remesal, Victor. “Museums of Failure: Fans as Curators of “Bad”, Unreleased, and ‘Flopped’ Videogames.” In Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives, edited by Melanie Swalwell, Helen Stuckey and Angela Ndalianis, 128–145. New York: Routledge 2017. Newman, James. Best Before: Videogames, Supersession and Obsolescence. London: Routledge, 2012. Newman, James. “The Game Inspector: A Case Study in Gameplay Preservation.” Kinephanos: Journal of Media Studies and Popular Culture 5, no. 1 (2018): 120–148. Newman, James, and Simons, Iain. “Time Extend: The Future of Curating, Preserving and Exhibiting Videogames. A White Paper.” Paper presented at Before It’s Too Late: Saving Video Games, The BFI, London, February 25, 2020. Nicoll, Benjamin. “Sega Saturn Fan Sites and the Vernacular Curation of Videogame History.” In Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives, edited by Melanie Swalwell, Helen Stuckey, and Angela Ndalianis, 180–196. New York: Routledge 2017. Paul, Christopher. “Process, Paratexts, and Texts: Rhetorical Analysis in Virtual Worlds.” Journal of Virtual Worlds Research 3, no. 1 (2010): 317. Pennington, Michael. “Curated Expressions of Japanese History in Hearts of Iron IV.” Replaying Japan 3 (2021): 101–113. podcat. “Hearts of Iron IV – 46th Development Diary – 26th of February 2016”. Paradox Forum. February 26, 2016. Accessed May 1, 2021. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/ forum/threads/hearts-of-iron-iv-46th-development-diary-26th-of-february-2016.910637/. podcat.

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“Hearts of Iron IV – Development Diary 1 – Our Vision.” Paradox Forum. February 7, 2014. Accessed May 10, 2021. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/hearts-of-iron-ivdevelopment-diary-1-our-vision.754427/. ReAn. “National Focus.” HOI4 Wiki. February 28, 2020. Accessed May 1, 2021. https://hoi4.paradoxwi kis.com/National_focus. Scullion, Chris. “Revealed: The 138 PlayStation Games that Won’t be Available Anywhere After Store Closures.” Videogames Chronicle, April 4, 2021. Accessed May 1, 2021. https://www.videogames chronicle.com/news/revealed-the-138-playstation-games-that-wont-be-available-anywhere-after -store-closures. Seiwald, Regina. “The Ludic Nature of Paratexts. Playful Material in and Beyond Video Games.” In Paratextualizing Games: Investigations on the Paraphernalia and Peripheries of Play, edited by Benjamin Beil, Gundolf S. Freyermuth and Hanns Christian Schmidt. 293–318. Bielefeld: transcript, 2021. Sherlock, Lee. “Patching as Design Rhetoric: Tracing and Framing the Delivery of Iterative Content Documentation in Online Games.” In Computer Games and Technical Communication, edited by Jennifer de Winter and Ryan Moeller. 157–170. London: Routledge, 2014. Smith, Caylin, McConnachie, Stephen., and Burnside, Stuart. “A Matrix for Video Game Collecting: Presentation at the BFI.” Paper presented at Before It’s Too Late: Saving Video Games, The BFI, London, February 25, 2020. SolSys. “La Résistance.” HOI4 Wiki. October 15, 2020. Accessed April 30, 2021. https://hoi4.paradoxwi kis.com/La_Résistance. Solsys. “Patch 1.1.” HOI4 Wiki. July 9, 2017. Accessed April 30, 2021. https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/ Patch_1.1. SolSys. “Patches.” HOI4 Wiki. April 17, 2021. Accessed April 21, 2021. https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/ Patches. Sugarman, Martin. “Breaking the Codes: Jewish Personnel at Bletchley Park.” Jewish Historical Studies 40 (2005): 197–246. Sutton-Smith, Brian. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997. Švelch, Jan. “‘Footage Not Representative’: Redefining Paratextuality for the Analysis of Official Communication in the Video Game Industry.” In Contemporary Research on Intertextuality in Video Games, edited by Christophe Duret and Christian-Marie Pons, 297–315. Hershey: IGI Global, 2016. Švelch, Jaroslav. “Should the Monster Play Fair?: Reception of Artificial Intelligence in Alien: Isolation.” Game Studies 20, no. 2 (2020). Accessed January 30, 2021. http://gamestudies.org/2002/articles/ jaroslav_svelch. Turing, Dermot. X, Y & Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken. Stroud: The History Press, 2018. Van Looy, Jan, and Baetens, Jan. “Introduction: Close Reading Electronic Literature.” In Close Reading New Media: Analyzing Electronic Literature, edited by Jan Van Looy and Jan Baetens, 7–26. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003. Wanenchak, Sarah. “Tags, Threads, and Frames: Toward a Synthesis of Interaction Ritual and Livejournal Roleplaying.” Game Studies 10, no. 1 (2010). Accessed February 18, 2021, http://gamestudies.org/1001/articles/wanenchak. Welsh, Timothy. “(Re)Mastering Dark Souls.” Game Studies 20, no. 4 (2020). Accessed February 17, 2021. http://gamestudies.org/2004/articles/welsh. Wright, Esther. “Marketing Authenticity: Rockstar Games and the Use of Cinema in Video Game Promotion.” Kinephanos: Journal of Media Studies and Popular Culture 7, no. 1 (2017): 131–164.

E. Charlotte Stevens

Video game fanvids as paratexts and as texts This chapter discusses fanvids (“vids”) that are made out of and about video games, which can be productively examined as paratexts of their source games and also texts in their own right. Vids are non-commercial fan works which use existing media to construct creative and critical analyses of that source material, with a history of production dating back to the late 1970s.1 They are made by fans, for fans, and use clips from television, film, and other video sources cut to a song. Importantly, for the purposes of this collection, this includes recordings of video game play. In his discussion of film trailers and other media paratexts, Jonathan Gray also discusses vids, as one form of many “viewer-created paratexts,” arguing that they construct a path through a text “leaving tracks for others to follow” similar to marginalia in a book.2 Building on this, I argue that vids can be read as documentation of how an audience understood that series, film, game, celebrity, and so on.3 Vids will articulate this understanding through clip choice, by drawing directly from the source (a straightforward task for films, games with a story, novels, etc.) or juxtaposing clips with the vidsong’s lyrics to achieve these ends.4

 Francesca Coppa, “Women, Star Trek, and the Early Development of Fannish Vidding,” Transformative Works and Cultures 1 (2008); Francesca Coppa, “A Brief History of Media Fandom,” in Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays, ed. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2006), 41–59; Katharina Freund, “‘Becoming a Part of the Storytelling’: Fan Vidding Practices and Histories,” in A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies, ed. Paul Booth (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2018), 207–223.  Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (New York: NYU Press, 2010), 154.  E. Charlotte Stevens, Fanvids: Television, Women, and Home Media Re-Use, Transmedia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020).  For example, vids made of YouTube star Maru the cat, reality TV and lifestyle vloggers, or puzzle games like Baba is You (2019) use their song soundtracks to find narrative or development. Acknowledgements: Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at: European Network for Cinema and Media Studies 2017, Console-ing Passions 2018, and Society for Cinema and Media Studies 2021. Thank you to colleagues who have offered feedback along the way. My gratitude goes to the vidders and to VJs who shared and curated game vids at fan conventions. E. Charlotte Stevens, Birmingham City University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-007

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However, as video games are different to film and television, video game vids have the potential to highlight the affective and experiential aspects of gameplay as well as interpretation of themes or character development. For this chapter, I will work with existing definitions of (and perspectives on) the idea of a “paratext,” in aid of working through this case study of what happens after a game has been played. The finality of “has been played” is intended to suggest a point at which a player has come to the end of a narrative and can use that experience to guide creating a vid: in this case, a work that returns to characters, themes, experiences that has a different outcome to the repetition and replay normally raised in relation to sustained engagement with video games.5 With a nod to Gray and to Jason Mittell,6 Martin Barker notes “paratexts’ doubled nature: they are themselves already evidence of particular kinds of audience response; but they are also invitations to others to engage in specific ways.”7 A game vid therefore leaves tracks for others to follow, offering evidence of an affective response to an experience of gameplay, and presents the game in question to an audience trained in watching vids who may or may not have played the game on their own. My purpose here is first to explore the paratextual qualities of vids made from the reboot Tomb Raider (2013) and indie game Transistor (2014). This chapter will then pick up on the historiographical qualities of vids to discuss examples made from multiple games in the Zelda and Mass Effect franchises, finishing with a vid that memorialises the summer of the Pokémon Go (2016) craze.

What are vids and how are they made? A vid is a non-commercial fanwork that repurposes media texts, by editing together clips from existing video sources in time to a song. Vidding began with television – in “media fandom,” so-called to distinguish themselves from “literary science fiction fandom” which was less welcoming to female Star Trek fans8 – but quickly expanded to encompass all variety of visual (and non-visual, e.g., book and podcast9) media sources. Early vids were made on videotape, and were

 Christopher Hanson, Game Time: Understanding Temporality in Video Games, Digital Game Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 110–134.  Gray, Show Sold Separately; Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015).  Martin Barker, “Speaking of ‘Paratexts’: A Theoretical Revisitation,” Journal of Fandom Studies 5, no. 3 (2017): 236.  Coppa, “A Brief History of Media Fandom.”  Stevens, Fanvids, 19–20.

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frequently known as “song tapes,” with “fan music video” and then fanvid/vid settling as dominant terminology within media fandom.10 Vids approximate music videos in appearance and duration, and music choice is essential to structuring a vid’s argument,11 and to guide the audience’s affective response as they watch.12 Tisha Turk adopts the principle of “synchresis”13 – a synchronisation of sound and image – as coined by Michel Chion to articulate how vidders construct and how vid-watchers decode the density of meaning that exists in a vid.14 This chapter acknowledges the centrality of synchretic relationships and uses lyrics as a shorthand in highlighting key moments of significance in each vid. In thinking about games and history, vids can be understood as historiographies, or works that write a history of engagement with a television series or film, and encompasses a holistic experience of that work wherein “the [vid] form’s inherent reflexivity demands that the vid be viewed and read alongside the viewer’s memory and understanding of its source series as a whole.”15 For vids made of non-interactive media (television series, films, etc.), this memory and understanding is based in watching the source themselves and awareness of conversations and framings of that source material more generally. That said, it is possible to watch and understand a vid made out of unfamiliar material if one is sufficiently familiar with conventions of the vid form,16 or knows enough about the source through its paratexts – a process media fandom calls fannish/fandom osmosis17 – to be able to parse the characters, setting, relationships, and so forth. However, for vids made of interactive media (that is, video games), that memory and understanding operates in a slightly different register because the experience of playing a game is not the same as watching a television series. Game vids are not machinima (a once-popular use of a game engine to produce novel animations),

 Stevens, 28; Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Studies in Culture and Communication (New York: Routledge, 1992), 228–254.  Tisha Turk, “Transformation in a New Key: Music in Vids and Vidding,” Music, Sound, and the Moving Image 9, no. 2 (2015): 163–176; Francesca Coppa, “A Fannish Taxonomy of Hotness,” Cinema Journal 48, no. 4 (2009): 107–113; Stevens, Fanvids.  Sebastian F. K. Svegaard, “‘All the Feels’: Music, Affect and Critique in Vids” (PhD diss., Birmingham, UK, Birmingham City University, 2022).  Michel Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).  Turk, “Transformation in a New Key.”  Stevens, Fanvids, 130.  Stevens, 17.  Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson, “Identity, Ethics, and Fan Privacy,” in Fan Culture: Theory/Practice (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 38–56; Paul Booth, “Introduction: SuperWhoLock Fandom: Fandoms Crossed,” in Crossing Fandoms: SuperWhoLock and the Contemporary Fan Audience, ed. Paul Booth (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016), 1–27.

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nor other re-workings that repurpose a game engine for new ends (mods, hacks), but are instead a form of players’ textual productivity (fan fiction, fan art) that focuses on game narratives.18 Game vids sit in between the two kinds of fan activity typified by mods and fan fiction: they are not interventions into the mechanics nor mechanisms of a game, nor necessarily riffing on the stories told, but historicise the affective and experiential aspects of gameplay. Due to the fact that vids are made out of video clips taken from existing media, to explore vidding is also to encounter ideas of media archiving and media history and how fanworks can provide a record of fans’ interpretation of the vid’s source material. Older vids, made on videotape or using digital transfers of off-air recordings, unwittingly preserve something of the way television fans kept their own collections of episodes before the convenience (and clean footage) of a box set.19 Additionally, multifandom vids that use clips from more than one source offer up a tour of the vidder’s take on a genre or franchise.20 Vids made from and about video games offer similar potential for documenting interpretation of a player’s path through a game; however, scholarship interested in creative/critical re-uses of video games has tended to focus on machinima rather than the potential found in vids.21 (An exception is Sebastian Svegaard’s thesis on music and vidding, which analyses a vid made from Mass Effect Andromeda.22) Where “fanvids” are mentioned in these texts, scholars appear to rely on secondary sources that discuss vidding to make claims for proximate forms of fancreated video, and in doing so mischaracterise vidding.23 Therefore, this chapter’s

 Garry Crawford, Video Gamers (Routledge, 2012). See also Matt Hills, “Fiske’s ‘Textual Productivity’ and Digital Fandom: Web 2.0 Democratization versus Fan Distinction?” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 10, no. 1 (2013): 130–153.  E. Charlotte Stevens, “On Vidding: The Home Media Archive and Vernacular Historiography,” in Cult Media: Re-Packaged, Re-Released and Restored, ed. Jonathan Wroot and Andy Willis (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 143–159.  Stevens, Fanvids, 137–178.  Mizuko Ito, “Machinima in a Fanvid Ecology,” Journal of Visual Culture 10, no. 1 (1 April 2011): 51–54; Matthew Brett Freedman, “Machinima and Copyright Law,” Journal of Intellectual Property Law 13, no. 1 (2005): 235–254; Henry Lowood, “A ‘Different Technical Approach’? Introduction to the Special Issue on Machinima,” Journal of Visual Culture 10, no. 1 (April 2011): 3–5; Henry Lowood, “High-Performance Play: The Making of Machinima,” Journal of Media Practice 7, no. 1 (2006): 25–42.  Svegaard, “All the Feels!”.  Jackie Marsh, “The Discourses of Celebrity in the Fanvid Ecology of Club Penguin Machinima,” in Discourse and Digital Practices, ed. Rodney H. Jones, Alice Chik and Christoph A. Hafner (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 193–208; Manuel Garin, “Super Mario, the New Silent Clown: Video Game Parodies as Transformative Comedy Tools,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 18, no. 3 (1 May 2015): 305–309.

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discussion of game vids addresses an established practice of fan/player re-use of games that has not yet been substantially accounted for in literature. It also argues for the historiographical aspect of vidding: vids capture vidders’ interpretation and can be read as an account of that past activity.

Methods for studying fanworks There has been a methodological consolidation of late in fandom studies, with a recent edited collection and special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures interrogating the range of ways to study fandoms and fanworks.24 An “incredibly multi-inter-para-disciplinary field,” fandom studies has anthropological and therefore ethnographic roots in its approach in individuals and communities.25 This is complicated by how those of us who study fandom tend to be “in fandom” ourselves26 and even if we are not participants in the communities under study we often will have a good working knowledge of fan communities in general.27 Therefore, even when a study does not contain interviews or direct observation, scholarship about fanworks (such as vids) will still be “fundamentally grounded in the scholar’s understanding of the text in question and its cultural context.”28 In practice, accounting for this grounding means that fandom studies “relies on the use of ethnographic methods,”29 and therefore an extra layer of care must be taken when presenting one’s findings: this includes using the vidder’s chosen pseudonym to identify their work.30 Accordingly, this chapter will not provide URLs to individual

 Julia E. Largent, Milena Popova and Elise Vist, eds., Special Issue: Fan Studies Methodologies, Transformative Works and Cultures 33 (2020), https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/ twc/issue/view/59; Rebecca Williams and Paul Booth, eds., Fan Studies: Methods, Ethics, Research (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2021).  Julia E. Largent, Milena Popova and Elise Vist, “Toward Some Fanons of Fan Studies [Editorial],” Transformative Works and Cultures 33 (2020), https://journal.transformativeworks.org/ index.php/twc/issue/view/59.  Adrienne E. Raw, “Rhetorical Moves in Disclosing Fan Identity in Fandom Scholarship,” Transformative Works and Cultures 33 (15 June 2020), https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2020.1731.  Abby Waysdorf, “Placing Fandom, Studying Fans: Modified Acafandom in Practice,” Transformative Works and Cultures 33 (15 June 2020), https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2020.1739.  Stevens, Fanvids, 51.  Raw, “Rhetorical Moves in Disclosing Fan Identity in Fandom Scholarship,” para. 1.1.  Busse and Hellekson, “Identity, Ethics,” 45; Kristina Busse, “The Ethics of Studying Online Fandom,” in The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, ed. Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott (New York: Routledge, 2018), 9–17; Louisa Ellen Stein, Millennial Fandom: Television Audiences in the Transmedia Age (University of Iowa Press, 2015), 178, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p587m.

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vids, to limit link-scraping in online publication, but will provide sufficient identifying information should you wish to seek them out. This chapter is a textual analysis, insofar as it shares my readings of the vids’ apparent aims and arguments, but it is inspired by V.F. Perkins’s aim to present a film “as it exists for the spectator”31 with interpretation done “on the basis of its form and on the basis of our experience.”32 This approach allows me to theorise how game vids can function in relation to their source video; any comments about reception are based on online comments left by viewers, where available, or from my observations during vidshow screenings.33 In line with vidding’s proximate relationship to amateur video art,34 and its persistent exhibition-based culture, the vast majority of these were screened at fan conventions. Over the course of my research I viewed scores of game vids at fan conventions and individually on my own computer, including those made using older PC games (e.g. Myst, MechWarrior 4: Vengeance), triple-A console titles (e.g. Mass Effect, Tomb Raider), indie games (e.g. Baba is You, Transistor) and mobile games (e.g. Monument Valley); my examples for this chapter illustrate a range of responses by vidders to games, and were chosen to highlight different aspects of theorisation. To view the vids again, I accessed the blog posts and other non-publication platforms vidders use to “release” and archive their work. In this chapter, I borrow fandom terminology and refer to these framings and release notes as vid posts. There are also a range of complementary traditions of moving image re-use, from gallerybased found footage work to online groups such as Creaspace.ru and collectives operating solely on YouTube, and I have used my discretion and knowledge of media fandom’s vidding community to choose my sample.35

 V.F. Perkins, Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (Penguin Books, 1972), 27.  Perkins, 174.  Stevens, Fanvids, 59–60.  Stevens, Fanvids, 65–96.  The vids discussed in the chapter are sometimes posted or tagged with “GMV” (game music video), which follows the naming convention of AMV (anime music videos), as a way to increase discoverability to broader audiences. In the case of Yellow Flicker Beat (Mithborien, 2015), it was posted to YouTube as a GMV but made for a media fandom vidding event (Festivids) and crossposted to Archive of Our Own, an archive built by and for media fandom. Parody trailers, machinima, and other kinds of internet-based recuts exist and are beyond the scope of this discussion; vidding and AMVs pre-date these newer digital forms. See also: Ian Roberts, “Genesis of the Digital Anime Music Video Scene, 1990–2001 [Multimedia],” Transformative Works and Cultures 9 (15 March 2012), https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2012.0365.

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Vids as paratexts This section explores how game vids may be productively understood as paratexts, or at least as paratexual. My purpose is to open up a space in which testing out different labels can offer ways of thinking through how players account for their experience of a game or gaming franchise. How is a game vid a paratext? Jonathan Gray offers primary/secondary textuality in place of text/paratext to discuss the relationship between two media objects, depending on the angle of approach from a viewer or player.36 If the game itself has primary textuality, then a vid will be secondary; indeed, a vid cannot be made without available footage. This is unlike a film poster, which exists before and without the film it is advertising. Vids made from games need a game to have been played to have generated the video source used by the vidder. Taking this into consideration, game vids are unequivocally secondary texts, holding a subsidiary and therefore paratextual relationship to the game itself. Similar to trailers, then, game vids frame an approach to a primary/central text by arranging bits of gameplay and cutscenes to show off key features and attractions of the game. This material can either be generated and captured by the vidder or gathered from clips and playthroughs posted online. However, it would be a mistake to argue that vids are trailers, as they are neither commercial endeavours nor parodies thereof.37 Indeed, they are framed by their makers as variations on the music video form, not as iterations of a promotional discourse associated with the sale of goods or services. A vid’s structure is guided by the soundtrack’s lyrics and aural qualities, with attention paid to rhythm in the cuts, use of motion, and clips carefully chosen to inform (or create) thematic resonances. This aesthetic work is more like a subjective product review, to extend the marketing analogy, designed to capture and share the vidder/player’s personal history of engagement with a media text that scribbles in a game’s margins which leaves a record of interpretation. Some vids are motivated by an attempt to recoup the source material’s potential, for example to introduce an emotional coherence lacking in the source. Sometimes the purpose is to highlight gameplay itself, as with Our House (elipie, 2016), a vid made from The Sims sequels that glories in glitches and other digital hiccups and carries an implicit sense that the point of playing a Sims game is to find, capture, and share these ruptures.

 Gray, Show Sold Separately, 39.  Kathleen Amy Williams, “Fake and Fan Film Trailers as Incarnations of Audience Anticipation and Desire,” Transformative Works and Cultures 9 (2012); Ed Vollans, “So Just What is a Trailer, Anyway?” Arts and the Market 5, no. 2 (2015): 112–125.

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One straightforward example, Yellow Flicker Beat (Mithborien, 2015), was made from the indie game Transistor (2014) for the annual Festivids vidding gift exchange.38 This vid focuses on the player character, Red, making use of the song’s lyrics about having been famous and now seeking vengeance. The song is from Lorde’s soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 (2014); fittingly, its first-person narrative gives voice to Red, whose voice is stolen at the start of the game. The vid uses aesthetic as well as narrative congruence to make its point, with lyrics “red, orange, yellow flicker beat” heard as appropriately coloured clips are shown, and the on-screen prompt text in clips taken from gameplay appear on the beat. Returning to the idea that the purpose and function of a fan-made paratext is to guide interactions with a text – as Barker says, “as already-generated audience responses and as sources of influence on others”39 – comments on the vid post indicate that it worked both as an enticement to play the game (replies suggesting folks had purchased the game), and as a condensed adaptation (other replies noting the vidder had captured what others had loved about the game). This atmospheric vid offers some demonstration of mechanics, and revels in the game’s art style, but more significantly suggests that the game’s appeal for a player is through the experience of a female-centred narrative in a cool retro-cyberpunk setting. However, any enticement here to play Transistor is not a sales job, but an invitation to join in the vidder’s enjoyment of something which already exists. In contrast, We Got the Power (Isagel, 2014), a Tomb Raider (2013) vid, presents a queer reading of player character Lara Croft. Tomb Raider is a long-running franchise whose protagonist has been the subject of critical debate in and beyond academia.40 (Is she for straight men to ogle? For women to identify with? For men to “try out” identifying with a female perspective? For lesbians to desire?) The 2013 reboot uses a more “realist” character design, but employs a narrative that directs threats of sexual violence towards Croft, and gameplay that sees genre-typical failures accumulate into repeated acts of trauma on a female body. We Got the Power asks why she would put herself through extremely taxing physical situations (she is  Stevens, Fanvids, 53.  Barker, “Speaking of ‘Paratexts’,” 236.  See, for example: Adrienne Shaw, Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 55–96; Esther MacCallumStewart, “‘Take That, Bitches!’ Refiguring Lara Croft in Feminist Game Narratives,” Game Studies 14, no. 2 (2014); Helen Kennedy, “Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo? On the Limits of Textual Analysis,” Game Studies 2, no. 2 (2002); Maja Mikula, “Gender and Videogames: The Political Valency of Lara Croft,” Continuum 17, no. 1 (2003): 79–87; Anne-Marie Schleiner, “Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games,” Leonardo 34, no. 3 (1 June 2001).

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not raiding tombs for profit, for example), and it answers that question by cutting together clips of cutscenes and active gameplay sequences to argue that she is motivated by love for the woman she rescues from the cult at the end of the game. This vid is arguably an example of “queer game play that is not about finding the ‘real’ meaning of a game text, but playing between the lines with queer reading tactics”41 as it uses clips from the game to provide evidence for this reading of its events to document and textualise that queer reading. This vid shows how meaning is made across both puzzles/gameplay and plot-advancing cutscenes, and that there is little difference between these two parts of the game in how character motivations are read and understood. The vidder plays between the lines to find a queer reading in Tomb Raider and uses the vid form to communicate that interpretation – in other words, creates a vid designed to both document a personal response to the game and also influence spectators in their potential future engagement with that property. Interestingly, the makers of Yellow Flicker Beat and We Got the Power used vid posts and panel discussions at vidding conventions to discuss, respectively, how they cut around the mouse arrow appearing on screen and how to create a digital mask for the persistent crosshairs in a first-person game. This conscious (and literal) masking of the player’s own immediate embodiment to provide “clean” footage is something that is due further consideration.

Vids as texts This section addresses the slippage – and slipperiness – at play in identifying a vid as text or paratext. I have previously, breezily, declared vids to be paratexts, since a vid is “a fan-led extension of the source material” in a network of official and unofficial transmedia production.42 This present collection has prompted me to revisit that position, and to think about how vids can be both text and paratext at the same time.43 However, as discussed earlier, vids are more than trailers as vids can fulfil a range of functions and have different purposes for their viewers. Barker’s assertion that, for Genette, a paratext is useful to help a reader parse authorial intent,44 raises the issue of attempting to find an easy equation between (for example) a book’s flyleaf and a

 Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw, “Introduction: Imagining Queer Game Studies,” in Queer Game Studies, ed. Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), x.  Stevens, Fanvids, 10.  See Regina Seiwald, Chapter 1.  Barker, “Speaking of ‘Paratexts’,” 241.

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fanvid to make a strict definition of paratext have utility. As discussed elsewhere in this volume, games are authored collectively by a production team, with players’ actions contribution a further dimension of meaning-making.45 With game vids, a vidder also inhabits an author-role through their editorial work. (Vids might also be metatexts, given their commentary/criticism on source material, if not for vidders’ close proximity to meaning-making). This section of the chapter explores by which terms game vids can be understood as paratexts and texts simultaneously, especially as vids are arguably adaptations (and histories) in their own right, consumed without an expectation that the source material will be played or watched. All vids, game vids included, are records of interpretation. They are circulated and consumed by fans as texts in their own right. While vids are made out of pieces of their source material, there is a fuzziness that invites comparisons to adaptation and transmedia – in both cases we are comfortable treating parts of a whole as separate entities for analysis. I contend that game vidding can stand on its own as a vidder’s work of historiography, insofar as vidding is about “gathering artefacts [clips] and then using them to write a story” in video form.46 As discussed above, vids are made out of existing material, and these “found” videos (gameplay recordings, cutscenes) could productively be considered as archival sources. A very clear example of how vidding can be used to write a history of gaming is the Legend of Zelda vid The Hero’s Journey (thedeadparrot, 2020). This example uses Let’s Plays from seven different games in the series, from A Link to the Past (1991) through Skyward Sword (2011), cut to an instrumental piece titled “The Maelstrom” by Jim Guthrie. The vid exploits the fact that the player character is regularly centred in the frame to shift focus and enable a viewer’s consideration of (at minimum) evidence of the development of gaming graphics through this example. Rather than a functional consideration of how the avatar can be used to complete the game, this is a sustained engagement with games once they have been played, drawing out an affective history with video games beyond their replay value.47 Indeed, the vid post contains an essay about the vidder’s love for the franchise, and comments on the vid post note the scope of the footage as part of commending the vidder’s effort. As a collection of Let’s Plays, The Hero’s Journey has a curatorial edge to it, as it selects and positions each individual gamer’s recording of their own individual gameplay experiences as the authoritative evocation of each game in the franchise and combines them to give the viewer an  See Regina Seiwald, Chapter 1.  Stevens, “On Vidding,” 148. See Regina Seiwald, Chapter 1.  See also Rebecca Williams, Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity and Self-Narrative (New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

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impression of what it has been like to be a longstanding Zelda fan. The act of interpreting evidence from an archive is the work of a historian; this work is performed in this vid. The work a vid does as interpretation is based on personal understandings, but also can be understood in relation to a vidder’s sense of where the source material sits in the community. As Chris Louttit points out in relation to vids made of Jane Austen adaptations, “an important frame for the ‘creative’ and ‘interpretive’ act that is the fan video is the work and commentary of others active in the community.”48 Overtly reflexive television vid examples include Counteragent’s Still Alive (2008)49 and lim’s Us (2007),50 which both directly comment on specific aspects of media fandom. Tisha Turk argues that vid-making and vidwatching are acts of collaborative interpretation;51 vids respond to and are made for a community’s shared understanding of, for example, character motivations or thematic meanings. Vids are made to be shown to other fans, and therefore draw on and are part of discourses in fan communities about the vids’ source material. In the case of game vids, a motivation for making a vid can be to use clips from the game to stand as evidence in an argument that counters loud player disapproval of, as in the next example, the ending of Mass Effect 3. The Mass Effect trilogy vid With Blood (beccatoria, 2013) also uses gameplay captured by a range of YouTubers to account for meaningful choice in the contentious ending of the third game, in which there were not multiple possible endings.52 Comments on the vid post make it clear that the vidder’s intention was to note how each individual’s experience of Mass Effect is ultimately the same story for all players regardless of choice, and to find value in the wealth of variations  Chris Louttit, “Remixing Period Drama: The Fan Video and the Classic Novel Adaptation,” Adaptation 6, no. 2 (2013), 181.  Katharina Freund, “‘I’m Glad We Got Burned, Think of All the Things We Learned’: Fandom Conflict and Context in Counteragent’s ‘Still Alive’,” Transformative Works and Cultures 4 (2010); Louisa Ellen Stein, “Vidding: Remix as Affective Media Literacy,” Intermédialités: Histoire et Théorie Des Arts, Des Lettres et Des Techniques / Intermediality: History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and Technologies 23 (2014).  Alexis Lothian, “Living in a Den of Thieves: Fan Video and Digital Challenges to Ownership,” Cinema Journal 48, no. 4 (2009): 130–136; Svegaard, “All the Feels!”.  Tisha Turk, “‘Your Own Imagination’: Vidding and Vidwatching as Collaborative Interpretation,” Film & Film Culture 5 (2010): 88–110.  Jacqueline Burgess and Christian M. Jones, “‘Is It Too Much to Ask That We’re Allowed to Win the Game?’: Character Attachment and Agency in the Mass Effect 3 Ending Controversy,” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 37, no. 3 (2017): 146–158; Sarah Christina Ganzon, “Control, Destroy, Merge, Refuse, Retake: Players, the Author Function and the Mass Effect Ending Controversy,” in Words, Worlds, Narratives: Transmedia and Immersion, ed. Tawnya Ravy and Eric Forcier (Brill e-book, 2014), 127–146.

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that lead to the same end. Key to the success of the vid’s argument is the high degree of customisability in the player character, Commander Shepard, who can be male or female, with a range of appearances, backstories, and personalities chosen at the start of the game; elements of the narrative and potential for romance are then affected by choices made through gameplay. The vid textualises the customisability of the game by showing different experiences of Mass Effect, including the game’s optional queerness, by cross-cutting the same pieces of narrative that show different avatars, romantic partners, and the surviving nonplayer character from an event at the end of the first game. Since players capture and share their gameplay footage online, a vidder can combine these variations; With Blood drives home this customisability with a space orgy sequence that gathers couplings between different Shepards and non-player characters, with each pairing the manifest result of player choice. In contrast to The Hero’s Journey, With Blood positions the various avatars as indicative of different ways of playing through the trilogy, in an affective and empathetic imagining of alternative possibilities in how the game unfolds, regardless of the final game’s ending. Annika Waern notes that the customisability of Dragon Age avatars (another series by Bioware, Mass Effect’s studio), and the ambiguity of the role-playing options, means the emotional boundary blurs between the character and player.53 With Blood offers a chance for the viewer to reflect on the intensity of identification with their Shepard: it’s in seeing the suite of other options, the other possible Shepards and stories, that the vid reminds a viewer that their experience of Mass Effect was individual, even though it comes to the same end. Indeed, text on screen at the end of the vid (“All Shepards choose to save you.”) makes it clear there is only ever one outcome here. Interestingly, the 1st-person lyrics which appear to be expressing the Shepards’ feelings for their crew (with a collective “you”) could also be addressing the viewer, splitting the avatar from the player and offering Shepard a semblance of autonomy and agency in describing their own experience of the narrative. With this example, the question of authorship in considering the paratextuality of the vid becomes starker: many different players’ footage appears in this vid, as it catalogues, combines, and historicises many different sets of choices and potential experiences. Limiting authorship to Bioware, and allocating primary textuality to Mass Effect alone, excludes the players’ interpretive work in documenting their experience, and implies beccatoria’s response to the trilogy is similar to (perhaps) a designer creating a book jacket. Thinking of With Blood as a text honours the critical and affective labour undertaken in its

 Annika Waern, “‘I’m in Love with Someone That Doesn’t Exist!’ Bleed in the Context of a Computer Game,” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 3, no. 3 (2011): 239–257.

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production and credits a vidder’s ability to advance coherent historical and analytical accounts of games and player experience. Finally, and briefly, the Pokémon Go vid 500 Miles (elipie, 2017) goes beyond gameplay itself to create a memorialisation of the so-called “summer of Pokémon Go” that followed the game’s release in July 2016. The vid writes a history of an experience shared by players and non-players alike, which is cited in the vid through gathered news footage and collections of headlines, alongside marketing clips for the game, fan-shot footage of players gathering in public, and social media posts of entertaining augmented reality screenshots. 500 Miles textualises gameplay to the extreme – unusually for a game vid, we see people playing the game – and also offers an extended definition of play that includes interaction on social media, glitches, failures (such as being so absorbed in the game that a player walks into a piece of public art or off a dock into the water), and pleasure in AR juxtapositions that put different Pokémon in absurd or amusing situations. The vid’s soundtrack, “500 Miles” by The Proclaimers, can be taken as a reference to both the central mechanism of the game (walking many miles) and the figurative distance players would go to organise their life around the product. Therefore, 500 Miles documents a performance of engagement with Pokémon Go that creates an affective historicisation of that summer’s activity. This example of textual productivity uses records of gameplay to talk about gameplay and allows for an intervention into these spaces and practices. Game vids offer evidence of a player’s interpretation of a game, and they textualise identification with or investment in these products.

Conclusion In conclusion, game vids offer one venue for players to extend their engagement with a game once it has been played. For the vidder, through the process of vidding, they return to and highlight key moments, gestures, and settings that are key to their interpretation of the game/franchise and of their gameplay experience. This experience can and will extend beyond a playthrough of a single game text and encompass a range of paratexts. A game vid offers a similar return to a familiar game, offering a capsule version of another player/vidder’s experience to compare with their own. However, and particularly for game vids that are shown at conventions alongside vids using film, television and other game source, the vids’ viewers may not have played (or even have heard of) the game being vidded

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and therefore the vid holds primary textuality as an “entryway paratext.”54 In my experience of playing Transistor after watching Yellow Flicker Beat, my memory of the vid’s mood followed me into playing, as I chased the feeling promised by the vid. Studying game vids is not a substitute for ethnography, but game vids offer a set of (para)texts which encounter the narrative, spectacle and emotion involved in gameplay, through both the sustained engagement with a media text and the memorialisation of that activity are communicated through the vid. Game vids, or rather the act of watching game vids, opens space for reflection on the different possible ways of experiencing a game beyond playing it. Watching a streamer (or a sibling or friend) as they play and engaging with reviews (either reading or watching) are ways we can experience a game without directly exerting agency over outcomes when points of meaningful choice are offered. More than a highlight reel, a game vid leverages its soundtrack to construct an affective memorialisation of the feelings and experiences of gameplay. The examples of game vids discussed in this chapter do not necessarily offer explicit critiques of their source material, but it is possible to use the vid form in this way.55 Game vids do not often show players’ failures within gameplay, something Jesper Juul suggested was fundamental to understanding the “playing” of games.56 Instead, the focus on successful gameplay and on cutscenes perhaps elides the effort of actually working through the game; or perhaps, for an audience literate in gaming, the unspoken failures are understood to be haunting these works. (An exception that proves the point is 500 Miles.) Game vids do demonstrate one possible afterlife for digital games once the playthrough is completed, as a site of sustained engagement for a medium beyond its specific/intrinsic replay value.

References Barker, Martin. “Speaking of ‘Paratexts’: A Theoretical Revisitation.” Journal of Fandom Studies 5, no. 3 (2017): 235–249. https://doi.org/10.1386/JFS.5.3.235_1. BioWare. Mass Effect. Microsoft Game Studios/Electronic Arts. Xbox 360/PS3 and PC, 2007. BioWare. Mass Effect 2. Electronic Arts. Xbox 360/PC, 2010. PS3, 2011. BioWare. Mass Effect 3. Electronic Arts. Xbox 360/PC/PS3/Wii U, 2012. Bioware. Mass Effect Andromeda. Electronic Arts. PC/PS4/Xbox One, 2017.

 Gray, Show Sold Separately, 35.  Svegaard, “All the Feels!”.  Jesper Juul, The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games, Playful Thinking (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013). However, as discussed regarding Our House, game vids can delight in a game’s failures, e.g. glitches.

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Booth, Paul. “Introduction: SuperWhoLock Fandom: Fandoms Crossed.” In Crossing Fandoms: SuperWhoLock and the Contemporary Fan Audience, edited by Paul Booth, 1–27. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57455-8_1. Burgess, Jacqueline, and Christian M. Jones. “‘Is It Too Much to Ask That We’re Allowed to Win the Game?’ Character Attachment and Agency in the Mass Effect 3 Ending Controversy.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 37, no. 3 (2017): 146–158. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0270467618819685. Busse, Kristina. “The Ethics of Studying Online Fandom.” In The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, edited by Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott, 9–17. New York: Routledge, 2018. Busse, Kristina, and Karen Hellekson. “Identity, Ethics, and Fan Privacy.” In Fan Culture: Theory/ Practice, edited by Katherine Larsen and Lynn Zubernis, 38–56. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Coppa, Francesca. “A Brief History of Media Fandom.” In Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays., edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, 41–59. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2006. Coppa, Francesca. “A Fannish Taxonomy of Hotness.” Cinema Journal 48, no. 4 (2009): 107–113. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.0.0136. Coppa, Francesca. “Women, Star Trek, and the Early Development of Fannish Vidding.” Transformative Works and Cultures 1 (15 September 2008). https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2008.044. Crawford, Garry. Video Gamers. Routledge, 2012. Crystal Dynamics. Tomb Raider. Square Enix. Xbox 360/PC/PS3, 2013. Cyan. Myst. Broderbund. Mac OS, 1993. PC, 1994. FASA Interactive. MechWarrior 4: Vengeance. Microsoft, 2000. Freedman, Matthew Brett. “Machinima and Copyright Law.” Journal of Intellectual Property Law 13, no. 1 (2005): 235–254. Freund, Katharina. “‘Becoming a Part of the Storytelling’: Fan Vidding Practices and Histories.” In A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies, edited by Paul Booth, 207–223. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2018. Freund, Katharina. “‘I’m Glad We Got Burned, Think of All the Things We Learned’: Fandom Conflict and Context in Counteragent’s ‘Still Alive’.” Transformative Works and Cultures 4 (2010). https:// doi.org/10.3983/twc.2010.0187. Ganzon, Sarah Christina. “Control, Destroy, Merge, Refuse, Retake: Players, the Author Function and the Mass Effect Ending Controversy.” In Words, Worlds, Narratives: Transmedia and Immersion, edited by Tawnya Ravy and Eric Forcier, 127–146. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Garin, Manuel. “Super Mario, the New Silent Clown: Video Game Parodies as Transformative Comedy Tools.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 18, no. 3 (2015): 305–309. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1367877913513688. Gray, Jonathan. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: NYU Press, 2010. Hanson, Christopher. Game Time: Understanding Temporality in Video Games. Digital Game Studies. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2018. Hempuli. Baba is You. Hempuli. PC/Switch, 2019. iOS/Android, 2021. Hills, Matt. “Fiske’s ‘Textual Productivity’ and Digital Fandom: Web 2.0 Democratization versus Fan Distinction?” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 10, no. 1 (2013): 130–153. Ito, Mizuko. “Machinima in a Fanvid Ecology.” Journal of Visual Culture 10, no. 1 (2011): 51–54. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1470412910391557.

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Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Studies in Culture and Communication. New York: Routledge, 1992. Juul, Jesper. The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games. Playful Thinking. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013. Kennedy, Helen. “Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo? On the Limits of Textual Analysis.” Game Studies 2, no. 2 (2002). http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/kennedy/ Largent, Julia E., Milena Popova, and Elise Vist, eds. Special Issue: Fan Studies Methodologies. Transformative Works and Cultures 33 (2020). https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/ twc/issue/view/59. Largent, Julia E., Milena Popova, and Elise Vist, eds. “Toward Some Fanons of Fan Studies [Editorial].” Transformative Works and Cultures 33 (2020). https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/ twc/issue/view/59. Lothian, Alexis. “Living in a Den of Thieves: Fan Video and Digital Challenges to Ownership.” Cinema Journal 48, no. 4 (2009): 130–36. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.0.0152. Louttit, Chris. “Remixing Period Drama: The Fan Video and the Classic Novel Adaptation.” Adaptation 6, no. 2 (2013): 172–86. https://doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apt005. Lowood, Henry. “A Different Technical Approach’? Introduction to the Special Issue on Machinima.” Journal of Visual Culture 10, no. 1 (April 2011): 3–5. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412910391546. Lowood, Henry. “High-Performance Play: The Making of Machinima.” Journal of Media Practice 7, no. 1 (2006): 25–42. https://doi.org/10.1386/jmpr.7.1.25/1. MacCallum-Stewart, Esther. “‘Take That, Bitches!’ Refiguring Lara Croft in Feminist Game Narratives.” Game Studies 14, no. 2 (2014). http://gamestudies.org/1402/articles/maccallumstewart. Marsh, Jackie. “The Discourses of Celebrity in the Fanvid Ecology of Club Penguin Machinima.” In Discourse and Digital Practices, edited by Rodney H. Jones, Alice Chik and Christoph A. Hafner, 193–208. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015. Mikula, Maja. “Gender and Videogames: The Political Valency of Lara Croft.” Continuum 17, no. 1 (2003): 79–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/1030431022000049038. Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press, 2015. Niantic. Pokémon Go. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. iOS/Android, 2016. Nintendo. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Nintendo. Wii, 2011. Nintendo EAD. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Nintendo. SNES, 1991. Perkins, V. F. Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. London: Penguin Books, 1972. Raw, Adrienne E. “Rhetorical Moves in Disclosing Fan Identity in Fandom Scholarship.” Transformative Works and Cultures 33 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2020.1731. Roberts, Ian. “Genesis of the Digital Anime Music Video Scene, 1990–2001 [Multimedia].” Transformative Works and Cultures 9 (2012). https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2012.0365. Ruberg, Bonnie, and Adrienne Shaw. “Introduction: Imagining Queer Game Studies.” In Queer Game Studies, edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw, ix–xxxiii. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. Schleiner, Anne-Marie. “Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games.” Leonardo 34, no. 3 (2001): 221–226. https://doi.org/10.1162/ 002409401750286976. Shaw, Adrienne. Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture. U of Minnesota Press, 2015. Stein, Louisa Ellen. Millennial Fandom: Television Audiences in the Transmedia Age. University of Iowa Press, 2015.

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Stein, Louisa Ellen. “Vidding: Remix as Affective Media Literacy.” Intermédialités : Histoire et Théorie Des Arts, Des Lettres et Des Techniques / Intermediality: History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and Technologies 23 (2014). https://doi.org/10.7202/1033338ar. Stevens, E. Charlotte. Fanvids: Television, Women, and Home Media Re-Use. Transmedia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. Stevens, E. Charlotte. “On Vidding: The Home Media Archive and Vernacular Historiography.” In Cult Media: Re-Packaged, Re-Released and Restored, edited by Jonathan Wroot and Andy Willis, 143–159. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Supergiant Games. Transistor. Supergiant Games. PC/PS4, 2014. Svegaard, Sebastian F. K. “‘All the Feels!’: Music, Affect and Critique in Vids.” PhD thesis, Birmingham City University, 2022. Turk, Tisha. “Transformation in a New Key: Music in Vids and Vidding.” Music, Sound, and the Moving Image 9, no. 2 (2015): 163–176. Turk, Tisha. “‘Your Own Imagination’: Vidding and Vidwatching as Collaborative Interpretation.” Film & Film Culture 5 (2010): 88–110. Vollans, Ed. “So just what is a Trailer, Anyway?” Arts and the Market 5, no. 2 (2015): 112–125. https:// doi.org/10.1108/AAM-07-2014-0026. Waern, Annika. “‘I’m in Love with Someone That Doesn’t Exist!’ Bleed in the Context of a Computer Game.” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 3, no. 3 (2011): 239–257. https://doi.org/10.1386/ jgvw.3.3.239_1. Waysdorf, Abby. “Placing Fandom, Studying Fans: Modified Acafandom in Practice.” Transformative Works and Cultures 33 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2020.1739. Williams, Kathleen Amy. “Fake and Fan Film Trailers as Incarnations of Audience Anticipation and Desire.” Transformative Works and Cultures 9 (2012). https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2012.0360. Williams, Rebecca. Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity and Self-Narrative. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. Williams, Rebecca, and Paul Booth, eds. Fan Studies: Methods, Ethics, Research. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2021.

Section 4: Game production and paratexts

Alan Galey and Ellen Forget

Video games with footnotes: Understanding in-game developer commentary Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. [. . .] The mind is refrigerated by interruption. Samuel Johnson, Preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare (London, 1765), lxix–lxx

When Shakespeare’s plays were printed in the eighteenth century in large multivolume editions like Samuel Johnson’s, they were often advertised as editions cum notis variorum, Latin for an edition with the notes of various commentators and previous editors, usually printed below the main text. By the end of the eighteenth century, there were so many of these commentators that the lengthy footnotes sometimes edged Shakespeare’s text off the page entirely, hence Johnson’s complaint in the epigraph above (though he was certainly part of the problem). When you think of a footnote today, you probably imagine a book or article where a small – or not so small – chunk of text in the margin of the page comments on part of the main text, linked with a number or symbol (e.g. an asterisk ✶ or dagger †). The book you are reading now uses footnotes where its authors cite relevant sources, offer guidance to readers, or expand or nuance a point in the main text. Even if you are reading this chapter in digital form, say as a PDF page image or HTML text in a web browser, the relationship between notes and main text should remain more or less the same as in print. Even born-digital forms such as blogs and wikis use notes to allow authors to comment on their texts. What matters in all these cases is that a note represents a mechanism for commentary that is readily accessible and written to be read (or ignored, as is often the case).1

 For general introductions, see Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: a Curious History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999) and Chuck Zerby, The Devil’s Details: a History of Footnotes (Montpelier, VT: Invisible Cities Press, 2002). On the idea of reader/user/player annotation in Note: The research for this chapter was supported by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. For a companion blog post to this chapter, see Alan Galey’s blog www.veilofcode.ca. Alan Galey and Ellen Forget, University of Toronto https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-008

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Whether interruption or illumination, all notes are instances of paratexts (texts with some relationship to a primary text), which may also be subcategorized as peritexts (paratexts that are materially connected to a primary text), to use the terms coined by Gerard Genette.2 In this chapter, we examine a specific and often overlooked kind of video game paratext: the commentaries inserted by game developers into the games themselves, which may illuminate a game’s production history and gameplay details from the perspectives of the people who created it.3 We offer some thoughts on how to approach a concept like annotation by working through a set of examples from the games Portal, Gone Home, Tacoma, Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa), and The Stanley Parable, followed by a conclusion that considers not only how to understand in-game developer commentary, but also why it matters.

Annotation beyond books The annotation of written texts is a widespread practice with a long history in the form both of readers’ annotations (also known as marginalia) and of notes added by authors or editors as part of the text’s production (or reproduction). As a media form, video games are obviously very different from printed books, but it can help to compare different kinds of cultural artifacts that enable their creators to attach commentary. For example, home releases of films and television shows are often accompanied by commentary tracks. In some cases, separate commentary tracks for the same film may offer different perspectives, with, say, the directors and writers discussing their work in one track, actors in another, and art directors and cinematographers in yet another. Music may also be accompanied by a kind of annotation in the form of liner notes, which in some musical genres can take the form of lengthy essays written by critics, scholars, and other musicians. More recently, annotated versions of albums now appear on streaming services such as Spotify, either with audio commentary tracks inserted between the original recordings or as a separate

digital media, see Elyse Graham, “The Past and Futures of Annotation: How Reading Communities Drive Media Change,” Book 2.0 5, no. 1–2 (2015): 59–70.  See Regina Seiwald’s chapter in this book, “De-Centralising the Text: The Text–Paratext Relationship of Video Games,” for a more detailed description of Genette’s work and the terms paratext and peritext.  For lists of games with this kind of commentary, see these two helpful Wikipedia pages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_commentary/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category: Video_games_with_commentaries.

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companion album that shows up in search results.4 Even live performances of operatic works are now commonly accompanied by surtitles above the stage, which display translations of lyrics for audiences who may not know the work’s original language. But if books, films, and music – even when performed live – can have their own forms of annotation, why not video games? The closest thing to a literal example of a video game with footnotes from its developers may be the third-person psychological horror game Alan Wake (2010), which, like many of the examples we discuss in detail below, allows players to activate a commentary mode in the settings. When this mode is active, the player will occasionally see a small video overlay at the bottom of their screen, in which various members of the development team speak directly to players about some relevant aspect of the game (e.g. when a new gameplay mechanic is introduced). Oddly enough, these video game footnotes share a peculiar quality with those long footnotes in eighteenth-century Shakespeare editions: the notes and primary text are simultaneous and co-present in the reader’s/player’s experience.5 This can have interesting results as the text and paratext compete for attention; in Alan Wake, you can easily find yourself trying to escape the game’s shadowy antagonists while a developer cheerfully talks about level design in the corner of your screen. At least the game, unlike (printed) Shakespeare editions, allows you to turn off the commentary if it becomes distracting. The analogy between Alan Wake’s commentary and printed footnotes is an easy one because of their visual similarity, in that the annotations appear in the margin of the screen and page, respectively. But focusing only on similarities between different media forms can be limiting. If we think of annotation abstractly, in terms of its functions and not just its appearance, then even non-verbal forms like sculpture or painting may be said to have annotations in the form of curators’ notes next to the objects in galleries, not to mention the audio tours that are increasingly the norm in galleries and museums. Again, video games offer their own examples of annotations that do not merely look like print. An early and influential example of in-game commentary is the first-person puzzle game Portal,  With music, it makes a difference when the commentary is heard, not written, and thus appears in the same medium as the music. Commentary versions on Spotify frequently take the form of separate album entries divided into tracks that correspond to the record, catalogued in Spotify so that they appear alongside the album with the same artwork. A variation on this format may be found in the fortieth anniversary version of Rush’s album 2112, which appears on Spotify with commentary from guitarist Alex Lifeson and producer Terry Brown interspersed between the music tracks. (Brown mentions at one point that they recorded the commentary specifically for Spotify.)  Mia Consalvo suggests that we remain open-minded about what counts as primary and secondary, and advocates for paratexts as primary texts; see her article “When Paratexts Become Texts: De-Centering the Game as Text,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34, no. 2 (2017): 177–183.

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which was updated by its developers to include a commentary mode, which, in contrast to Alan Wake, adds its footnotes not as a 2D overlay but as 3D icons in the spaces of the game’s levels (Figure 1).6 With Portal’s commentary mode activated, players will encounter these non-diegetic icons (shaped like speech bubbles from comics) as though they were objects in the game world, and activate them (or not) to hear commentary from the developers. Below, we will look in detail at Portal’s commentary and similar modes in other games and consider the kinds of questions they raise for the study of video games and their paratexts.

Figure 1: A commentary icon in Portal. Screenshot reproduced by permission of Valve Corporation.

Before we do, it is worth pausing to consider that supposedly clear dividing line between what is and isn’t part of the game world. The term non-diegetic in the preceding paragraph, borrowed from film studies, means an element in a film that the audience experiences but the characters do not because it is not part of the fictional world. For example, in the Lord of the Rings films Howard Shore’s symphonic score is non-diegetic; presumably Gandalf is not hearing the ominous strains of an orchestra as he recounts the history of the One Ring to Frodo. But when characters like  On annotations in Portal and other Valve games, see René Glas, “Paratextual Play: Unlocking the Nature of Making-of Material in Games,” in Proceedings of the 1st International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG (Dundee, Scotland: Digital Games Research Association, 2016), 7–8. http:// www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/paper_266.pdf.

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Pippin or Aragorn sing in the films, we know their song is present in the fictional world – i.e. part of the film’s diegesis – because other characters can hear it. Kristine Jørgensen argues that the diegetic/non-diegetic distinction is inapplicable to video games because of the active role of the player and other non-narrative elements of games.7 As Jørgensen points out, an interactive overlay such as a health bar cannot be neatly classified as non-diegetic (like credits in a film), but for our purposes the term may be safely applied to most – though not quite all – of the forms of video game annotation we discuss here. Our use of the distinction follows Alexander Galloway, who pragmatically adapts the terms from cinema to recognise the differences of video games.8 The opposing positions on the applicability of the terms may be reconciled if we remember that one purpose of drawing any distinction – as between diegetic and non-diegetic – is to enable us to recognise when it is being blurred creatively, not just to sort phenomena into neat categories. (For an example, see our discussion of The Stanley Parable below.) Our choice of examples is by no means exhaustive nor representative of video games with developer commentary. We have chosen these examples partly as a sampling of different ways to incorporate commentary, in terms of interface and interactivity, but more importantly we have chosen examples of games where form and meaning are entwined in important ways. Forms of commentary are still evolving, but a reliable strategy for understanding annotation and commentary across media is to pay attention not only to the forms they take, but also to their function and effects. All of the examples we discuss in this chapter, including the video games and examples of annotation in other media, share two defining elements: first, the commentary accompanies the immediate experience of the primary text, whether in the same visual field (e.g. the page or the screen) or in close proximity; and second, the commentary has a recognisable authority behind it, whether it comes from the creators of the work or someone else who can speak with expertise or insider knowledge.9 These two factors – material proximity to the

 Kristine Jørgensen, Gameworld Interfaces (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013), 65–67.  Alexander Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 6–8 and passim.  It is important to remember, however, that developers’ officially published accounts of gamemaking should not necessarily be taken as the full story, nor as the unvarnished truth. A thorough account of a game’s production might use a range of methods for gathering and interpreting evidence, including interviews and studio ethnographies. For examples of these approaches, see Casey O’Donnell, Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), Jennifer Whitson, “What Can We Learn from Studio Ethnographies?: A ‘Messy’ Account of Game Development Materiality, Learning, and Expertise,” Games and Culture 15, no. 3 (2020), and Chris J. Young, “Scene Tracing: The Replication and Transformation of Global Industry, Movements, and Genres in Local Game Production,” Lateral 11, no. 1 (2022), https://csalateral.

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work and authority of the commentators – are what distinguishes our examples from social media paratexts created by fans. Tweets, streams, Reddit threads, playthrough videos, and other forms of social media are all forms of framing and potentially worth studying, but our focus here is on commentary by the games’ creators, as it appears within the games themselves.10 As we shall see in the examples below, it makes a difference to hear from the people who make the games we play.

Example 1: Portal For a game whose dominant themes include isolation, absence, and unanswered questions, Portal’s commentary mode makes a real difference in one’s playing experience. Normally, one plays Portal though the first-person perspective of a silent protagonist (named Chell, as we learn in the end credits), with only the voice of a passive-aggressive AI named GlaDOS as your companion through a deserted underground testing facility as you solve physics puzzles armed with a gun that can shoot wormholes onto surfaces. But with commentary mode turned on in the game’s settings, Portal’s levels become populated with the voices of its creators.11 As a physics puzzle game with a minimalist aesthetic, Portal includes many subtle design choices that guide the player’s experience. These design choices usually go unnoticed – good design often does – but the developer commentary mode allows the designers to explain their choices and techniques in their own voices. For example, not long after the player escapes GlaDOS’s murderous ploy at the end of Test Chamber 19, the player encounters an industrial room with a very high ceiling.

org/issue/11-1/scene-tracing-replication-transformation-global-industry-movements-genres-localgame-production-young/. For an example of video games scholarship that draws upon in-game developer commentary as one among several sources of evidence, including other official paratexts such as tie-in art books, see Jaroslav Švelch, “Always Already Monsters—Bioshock’s (2007) ‘Splicers’ as Computational Others,” Nordlit 42 (2019), 261. See also Glas, “Paratextual Play,” on the role of in-game developer commentary in interpretation.  On fan-created materials, see E. Charlotte Stevens’s chapter in this collection, “Video Game Fanvids as Paratexts and as Texts.”  Portal was released in 2007 but Valve debuted its commentary mode with Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast, a stand-alone level omitted from the original Half-Life 2 (2004) but released on its own in 2005 as a graphics demo. The system has been used in seven other Valve games, including 2020’s Half-Life: Alyx. Technical documentation for the commentary system may be found on the Valve Developer Wiki: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Commentary_System. On the agency of players in determining which paratexts shape their gaming experiences, see Regina Seiwald’s chapter in this collection, “De-Centralising the Text: the Text–Paratext Relationship in Video Games.”

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A commentary node by designer Jeep Barnett explains that players rarely seem to look up when they enter new spaces and describes the addition of an unclimbable ladder to prompt players to look upward and realise how to escape the room. This explanation of a subtle design technique is one of many such commentary nodes in Portal, and it offers us insight into both the art of game design and the tendencies of players. Those tendencies usually become apparent as patterns (such as the tendency to ignore ceilings) discovered only through systematic playtesting. Indeed, many of Portal’s most interesting commentary nodes could be categorised under the heading “surprising things we learned from playtesting” – an ironic mirror of GlaDOS’s far less benign preoccupation with testing.12 Portal’s commentary nodes also illuminate story elements that might otherwise be unclear or ambiguous. For example, shortly before the final confrontation with GlaDOS, the player passes through an office adjacent to the chamber where the GlaDOS supercomputer is physically housed. On a desk in this office sits a red telephone with its cable cut, an easily missed detail for players hurrying to the final boss battle. As Portal’s co-writer Eric Wolpaw explains in the accompanying commentary node, the idea behind the red phone was that an Aperture Science employee would sit ready to make an emergency call if GlaDOS threatened to become “sentient and godlike.” Clearly this plan didn’t work, and the cut phone cord suggests that the rogue AI turned the tables on her creators. The phone is a small detail, but once explained it tells us something about Aperture Science: they’re the kind of company whose idea of a failsafe plan is to make an employee sit by a phone waiting for an AI to say the wrong thing. Writing and design are two of the most obvious elements of a game where developer commentary can give us insights that might not be apparent to players. A third category of developer commentary that can be particularly interesting deals with voice acting. As a game with a silent protagonist, Portal’s most memorable performance comes from GlaDOS herself, voiced by actor Ellen McLain. Several of the commentary nodes describe working with McLain to create GlaDOS’s memorable voice, including one where we hear before-and-after examples of the digital treatment of McLain’s voice to suggest a computer simulating a human. However, McLain herself speaks in several nodes. Her comments are among the most illuminating in the game, not only because she delivers them with more energy and spontaneity than the other developers – she is a professional actor, after all – but also because she unpacks the collaborative nature of voice acting, with

 For a complete list and transcription of Portal’s in-game developer commentaries, see https:// theportalwiki.com/wiki/Portal_developer_commentary/.

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contributions not only from the actor but also the writers and the voice director in the recording studio. Overall, the developer commentary nodes in Portal provide glimpses into the development processes of a now-classic video game. With Portal, the voices of developers are all the more important to hear because of the game’s origins as a student project at the DigiPen Institute of Technology. Several of the student developers of the original game, Narbacular Drop, went on to join Portal’s development team when Valve acquired the game, and their perspectives are now part of Portal’s experience for players using commentary mode.

Examples 2 & 3: Gone Home and Tacoma The icon-based annotation system found in Portal and other Valve games has been refined in two more recent games, Gone Home (2013) and Tacoma (2017). Both were made by the developer Fullbright, and we will discuss them together given their similarities. In Gone Home, set in 1995, you play as a young woman, Kaitlin Greenbriar, who arrives one stormy night to her family home after an overseas trip, and must then reconstruct what has been happening in the lives of her (apparently absent) mother, father, and younger sister. In Tacoma, set in 2088, you play as someone tasked with searching an abandoned space station in Earth orbit to determine what happened to its crew and the AI responsible for running the station. Both games are examples of what some call walking simulators – a term of endearment or derision depending on who is using it. In Gone Home, Tacoma, and other walking simulators, the first-person player-character moves through spaces where other characters are apparently absent but have left notes or other messages that allow players to piece together the story by exploring objects in the environment. The icon-based approach to in-game commentary fits right in with this mode of gameplay. As players move through the Greenbriar house or the Tacoma space station, they can interact with clearly marked icons to activate the commentary and listen to developers, programmers, level designers, writers, artists, and voice actors speak about something relevant to that area of the game.13 However, Fullbright’s games differ from Portal in some interesting ways. One difference is that Fullbright has improved upon Valve’s commentary system by adding new features. In Tacoma, several commentary nodes not only trigger

 On the collective nature of authorship in video games, see the editors’ introduction to this collection.

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Figure 2: An active commentary icon in Tacoma with accompanying pictures of the game’s voice actors. Screenshot reproduced by permission of Fullbright.

Figure 3: Tacoma’s pause menu in commentary mode, showing all of the visited commentary nodes in a given section of the space station. Screenshot reproduced by permission of Fullbright.

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audio from developers but also show concept art next to the icon, allowing the ingame annotations to work visually, not just aurally (Figure 2). Tacoma’s commentary nodes also have titles (e.g. “Drone Bay visual design”) which appear in a list on the pause menu, allowing players to see which nodes they have yet to discover in a given part of the space station (Figure 3). The most helpful improvement over Valve’s model, however, has nothing to do with design innovation: it is simply that the audio commentaries often include more than one of the developers speaking with each other, resulting in natural and often very entertaining conversations among colleagues. Another difference with both games is that the commentary nodes are not the only interaction-activated objects in the spaces the players are exploring. In Gone Home, interacting with some unmarked objects will cause the player-character’s sister, Sam, to read out a short journal entry in her own voice, which is how the player learns most of the storyline in the game. Similarly, in Tacoma the player must activate augmented-reality recordings and documents to solve the mystery of what happened on the station. There is a notable pair of commentary nodes in Gone Home – one at the very beginning of the game and one at the end – which revolve around Christmas Duck. One of the first nodes you encounter is in the foyer where you find the key to enter the house, which is under a duck with a Christmas-style bow around its neck. The accompanying commentary explains that Christmas Duck was used as a placeholder asset before a 3D modeller joined the project, but the team loved the object so much that they decided to keep it in the game. The companion node titled “A Place for Christmas Duck” at the end of the game appears in the attic next to a basket, where the developers discuss how some players will often carry a specific object throughout the entire game; the basket in the attic gives those players the satisfaction of finding somewhere to put Christmas Duck before they move into the last scene of Gone Home. This and other stories told through the commentary reveal how Gone Home is a game full of objects with stories of their own.14 Gone Home in particular has been praised for how it deals with themes of queerness, homophobia, and feminism through the story of the younger sister Sam’s realisation that she is in love with another girl from her school, named Lonnie. The developers were able to continue the conversation surrounding those issues in the commentary nodes. For example, much of the commentary in Gone Home discusses the music chosen for the game, along with indie band mixtapes and zines, and how these cultural  These objects sometimes function as in-jokes which connect the two games. In Tacoma, Christmas Duck makes a cameo in the character Natali Kuroshenko’s quarters, and a book written by Janice Greenbriar from Gone Home shows up in Tacoma’s arboretum. In both cases, the commentary nodes in these spaces let players in on the joke.

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reference points connect to the Riot Grrrl feminist movement of the 1990s. Those nodes, along with the ones that discuss Sam’s character design, help to develop the characterisation of Sam and her girlfriend, Lonnie. In the dining room of the house there is a commentary node where lead developer Steve Gaynor discusses the amount of research he did to write Sam as a gay female teenager because he could not primarily rely on his own experience to imagine Sam as a real person with real anxieties and hopes. This and other commentary nodes that focus on Sam and the Riot Grrrl movement show how seriously they took Sam’s characterisation, not merely dropping her identity into the story as a plot device. These commentaries also demonstrate how game-making can depend upon background research and writing, not just design and programming – especially when a game deals with topics that may be deeply personal to many of its players. Despite the visual similarity of Valve’s and Fullbright’s non-diegetic icons inserted like footnotes into the game world, the differences between their approaches to commentary are revealing. They tell us something about design choices in the implementation of a commentary system, and they may provide insight into the differences between the working cultures of the different studios. (Valve is a large, well-established developer; Fullbright is a smaller indie developer.) Most of all, the differences in the commentary between Portal and the two Fullbright games reflect the natures of the games themselves. Although Portal incorporates a subtle and pointed narrative, it is also defined by its gameplay mechanics and physics-puzzle solving. By contrast, first-person shooter gameplay elements are almost non-existent in Gone Home, Tacoma, and other walking simulators, which focus on stories told through objects, documents, and recordings. The challenges of these games depend not on players’ dexterity or timing – there are no moving platforms to jump on in Gone Home and no aliens to shoot in Tacoma – but on players’ curiosity, perceptiveness, memory, and willingness to follow the narrative. The term walking simulator hardly does justice to these games. They are not simulators at all; they are stories. But the walking simulator genre helps to explain why the Fullbright games’ commentary focuses so much on the stories and their nuanced themes. As students and scholars of these games, we can therefore pay attention to the details of form and meaning in both the commentary and the games and understand how each illuminates the other. That illumination extends beyond the fictional frame of the game, especially when we pay attention to who made the game and why. As Adam Hammond points out, “[t]he media analogy that Gone Home develops, then, is that an indie game is the videogame equivalent of a zine: self-produced without the interference of publishers or editors, it allows for a degree of expressive freedom impossible in commercially published forms, be

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they JFK novels or first-person shooters.”15 Our next example takes this kind of analysis further and considers how form and meaning work together in a game whose paratexts deal with questions of cultural knowledge.

Example 4: Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa) Non-diegetic icons that function like annotations are only one way of incorporating commentary within games. An approach more familiar from older media forms can be found in the game Never Alone (also titled Kisima Inŋitchuŋa in Iñupiat). The game itself challenges traditional industry definitions of “developer”: it originates from a partnership between educational game company E-Line Media and the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, a nonprofit organisation that serves Native American people in Alaska. The partnership led to the creation of Upper One Games, the first Indigenous-owned game studio in the United States, resulting in the publication of Never Alone in 2014. The game pairs Iñupiat legends and cultural symbols with the genre of the side-scrolling platform game and tells the story of an Iñupiat girl named Nuna who, with the aid of traditional knowledge, spirit helpers, and her Arctic Fox companion, must find a way to end the blizzard that afflicts her people. Since its publication, Never Alone has become recognised as a landmark in the growing body of games produced by and with Indigenous people.16 In its incorporation of developer commentary, Never Alone differs in several ways from the examples discussed above. Rather than including snippets of commentary as spatial footnotes in the game’s levels, Never Alone follows the model of films and television shows, which are often accompanied by brief documentarystyle making-of videos. As the player progresses through the game, they unlock up to 24 short videos, which become accessible via the game menu in a section labelled “Cultural Insights.” Topics include the nature of storytelling, scrimshaw as an artistic and storytelling medium, bolas (a tool used by Iñupiat hunters and by Nuna in

 Adam Hammond, “Books in Videogames,” in The Unfinished Book, ed. Deidre Lynch and Alexandra Gillespie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 341. His mention of “JFK novels” refers to Gone Home’s father character, Terry Greenbriar, and his failed attempt to become a mainstream novelist.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_people_in_video_games. On the making of Never Alone, see Ivan Encelewski, “The Making of Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa): Celebrating a People and a Language,” Cultural Survival Quarterly 43, no. 1 (March 2019) https://www.culturalsur vival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/making-never-alone-kisima-innitchuna-celebrat ing-people and Colin Campbell, “The First Native American Games Company,” Polygon, August 21, 2013, https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/8/21/4594372/native-american-games/.

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the game), the Northern Lights, and the effects of climate change on Iñupiat people. Video and photographs of life in the arctic are intercut with footage from the game, and the faces and voices that give each video its through-line are those of Iñupiat community members (Figure 4).

Figure 4: The Cultural Insights menu in Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa). Screenshot reproduced by permission of E-Line Ventures.

These developer commentary videos differ from the in-game footnotes of the previously discussed games not only in terms of form, and of who speaks for the game, but also purpose. In Portal, for example, the comments are largely explanatory and shed light on the art and craft of game development. The commentary in Portal is informative and interesting but not strictly necessary to understand the game; indeed, Portal was released and widely played for several years prior to the addition of the commentary mode in a software update. With Never Alone, the commentary has been present since the game’s release, which, as Adrienne Massanari points out, makes it “unlikely that a player would not have some awareness of the unique circumstances of the game’s creation.”17 Those unique circumstances mean that the commentary serves at least two needs that are not present in the other examples we are considering: distancing Never Alone from the tradition of stereotyping and cultural appropriation of Indigenous people in video games; and educating the game’s audience about the cultural contexts of the story and world portrayed in the game, which reflects the traditional knowledge of Iñupiat people.

 Adrienne Massanari, “Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa): Possibilities for Participatory Game Design,” Well Played: A Journal on Video Games, Value and Meaning 4, no. 3 (2015), 95.

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In this light, the paratexts of a game like Never Alone require different interpretive strategies than the more straightforward commentary of Portal, Gone Home, and Tacoma.18 One strategy would be to pay attention to content and form together: not just what the videos tell us, but also how they fit into possible experiences of the game. For example, the videos are not all available to players at the outset, and must be unlocked progressively like achievements.19 Yet once unlocked, players are reminded about the videos in each level loading screen, which encourages them to move back and forth between the cultural insight videos and gameplay. Another strategy would be to observe how the videos interact with other paratexts, even ones that tend to go overlooked such as subtitles. While the videos are all in English, the game’s narration (by James Mumiġan Nageak) is in Iñupiat, with optional English subtitles. The implications of this design choice are worth thinking about, especially in relation to the status of English as a colonial language (and still usually the default language of video games), and the intimate connections between language and culture. Would this be an Indigenous game if the Iñupiat language were not present to remind non-Iñupiat speakers of whose story this is? And what would be the consequences to Iñupiat storytelling and culture if this language was suppressed or endangered, which has been the case for many Indigenous people in North America as a result of residential schools and other colonial policies? The information shared by the developers of the other games discussed in this chapter usually takes the form of shareable facts, experiences, and insights about game development. But with Never Alone, the commentary does not simply arm the player with facts; it also bestows a responsibility to understand where the story comes from, and to remember that the Iñupiat are real people and not just objects of knowledge. As the first comment in the first video pointedly states, “we’re not a museum piece.”20 It serves as a reminder of a basic interpretive responsibility for all non-Indigenous game scholars (including the two authors of this chapter), which is to respect the limits of our knowledge and to defer to  For examples of scholarship on Never Alone which engage with its cultural insights videos and other paratexts, see Massanari, “Never Alone;” Nathan Shafer, “Circumpolar Gamifications in the Age of Global Warming: Ice Levels, Anxiety, and the Anthropocene,” in Augmented Reality Games II: The Gamification of Education, Medicine, and Art, ed. Vladimir Geroimenko (Cham: Springer, 2019), 275–304; and Kateryna Barnes, “Agniq Suaŋŋaktuq and Kisima Inŋitchuŋa (Never Alone): ‘Cause Gaia Likes It Cold,’” First Person Scholar, July 24, 2019, http://www.firstpersonscho lar.com/agniq-suannaktuq-and-kisima-innitchuna-never-alone/.  On unlockable developer commentary, see Glas, “Paratextual Play,” 8–9.  Amy Fredeen makes this point at the beginning of the first unlockable cultural insights video, titled “A Living People, a Living Culture.”

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Indigenous people when it comes to interpreting their own cultural artifacts – which includes video games.

Example 5: The Stanley Parable For an example of a game that deliberately depicts itself as a museum piece, we can turn to the experimental game The Stanley Parable, an indie project that received critical acclaim for its fourth-wall-breaking satire of first-person games themselves.21 The player-character is Stanley, an unremarkable office worker who notices one day that all of his co-workers have disappeared, and must navigate a surreal office environment to understand the nature of his predicament. As Stanley moves through the game’s spaces, his actions are accompanied by the authoritative voice of the Narrator (actor Kevan Brighting), who provides a thirdperson description of Stanley’s actions, as though the Narrator were telling a story that Stanley is acting out.22 Yet the player-character is soon faced with the choice of whether to follow the Narrator’s prompting (e.g. “When Stanley came to a set of two open doors, he entered the door on his left”) or disregard it (e.g. by going through the door on the right). Contradicting the Narrator provokes him into various stages of criticising, reprimanding, cajoling, threatening, and eventually pleading with the player to comply with the narrative. The Stanley Parable is thus a game about choice, agency, and the conventions we take for granted in first-person games – all unpacked for the player with wit, insight, and pointed comedy.23

 The Stanley Parable was originally released by its developer Davey Wreden in 2011 as a free Half-Life 2 mod and was then remade with a larger team for commercial release by Galactic Café in 2013. In 2022, the developers released an expanded “Ultra Deluxe” version. We have focused mainly on the 2013 version while also accounting for differences in the 2022 version.  Compare the role of the all-knowing, English-accented, fairy-tale storybook narration in the Trine games (voiced by Terry Wilton), whose first instalment appeared in 2009, just a few years prior to The Stanley Parable. An unaware player could easily imagine both narrators being played by the same actor.  For articles that discuss these themes in relation to the game, see Antranig Arek Sarian, “Paradox and Pedagogy in The Stanley Parable,” Games and Culture 15, no. 2 (2020), 179–197; Sarah H. Beyvers, “The Game of Narrative Authority: Subversive Wandering and Unreliable Narration in The Stanley Parable,” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 12, no. 1 (2020), 7–21; and Feng Zhu, “The Freedom of Alienated Reflexive Subjectivity in The Stanley Parable,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media 26, no. 1 (2020), 116–134. Of these three, only Sarian discusses the game’s museum ending.

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These self-referential qualities make The Stanley Parable an especially interesting example of developer commentary. The game as a whole may be understood as a clever commentary on the nature of video games and the sometimes blurry distinctions between narrative and play, and between the diegetic and non-diegetic. One of The Stanley Parable’s possible endings, however, shifts from implicit commentary into a more direct explanation of the game’s creation by its developers. If you follow the sequence of choices to reach what is known as the “museum ending,” you find yourself in a space whose architecture evokes a neoclassical museum, with labelled exhibits depicting elements of the game’s development. For example, Figure 5 shows the beginning of the museum space, including a three-dimensional model of the game’s opening sequence leading to the doorway choice mentioned above. An interpretive plaque offers some insight from the developers, under the label “The Two Doors”: “The set of two open doors was the very first concrete piece of The Stanley Parable’s design. Once this room was created, the rest of the game emerged as an extension of it, an exploration of the contradiction this room posed.” As with the commentary icons in Portal, Gone Home, and Tacoma, visitors are free to browse the exhibits by moving from room to room.

Figure 5: An exhibit in the museum ending of The Stanley Parable. Screenshot reproduced by permission of Crows Crows Crows.

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Just as The Stanley Parable holds up a mirror to the assumptions and expectations we bring to games, especially with regard to choices and freewill in gameplay, so does the museum ending reflect the choices and pathways involved in gamemaking. As Sarian suggests, the museum ending “foregrounds the constructed nature of the game and its many paths, emphasizing that each moment within the game is created, planned, and tested.”24 As with Gone Home, Tacoma, and Never Alone, one of the most interesting things we can learn from The Stanley Parable’s museum is how the development process works with a small indie game. The small size of the development team is made clear in the opening room of the museum, which includes a three-panel alcove with the credits that traditionally scroll down the screen after a game ends. As a game about choice – or the illusion of choice – it is fitting that so many of the museum exhibits describe choices made and ideas abandoned in the development process. For example, one room describes an abandoned idea for a “Warzone” ending: Early in development, we designed an ending where Stanley would end up on a battlefield fighting aliens. The action game would become sentient and would wage war against the Narrator. We realized shortly after starting to build it that it was far too jokey and on-thenose for the tone of the game. Plus, some people interpreted it as making fun of people who like shooters, which was not our intention.

Here we have a written description, accompanied by some unused game assets and concept art, for an idea that the developers considered but abandoned, along with insight into how they made these kinds of decisions. Other rooms in the museum offer similar examples of decisions in the development process, from the changing layout of levels, to the evolution of Stanley’s office, to outtakes of Kevan Brighting’s narration.25 The Stanley Parable’s museum of itself shows us objects and images from the paths not taken in game development; we are not merely told about them. The museum is the right metaphor, then, given that real museum experiences are designed around objects, not just words.26 The architectural metaphor of the museum ending

 Sarian, “Paradox and Pedagogy,” 14. Original emphasis.  At least two parts of the museum have changed in the 2022 Ultra Deluxe version. The pictures above the stairs outside the “Warzone” room in the 2013 version show images from the game’s 2012 Steam Greenlight submission, and in the 2022 version show images from the 2018 Ultra Deluxe version announcement. The details on the credits plaques in the entrance room also differ between the two versions.  On video games in musuems and museums in video games, see Andrew Reinhard, Archaeogaming: An Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018), chapter 4; and Raiford Guins, Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), chapter 1.

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also ties in nicely with Genette’s central metaphor for paratexts: he considered them to be thresholds (seuils in his original French) through which we pass into and out of a main text. The museum ending may be an exceptional example of ingame developer commentary, in contrast with, say, Portal’s or Never Alone’s more adaptation-friendly approaches, as we have seen. But as with so many aspects of The Stanley Parable, the museum ending’s strangeness points to the paratextual condition of all video games, where the boundary between inside and outside can be ambiguous. We can learn a great deal by exploring a game’s paratextual threshold spaces, just as one might explore the dark corners of a real museum. The Stanley Parable’s museum doesn’t require us to exit through the gift shop, but it does challenge us to think about what it means to exit a video game.

Conclusion As video games become increasingly recognised as important cultural artifacts, the need for ways to marry gameplay with commentary will only increase. The diversity of methods and sources for intelligent commentary will need to increase as well, whether it builds on the models of the footnote (as in Alan Wake and the Valve and Fullbright games), the documentary video (Never Alone), the museum (The Stanley Parable), or other framing metaphors. In all cases, what matters is not so much the aptness of the older metaphor, or the closeness of the comparison between video games and older media, but the creative adaptation of media metaphors to suit video games, whose forms and player/developer communities continue to grow and change. Commentary systems are centrally important to fans, and in this chapter we haven’t even scratched the surface of fan-created social media commentary on games, whether in the form of, say, Twitch streaming or wikis as fan-made reference works for games.27 Nor have we looked at the equivalents of footnotes in gameplay aside from developer commentary, such as the vast amounts of written lore included in, say, the Dragon Age and Mass Effect games, which are encountered as diegetic objects and made to be read in the midst of gameplay. As with notes in printed books, players may find themselves ignoring or embracing the sometimes copious amounts of supplementary in-game writing about the game worlds. (Remember Samuel Johnson’s comments in 1765 about interruption and

 All of the games discussed in this chapter have wikis hosted on Fandom.com, many of which are currently the most thorough reference sources for the games in question. The oldest of our examples, Portal, has an additional wiki at https://theportalwiki.com.

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refrigeration of the mind, quoted in our epigraph.) These and other examples indicate that potential for annotation seems only to be growing with video games.28 The autonomous player also has control over whether they interact with the paratextual commentary – just as the reader of Shakespeare can decide to read or skip certain footnotes or annotations, and just as players of Mass Effect might not read every piece of in-game lore. Although in-game commentary is largely an optional experience in the games we’ve discussed, that option is usually toggled on or off when the player begins the game and cannot be changed mid-game. In some cases, the autonomy of the player-character and the player are in tension. For example, Gone Home’s story nodes can be cut short by interacting with a commentary node, and vice versa. This raises questions about how the player and player-character interact – or even diverge at certain points – and how autonomous a player really is in story-based games. With Never Alone, there is also the question of how optional the developers’ commentary should be, given that Never Alone’s developers include members of the Iñupiat community whose story is being told, and for whom the act of storytelling is a form of cultural preservation. Whatever ways annotation evolves in the future along with video games, questions of authority, authorship, and autonomy will remain important. As it happens, all of the examples we have discussed above deal thematically with voices of authority: Portal’s GlaDOS, The Stanley Parable’s Narrator, and Tacoma’s Venturis Corporation (in its periodic text instructions to the player-character) all attempt to control the player-character’s actions; Never Alone’s narration, in sharp contrast, guides and encourages with the more benign authority of an Iñupiat storyteller; and, in yet a different mode, Gone Home and Alan Wake depict characters who are authors and creators in various ways themselves – all struggling at times to articulate their visions and reach their readerships and audiences. The voice that tells the story, and the nature of its authority, is an essential thematic element of all these games even before we hear (or read) what stories the developers have to tell. Unlike the fictional Narrator in The Stanley Parable, however, all of the developers in these games have names, and invariably those names accompany their commentary, like an end-credits scroll come to life. In-

 Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux, authors of the influential book Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Video Games (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), have created a companion game called Footnotes in which players can explore the book’s ideas through its notes by encountering them, scattered and disconnected from their primary text, in procedurally generated game levels. See https://alt254.itch. io/footnotes/. Footnotes is therefore not so much an annotated game as a set of gamified notes.

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game commentary reminds us that these individuals have lives and careers in the game industry and beyond. We can learn from all of them – if we listen.

References Alan Wake [video game]. Espoo, Finland: Remedy, 2010. Barnes, Kateryna. “Agniq Suaŋŋaktuq and Kisima Inŋitchuŋa (Never Alone): ‘Cause Gaia Likes It Cold.’” First Person Scholar, July 24, 2019. http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/agniq-suannaktuqand-kisima-innitchuna-never-alone/ Boluk, Stephanie, and Patrick LeMieux. Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Video Games. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. Beyvers, Sarah H. “The Game of Narrative Authority: Subversive Wandering and Unreliable Narration in The Stanley Parable.” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 12, no. 1 (2020): 7–21. Campbell, Colin. “The First Native American Games Company.” Polygon, August 21, 2013. https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/8/21/4594372/native-american-games/ Consalvo, Mia. “When Paratexts Become Texts: De-Centering the Game as Text.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34, no. 2 (2017): 177–183. Encelewski, Ivan. “The Making of Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa): Celebrating a People and a Language.” Cultural Survival, March, 2019. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cul tural-survival-quarterly/making-never-alone-kisima-innitchuna-celebrating-people/ Galloway, Alexander. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Glas, René. “Paratextual Play: Unlocking the Nature of Making-of Material in Games.” In Proceedings of the 1st International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG. (Dundee, Scotland: Digital Games Research Association, 2016), 1–13. http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library /paper_266.pdf. Gone Home [video game]. Portland, OR: Fullbright, 2013. Grafton, Anthony. The Footnote: A Curious History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999. Graham, Elyse. “The Past and Futures of Annotation: How Reading Communities Drive Media Change.” Book 2.0 5, no. 1–2 (2015): 59–70. Guins, Raiford. Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014. Hammond, Adam. “Books in Videogames.” In The Unfinished Book, edited by Deidre Lynch and Alexandra Gillespie, 332–344. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Johnson, Samuel, ed. The Plays of William Shakespeare, in Eight Volumes. Vol. 1. London, 1765. Jørgensen, Kristine. Gameworld Interfaces. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013. Massanari, Adrienne. “Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa): Possibilities for Participatory Game Design.” Well Played: A Journal on Video Games, Value and Meaning 4, no. 3 (2015): 85–104. Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa) [video game]. Anchorage, AK: Upper One Games. O’Donnell, Casey. Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014. Portal [video game]. Bellevue: Valve, 2007. Reinhard, Andrew. Archaeogaming: An Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games. New York: Berghahn Books, 2018.

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Sarian, Antranig Arek. “Paradox and Pedagogy in The Stanley Parable.” Games and Culture 15, no. 2 (2020): 179–197. Shafer, Nathan. “Circumpolar Gamifications in the Age of Global Warming: Ice Levels, Anxiety, and the Anthropocene.” In Augmented Reality Games II: The Gamification of Education, Medicine, and Art, edited by Vladimir Geroimenko, 275–304. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019. The Stanley Parable [video game]. Galactic Café, 2013. Švelch, Jaroslav. “Always Already Monsters—Bioshock’s (2007) ‘Splicers’ as Computational Others.” Nordlit 42 (2019): 257–277. Tacoma [video game]. Portland: Fullbright, 2017. Trine [video game]. Helsinki: Frozenbyte, 2009. Whitson, Jennifer. “What Can We Learn from Studio Ethnographies?: A ‘Messy’ Account of Game Development Materiality, Learning, and Expertise.” Games and Culture 15, no. 3 (2020): 266–288. Young, Chris J. “Scene Tracing: The Replication and Transformation of Global Industry, Movements, and Genres in Local Game Production.” Lateral 11, no. 1 (2022): https://csalateral.org/issue/11-1/ scene-tracing-replication-transformation-global-industry-movements-genres-local-gameproduction–young/. Zerby, Chuck. The Devil’s Details: a History of Footnotes. Montpelier: Invisible Cities Press, 2002. Zhu, Feng. “The Freedom of Alienated Reflexive Subjectivity in The Stanley Parable.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media 26, no. 1 (2020), 116–134.

Ed Vollans

Artefact, advert, or advertising? Getting to grips with game trailers As a commodity sold for economic gain, commercial video games require promotion: from flyers for new cabinet-sized arcade machines, early television advertisements explaining how to connect the console to the TV, right the way through to contemporary pre-roll YouTube adverts and trailers. As with all promotional paratexts, studying this kind of industrial communication provides a lens through which we can view both the product and the wider concerns of the industry. We can see how the product was presented, how the product’s audience was positioned, constructed, and ultimately how the consumer was communicated with through context – games ratings, formats, even the representation (or not) of players. As Lisa Kernan notes of film promotion, the [t]railers’ unique status as cinematic promotions of narrative—and narrativizations of promotion—enables a treatment that transcends a mere marketing critique and has the potential to contribute to a social history of desire.1

Like other paratexts, the trailer’s value to scholars and consumers stems from its ability to circulate separately from the product, allowing key purchase decisionmaking to take place, and allowing access to otherwise inaccessible games. Concurrently, we must acknowledge that “trailers” are not wholly or just promotion, but articulations of a product, of “what could be,” even if this articulation is inaccurate. Unlike posters or written material, the trailer operates in something approximating the medium of the product, and this quality – especially within film and television – offers analytical opportunities that regularly explore the notion of the “free sample.” We must, however, recognise that within gaming, the notion of the game trailer as a free sample has an extra dimension. Game trailers are tele-filmic interpretations of the game, or game/console experience, somewhere between an adaptation and a free sample. Their construction, though, allows for a degree of distancing, making them less likely to be seen as a free sample. In this sense, the game trailer is perhaps more overtly a commentary on what the game product could be and who the intended audience is. Indeed, Kernan’s treatise of the film trailer is focused on reading the desired, yet hypothetical audience

 Lisa Kernan, Coming Attractions (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 2. Ed Vollans, University of Leicester https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-009

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through these articulations. Gradually, this contribution is being developed as the field expands. As Kathleen Amy Williams has shown, it is not just official communication that warrants inquiry, reviewing “fan-made trailers”2 can help us understand audience desire as opposed to industry desires.3 In all cases, trailers (like adverts) promote a view or frame of another text; whether this is part of an authorised promotional effort or a fan-made commentary, all trailers point to another object, the “product,” whether real or imagined, available or unavailable. So it is that trailers (or indeed, any advert) can help us see the economics of an industry, industrial concerns, and allow us to peek into fan communities and generally to see how others view the trailer’s subject: the real or imagined product. Promotional objects circulate separately from the product itself and are an example of Genette’s epitext.4 Operating in different spaces, and along different timelines to the product, they too can be shared and consumed separately. This quality ultimately leads to what Keith M. Johnston refers to as the “mobility” of the trailer.5 This separation between text (the product) and paratext (the trailer) means that lost or inaccessible games can still be discussed and studied, at least in part. Elements of the product are essentially archived through their paratextual representation. Such separation between promotion and product also means that trailers may appear in a range of different places, some expected, some unexpected, archived during commercial breaks of TV recordings, circulating on discs with magazines, in cinema archives, on home video, in press kits and, of course, circulating online. It is the latter kind of circulation on which I will focus. The justification for this – perhaps stark – exclusion is simple: a clear focus is needed for this chapter, and work on the trailer’s history suggests that the emergence of games trailers as a label coincides with, and was exacerbated by, the digital age and online content.6 Contributors to this collection have explored forms of paratextual communication, and much has been written about using archives more generally, but little has been written about games trailers, and much less so on the challenges and processes involved in studying them. I have argued elsewhere that, within academic

 For a thorough discussion of fan-made videos, or “fanvids,” see E. Charlotte Stevens, chapter.  Kathleen Amy Williams, “Fake and Fan Film Trailers as Incarnations of Audience Anticipation and Desire.” Transformative Works and Cultures 9 (2012): 1–21.  Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).  Keith M. Johnston, “‘The Coolest Way to Watch Movie Trailers in the World’: Trailers in the Digital Age.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14, no. 2 (2008): 145–160.  Ed Vollans, “So Just What is a Trailer, Anyway?” Arts and the Market 5, no. 2 (2015): 112–125.

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discussions, to consider “the trailer” is implicitly to consider the film trailer, as the term is so grounded within cinema.7 While discussions of textual and industrial sovereignty exist beyond the boundaries of this chapter, we should note that much “trailer” literature is based on discussions of film, and this risks downplaying the game trailer’s unique qualities, the very thing that sets it apart from promotion for, and in, other industries. We need, then, to situate a game trailer within the wider context of game as a part of a multi-layered textual object. Considering game trailers as short films is implicitly different from considering those same trailers as a short film that is standing-in for or re-presenting a game in a film format. Here we might consider what T.L. Taylor suggests as “the assemblage of play,” that a game is itself multi-layered.8 Indeed, as Nick Couldry has implied, suggesting that a text should start and stop within pre-defined boundaries betrays the idea that the audience bring meaning to a text, and further denies the very real experience of audiences.9 Or as Chin and Gray put it, audiences can engage in “pre-viewing of pre-texts,”10 to say nothing here of the primacy of sight, at the expense of audioonly trailers.11 In an idealised promotional narrative, our consumer may first become aware of a text, see promotion for it, make a judgement to see it and then to engage with it (and often do so long afterwards). Of course, even rejecting a forthcoming text (“eww, that looks shit”) is to engage with it in some way. Those promotional texts stand in for the object being rejected and become representative of the rejected text. Similarly, looking forwards to a games’ release is to engage with prerelease materials and thus forms part of the wider contextual experience of anticipation, expectations etc. In short, we must acknowledge that games, films, theatre, or indeed any cultural artefact is not a single object but a network of overlapping things: companies, creatives, scenes, plot, dialogue, images, sounds and, of course, experiences. If we follow this to its logical conclusion, a game trailer, even if technically a short film, is still part of the game’s textual network, in just the same way that a cut scene or the credit sequence is.12

 Ed Vollans, “The Most Cinematic Game Yet,” Kinephanos 7 (2017): 106–130.  T.L. Taylor, “The Assemblage of Play,” Games and Culture 4, no. 4 (2009): 331–339.  Nick Couldry, Inside Culture: Re-imagining the Methods of Cultural Studies (London: Sage, 2008), 8.  Bertha Chin and Jonathan Gray, “‘One Ring to Rule Them All’: Pre-viewers and Pre-Texts of the Lord of the Rings Films,” Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media 2 (2001).  Keith M. Johnston, “Sound and (No) Vision Locating the Radio Trailer,” Music Sound and the Moving Image 8, no. 2 (2014): 163–178.  Rune Klevjer, “In Defense of Cutscenes,” in Proceedings of the Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Tampere, Finland (2002), ed. Frans Mäyrä (Tampere: Tampere University Press), 191–202.

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How, then, do we distinguish the trailer from a short film? How short is just short enough to qualify? End credit sequences, Pixar-style shorts, cut scenes? They all have the potential to be considered trailers; they are short, and they can thematically share content with a “central” intellectual property or cultural text. The broad answer is that no one really knows, and as scholars we must clearly define what it is we mean based on our own disciplines and parameters of study. We know that a trailer is often two to three minutes long, but just as aesthetics are not enough of a signifier, neither is timing and one end-credit sequence in another context is a trailer, and herein lies the problem – that “trailers” are largely vernacular. We all broadly agree on what is/isn’t a trailer but for every defining characteristic there is a whole host of exceptions. Johnston’s concept of mobility expanded how we might consider a trailer by positing trailers as short films, in opposition to Kernan’s understanding of them as “persuasive cinematic texts.”13 Johnston thus reduces the emphasis on industrial purpose; they need not be inherently persuasive (and so, for example, unofficial “honest trailers” become just as relevant). In a similar theme, my own work has expanded the scope of trailers further. In 2014, I suggested that we should consider anything that operates under the label of “trailer.”14 This throws the onus of definition not on the researcher but the spaces and places where such promotional content circulates and is visibly labelled by others. This proposition moves closer to understanding trailers as a genre of communication (to which multiple industries and agents may contribute), but it does not necessarily help narrowing down the focus of study. The mobile trailer is one that is separate from consumption in a fixed space and time. This mobility is, however, also aesthetic and intermedial. Where once the trailer was solely for a range of content associated with film,15 “trailer” has become shorthand for a specific kind of advert, but still lacks a clear definition.16 Accepting the typical, or idealised, trailer as a short film risks overlooking that other texts, such as interactive samples or limited sections of games, could also function in the same manner as a trailer. Yet, mere overlap of purpose need not give cause for alarm; a poster, after all, could be considered in the same functional category to a trailer without the need for inclusion in a trailer study. A

 Kernan, Coming Attractions, 5.  Vollans, “So Just What is a Trailer, Anyway?”.  Janet Staiger, “Announcing Wares, Winning Patrons, Voicing Ideals: Thinking about the History and Theory of Film Advertising,” Cinema Journal 29, no. 3 (1990), 3–31; Keith J. Hamel, “From Advertisement to Entertainment: Early Hollywood Film Trailers,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 29, no. 3 (2012): 268–278.  Vollans, “So Just What is a Trailer, Anyway?”.

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mobile trailer then is still a trailer, but we need to start considering if studying trailers is what is needed or if we simply want to look at promotion more broadly. Promotion itself allows us to see values and traits being emphasised, but within trailer studies, there is a broad tendency to see the trailer only as persuasive, only as existing to sell something, and thus as ontologically inferior to the product. Much writing on the film trailer sees the relationship between the film and the trailer, both belonging in the same medium, as core to its persuasive values.17 For early trailer scholars, the trailer presenting discontinuous elements of the film’s continuous narrative creates in the audience the desire to see the film, but this is predicated on three circumstance: (1) that each trailer is always being seen as “good” and is thus always persuasive rather than dissuasive;18 (2) the existence of a fixed relationship between the narrative of the film and the trailer (one obviously automatically reflects the other); and (3) it implies a passive audience. This determinist positioning of the trailer audience as vulnerable is perhaps a legacy of concern surrounding communication more generally but is a concern that has been rooted in a film–film trailer relationship. This relationship shifts significantly when we consider game narratives, game products, and game trailers. Given the translation between the medium of the game and of the trailer as well as the nature of gameplay not necessarily following a continuous narrative, we must treat existing scholarship on (film) trailers with caution, especially once we start to analyse individual game trailers.

Afterall . . . what’s in a name? If we accept (for now) that the game trailer is a short film, we have the perhaps unenviable task of identifying what short films to include in our “trailer” study. When prior studies have provided overviews of film trailers, it is often from film archives19 or from unclear, a priori selection processes of trailers.20 While it is useful to take trailers from archives, it throws the onus of definition onto what

 Mary Beth Haralovich and Cathy Root Klaprat, “Marked Woman and Jezebel: The Spectatorin-the-trailer,” Enclitic (1981): 66–74. See also Kernan, Coming Attractions.  This salient point belongs to Prof. Vinzenz Hediger, conveyed during a conversation in 2015.  Keith M. Johnston, Coming Soon (Jefferson: Macfarland, 2009); Kernan, Cooming Attractions.  Carmen Daniela Maier, “Structure and Function in the Generic Staging of Film Trailers: A Multimodal Analysis,” in Telecinematic Discourse: Approaches to the Fictional Language of Cinema and Television, ed. Roberta Piazza, Monika Bednarek and Fabio Rossi (Amsterdam, John Benjamins 2011), 141–158; Jan Švelch, “Exploring the Myth of the Representative Video Game Trailer,” Kinephanos 7 (2017): 7–36.

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others seem worthy of inclusion within an archive, risking naturalising or falsely stabilising a changing genre of communication. Conversely, using trailers without clear selection methods risks accusations of researcher bias as well as hindering replications of the study. This issue of inclusion is almost unavoidable precisely because of the trailer’s vernacular status. Including in our studies all texts called “trailers” allows us to map the genre of the trailer and it has shown the aesthetic variance at work in trailers and the different contexts in which they occur.21 While such trailer variance allows us to step out of the boundaries of the film trailer, it opens up the possibility and thus challenge of providing equal weighting to fan-made, official, announcement, teaser, and “main” trailers (along with any other variants). In this vernacular genre context, names matter as the only identifying feature of the trailer. When early game promotion started operating in film spaces, work was done to legitimate them by naming the promotion “trailers”.22 So it is that early promotion may well have operated under “advert,” “promo,” “teaser,” or any other term long before someone had the idea to call it a trailer. There is limited focus on the terminology used for such promotion, but it points to the possibility that these terms mean different things at different times and the same things in certain contexts. The use of the term “trailer” to describe game promotion might have been a result of industry personnel moving to represent new clients, or it might have seemed natural at the time, similarly it might have been a PR ploy. Linguistically, the use of “trailer” to describe promotion of a product other than a film is to borrow some of the cultural surround of the film industry and subtly hint at the kinds of experiences on offer either in the promotion itself or in the product being promoted.23 Academically speaking, one of the problems here is that it is only recently that different kinds of trailers have been recognised as being separate from film trailers, and this is in part because it is only recently that we have been able to see the change enacted when we can see the labels of the things being shown to us. The internet has largely been seen as a way of both challenging and stabilising the nomenclature of the trailer, with labels being used to organise, discuss, and identify freely circulating promotional objects; from video and file titles to web addresses and comments – all of these systems stabilise and challenge the names of things.24 Though considering existing texts labelled as trailer removes some of the researcher bias, we throw the onus onto someone else to do the    

Vollans, “So Just What is a Trailer, Anyway?,” 114. Vollans, “The most Cinematic Game yet.” Vollans, “The most Cinematic Game yet” and “So Just What is a Trailer, Anyway?”. David Crystal, Language and the Internet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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naming, which allows us to see what others consider as trailer and in what context this label is used. We must understand though that such an emphasis on names risks excluding things that we may not agree with, and including things we may not agree with. It is tempting under these circumstances to dismiss such outliers but in doing so we risk dismissing content at the vanguard of a wider genre change. On the one hand, reviewing trailers for a game (or any cultural object really) allows us to take the pulse of a community, industry, or macro text seeing what named trailers might look like in any given timeframe. However, on the other hand, this gives a lot of power to those doing the naming and relies on a system that allows us to see the name of the text. My earlier work exploring games trailers focuses on online newspaper websites as an archive of “things called trailers,” with these trailers being tracked down via video hosting sites.25 This approach exploits the hypertextual reliance on which the internet is built. It enables a clear industrial agent (journalists) to label the object of study and thus removes researcher bias but is reliant on the newspaper platform linking or hosting the trailers themselves. This, in effect, funnels trailers of relevance, but such an approach introduces another element of bias: newsworthiness. It is unlikely that a journalist will collate and present a range of trailers on the topic of your choosing. Such roundup pieces tend to be broad in nature and might be focused on a single event (e.g. “Here’s all the trailers from this year’s E3”) or might be focused on a theme (e.g. “The best trailers of the year,” “10 of the most misleading trailers” or whatever unifying theme might be useful). The bigger issue with this approach is that it assumes there is some form of underlying process or method employed by the journalist in question. Such roundups are unlikely to focus on a complete product’s promotional campaign and might be too broad for us to find them very useful unless focusing on an industry event that is itself newsworthy, such as E3. It may help to think of this approach as a sample of the total number of trailers on offer; a journalist is almost certain to omit references to something as they negotiate readability and relevance of their work. However, in the example above, in presenting E3 trailers, the journalists are almost certainly going to include wider contextual relevance. Just as with film trailers, knowing what was promoted at the same time is important. With such roundups, we often get a very overt discussion of how a company is positioning itself within a wider marketplace. Such “listicles” are ideal for collating trailers from a single event though it could be argued that all conference events are trailers of sorts, keeping most

 Vollans, “So Just What is a Trailer, Anyway?”.

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audiences out while inviting some of them in,26 window shopping if you will, to borrow from Kernan.27 The process outlined above is reliant on research goals and newsworthiness aligning. It is my duty to inform you that this is not always the case and simply finding the trailers mentioned by another is limited if they are not hyperlinked to the trailer in question, this process is therefore little more than a filter for video hosting platforms – platforms we could and should explore in their own right. Video hosting sites are often organised through titles and tags, which offer an account of a given video’s metadata. Searching these sites for a specific game’s trailer can bring up a wealth of results but is again reliant on the name being applied to a specific video. Widespread searches are useful in generating trailers within specific timeframes, or under specific labels, but may not always be useful in studies of specific games or games promotion in different linguistic systems. We have, for instance, focused on the trailer but not considered “preview” or “bande-annonce” English synonyms and French terminology for the same phenomenon. Consider that under a website search method, one must account for the reduction of say, 10,000 search results down to a manageable number. Additional criteria therefore are needed in accordance with the focus of the study, and this, in turn, depends on the kind of study being undertaken. Decisions to rely on video hosting site architecture, say “the top ten results,” risks being shaped by whatever search algorithms and ranking tools are at work. Similarly, working through the results to include/exclude based on perceived origin – “official” versus “unofficial” – risks placing onus on the channels, and again on the algorithms at work. It also carries with it implicit bias. So it is that even when trying to build one’s own archive using video hosting sites, we must be conscious that we are, in effect, using an archive with all the inherent challenges and archival politics this entails. Assuming we can navigate and justify our initial dataset, we then need to decide what to include. Here, we effectively follow the decisions needed if we were not to use a video hosting website but our own collection of trailers. We need to constantly ask ourselves what it is we are looking for and keep in mind that each decision may impact our goals. If trying to explore different trailers for the same product in the same territory, we may focus on a specific channel, user or handle. Of course, the internet is an inherently interconnected place, and promotion for specific territories may be given equal weighting. We might not be using a video

 Erin Hanna, Only at Comic-Con: Hollywood, Fans and the Limits of Exclusivity (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009).  Kernan, Coming Attractions, 6.

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hosting site, but rather a game’s promotional website or a fan site. Here, labels have the same kind of importance, but only when such labels are applied to our search criteria. In the absence of any labels denoting an object as trailer, triangulation might be needed. Consider that a website for a game may just have a reel of promotional content, labels might not be applied, or might not be visible. In such cases, it may be necessary to filter the website’s content in some way. Many contemporary products have their own social media channels, corroborating the content that looks like a trailer, with the labels used elsewhere for that same content allows you to lay claim that xx or yy is a trailer.

Trailers: Function or form Irrespective of how we find our trailers, we have several options when conducting analysis. As trailers are both product-specific commentary and wider socioindustrial commentary, we must consider both the macro and the micro. At the macro level, we have issues that span across the industry rather than a single product. Exploring macro issues may allow us to see wider trends in the industry or in communication. Here, we may seek to make the distinction between what the trailer is doing (function), and what it is showing (its form). Of course, as any good film student will tell you, these moments overlap but making a clear distinction allows us to make decisions between our mode of analysis. Exploring a trailer’s function, we may return to nomenclature; for example, when did “announcement trailers” first emerge, and how do these differ from other forms of trailer? We might also explore the aesthetics at work: promotion often educates audiences about the possibilities of a new technology, and there is evidence to suggest that this, too, is the case with trailers for consoles.28 Looking at broad trends in trailers allows for a form of grand narrative of industrial communication, and indeed the earliest sustained studies of trailers in the film industry do this.29 Part of the issue in studying the trailer as functional is accounting for intent and/or reception of the trailer itself. Without being party to production notes, we may lack vital context. Similarly, it is tempting to see all trailers as  Bryan-Mitchell Young, “The Disappearance and Reappearance and Disappearance of the Player in Videogame Advertising,” Situated Play DiGRA 2007 Conference, University of Tokyo, September 2007, 235–242, http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/the-disappearance-and-re appearance-and-disappearance-of-the-player-in-videogame-advertising/. For an illustrative example, see the 1982 Atari “Uncle Frank” advert available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= J5SawFdm3WM, accessed March 21, 2022.  Kernan, Coming Attractions.

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trying to be persuasive when many may be serving to keep the wrong audience away from a product. Beyond broad claims about numbers of trailers or labels, it is likely that any trailer study will consider the aesthetics of the trailers within the dataset. Of course, it is possible to build an overview based on broad aesthetics (e.g. the frequency with which a console is shown in promotional content in any given year), but in doing so, we have to look at each trailer in turn, and thus have to look at the form of the trailer in comparatively close detail in order to determine any broader function. As discussed earlier, much has focused on the trailer’s aesthetic form and for film discourse, this has become the central discussion. Kernan, Haralovich, and Klaprat have separately focused on discussing how the “discontinuous” narrative is used to present the film product, and implicitly embedded in this is the idea that the trailer is composed entirely out of the product being promoted.30 Within the game trailer as a whole, as I’ve argued elsewhere, we have two competing aesthetics,31 and the first looks just like a film trailer. The trailer will be composed of seemingly or actual in-game footage, the trailer narrative is a seemingly truncated version of the product’s narrative and is designed to give you a broadbrush stroke understanding of what the game is like, how it functions, etc. The second looks much more like an advert, in which the product is clearly situated within a narrative of that product being consumed by an on-screen representation of us, the target audience. Far from exclusive or absolute, these two aesthetics may overlap or disappear in time as preferences for modes of address shift. In terms of studying a trailer’s form, distinguishing between the “film” or the “advert” aesthetic offers us a way of seeing what is presented: the game or the game experience (including the console). Of course, many trailers have recurring, shared features – titles, studio idents, etc. – all of which can be used to chart and unpack industrial developments.32 Indeed, a study of game logos and idents can offer clear insight into the poetics and politics of industry in its own right, and how the logos manifest and interact with the rest of the trailer offers great insight into industrial attitudes and concerns.33

 Kernan, Coming Attractions; Haralovich and Klaprat, “Marked Woman.”  Ed Vollans, “[Para]Textually Here: Paratexts and Presence in Games. How Paratexts Extend the Game’s Network,” in Paratextualizing Games: Investigations on the Paraphenalia and Peripheries of Play, ed. Benjamin Beil, Gundolf S. Freyermuth and Hanns Christian Schmidt (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2021), 319–340.  Vivian Sobchack, “When the Ear Dreams: Dolby Digital and the Imagination of Sound,” Film Quarterly 58, no. 4 (2005): 2–15.  See Paul Grainge, “Brand Logos,” in Brand Hollywood, Paul Grainge (London: Routledge, 2008), 67–106.

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Film aesthetic Within the film aesthetic, we are likely to see the game’s narrative presented as the trailer, bracketed with studio logos and titles. The intermedial footage is almost always a montage of content. The narrative will likely follow a narrative of discontinuity, as discussed by Kernan:34 Typically, each shot will be chosen to reflect a development of the previous sequence – in film, we might see someone running along a road in one shot only to jump off a cliff in the next. The nature of the narrative in a game trailer may reflect the game, or may reflect levels of game play, we simply do not yet know; a rigorous discussion of Kernan’s discontinuous narrative in relation to gaming narratives has not yet been published. In all likelihood, elements of gameplay will be emphasised and exploring issues such as pace (how many shots are used in any one sequence) and the content within those shots will likely allow for any scholar to unpack the implications of the game. The different sequences within the montage may be supplemented with verbal narration or non-diegetic sounds of gameplay (gamers exclaiming, for example). All of this enables us to see the key themes being promoted to the viewer, and from there we can triangulate our discussion by drawing on wider cultural knowledge, knowledge of the game’s genre, the company etc., all of which allow us to say with some certainty what is being evoked.

Advertising aesthetic The positioning of the product within a narrative allows us to see the game experience as represented in context. We might expect to see the console or players interacting with the game in some way within a realistic-yet-fictional world that mirrors our own. Within this aesthetic, games trailers – through dint of being “games” trailers – showcase the systems that facilitate the game as well as the narrative, which is a key mode of promotional aesthetics. This context is likely part of the promotional framing but may also serve to educate viewers to the possibilities of the game or console. This, in turn, allows us to see if the product is being sold in conjunction with specific technology, i.e. if it seen as a so-called “system seller,” product. It allows us also to see if the product is being sold over multiple platforms and thus likely to have different experiences for each console system. Questions to be asked when we see the game within a promotional context might be:  Kernan, Coming Attractions, 10.

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Where is it placed in the scene, is there any sense of explaining the console to us or are we supposed to know already? (This might indicate accepted shared cultural knowledge at any given moment in time.) Who is doing the gaming and how is this represented on screen? Unpacking these key questions enables us to look at the idealised gamers (are they all male, are they young?) How is the product positioned by the industry? Is it new, a franchise, building on promotional shorthand, i.e. how much knowledge are they assuming?

Questions around representation (or product, gender, gamers, genres) within the trailer allow us a framework to move beyond mere denotation, and to start building a framework for analysis. As Young and Flynn have separately noted, the context in which games are placed on screen changes, and this, in turn, may speak to the idealised gamer as well as wider concerns about gaming.35 Depictions of gaming in shared or communal spaces might suggest a particular family-friendly tone, or might speak to the kind of console experience. Here, the presentation of the console and its gamer on screen acts as a form of documentary, depicting how the industry wants itself to be seen. In presenting an idealised consumption of its product, the industry is implicitly making claims about how they see themselves, and how others may or should see their product. Within the advertising aesthetic, it is the contextual information that offers this extra layer of commentary on the product itself. It is likely to articulate more of the industry concerns simply as it includes greater opportunities to situate the game as a whole rather than as a purely narrative product. There are of course challenges to this somewhat artificial binary of aesthetics, fan-made or “unofficial” trailers challenge our understanding of trailers simply through having different goals, purposes, creation and reception practices. Fan-made trailers challenge large swathes of trailer discourse as they exist outside systems of traditional economics while they still offer commentary on games and insight into how the unofficial trailer creators, potentially as representatives of their communities, receive and understand specific games. To date, fan-made games trailers are underexplored, though significantly worthy of discussion, and act as a metanarrative of reception practices. The representational or narrative aesthetics aside, it seems to me that there are only two key positions in terms of analysis of trailers specifically, though neither is exclusive from the other:

 Young, The Disappearance and Reappearance and Disappearance of the Player in Videogame Advertising;” Bernadette Flynn, “The Geography of the Digital Hearth.”

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Trailers as Representation (of games, gamers, industry, technology, communications etc.). Trailers as Stimuli (within a social or decision-making context).

Exploring representation in a trailer is in effect exploring their make-up, how has the trailer been put together, what is included (or omitted), even the very act of being called a trailer can be said to be representing something. When considering the trailer narrative holistically, a step-by-step analysis of each trailer might be useful. Shot-by-shot breakdowns in appendices or tables are time consuming but offer a clear viewpoint of logic at work. If, however, you are after the more macro study – say, how gamer representation changes across time/genres/studios, then it may be enough to identify specific illustrative instances based on observation. In this case, a clear dataset will be needed, with clear breakdowns of number of trailers representing gamers (or not representing them) complemented by a clear discussion of the phenomena under study. Yet, we could similarly see trailers as being stimuli, representative of something. Here, the focus is on that representation in context. Much of the existing work on film trailers has blended trailers-as-stimuli with trailers-as-representative. As discussed previously, early trailer studies saw a connection between their montage format and audience decision-making, but rarely spoke to or included audiences, directly risking valid critiques of determinism. Research questions exploring how audiences make sense of something, respond to it, or feel about a trailer would directly make the case for understanding gamers as consumers, viewers, and indeed as community members. Jan Švelch has conducted tentative work into the ways in which trailers represent games, but is unclear in his collation methods leading to more work being needed in terms of replicating such audience studies from different angles.36 The infrastructure of the internet allows us to see what trailers (official or unofficial) are circulating where, and the kind of reception they receive, which is important given the instability of online comments, platforms, websites and apps. Reviewing comments, conducting a sentiment analysis (where comments may be coded positive or negative), and searching for number of views, retweets, likes, and dislikes all form part of our wider discussions of how we might understand and make sense of the trailer as a cultural entity within a specific socio-historical context in just the same way as a micro analysis of a trailer allows us to tap into cultural and industrial concerns.

 Švelch “Exploring the Myth.”

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Concluding notes Within this chapter, and indeed, over the course of this volume, we have seen that acts of collating and acts of analysis are intertwined. You cannot study what you don’t include in a study and the act of studying something affects the discussion, offering nuances and interpretations that may not otherwise be apparent. There is no “correct” way to study anything, only degrees of suitability and accuracy. A study of xx that is seeking to discuss yy needs to have a clear connection between the two, and no matter how much we analyse the trailer, or any other paratext, it can only ever be a re-presentation. The nature of trailers as operating within an audio-visual medium removed from the ludic elements of the game (for now) means that we have to borrow from film and television methodologies. As such, the study of game trailers is only just emerging from the shadow of film studies, and in doing so has to borrow (or adapt) from existing methodologies and terminologies that are rooted in cinema. This adaptation potentially, but not necessarily risks marginalising the very nature of the game itself. To study the trailer is to study implicitly industrial politics as well as the representational, promotional narratives in which these manifest. As a promotional artefact, the trailer itself is inherently a historical one, situated like other paratexts in a specific context, and one that is inherently a context at the intersections of social, technological, and cultural knowledge. In writing about the game trailer, we similarly engage a form of medium-specific politics. Indeed, despite increased attention being paid to digital ephemera, there remains disconnection between studies of game-related ephemera and of game studies more generally and this risks placing primacy of importance on the act of gaming rather than the decision-making processes that are based on paratextual information. The only way to continue, then, is to develop analyses within the context of the games industry, and within the context of games history and to do so knowingly.

References Chin, Bertha, and Jonathan Gray. “‘One Ring to Rule Them All’: Pre-viewers and Pre-Texts of the Lord of the Rings Film.” Intensities: The journal of Cult Media 2 (2001). Accessed August 10, 2022. https://intensitiescultmedia.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/chin-and-gray-one-ring-to-rule-themall.pdf. Couldry, Nick. Inside Culture: Re-imagining the Method of Cultural Studies. London: Sage, 2000. Crystal, David. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Flynn, Bernadette. “Geography of the Digital Hearth.” Information, Communication & Society 6, no. 4 (2003): 551–576.

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Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Grainge, Paul. Brand Hollywood. London: Routledge, 2008. Hanna, Erin. Only at Comic-Con: Hollywood, Fans and the limits of Exclusivity. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019. Hamel, Keith J. “From Advertisement to Entertainment: Early Hollywood Film Trailers.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 29, no. 3 (2012): 268–278. Haralovich, Mary-Beth, Cathy Root Klaprat. “Marked Woman and Jezebel: The Spectator-in-theTrailer.” Enclitic (1981): 66–74. Johnston, Keith M. “‘The Coolest Way to Watch Movie Trailers in the World’: Trailers in the Digital Age.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14, no. 2 (2008): 145–160. Johnston, Keith. M. Coming Soon. Jefferson: Mcfarland, 2009. Johnston, Keith. M. “Sound and ( No) Vision Locating the Radio Trailer.” Music Sound and the Moving Image 8, no. 2 (2014): 163–178. Kernan, Lisa. Coming Attractions. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. Klevjer, Rune. “In Defense of Cutscenes.” In Proceedings of the Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Tampere, Finland, edited by Frans Mäyrä, 191–202. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002. Maier, Carmen Daniela. “Structure and Function in the Generic Staging of Film Trailers: A Multimodal Analysis.” In Telecinematic Discourse: Approaches to the Fictional Language of Cinema and Television, edited by Roberta Piazza, 141–158. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011. Sobchack, Vivian. “When the Ear Dreams: Dolby Digital and the Imagination of Sound.” Film Quarterly 58, no. 4 (2005): 2–15. Staiger, Janet. “Announcing Wares, Winning Patrons, Voicing Ideals: Thinking about the History and Theory of Film Advertising.” Cinema Journal 29, no. 3 (1990): 3–31. Švelch, Jan. “Exploring the Myth of the Representative Video Game Trailer.” Kinephanos, 7 (2017): 7–36. Taylor, T. L. “The Assemblage of Play.” Games and Culture 4, no. 4 (2009): 331–339. Accessed February 12, 2021. doi: 10.1177/1555412009343576. Vollans, Ed. “So just what is a Trailer, Anyway?” Arts and the Market 5, no. 2 (2015): 112–125. Vollans, Ed. “The most Cinematic Game yet.” Kinephanos 7 (2017): 106–130. Vollans, Ed. “Paratextually here.” In Paratextualizing Games, edited by Benjamin Beil, Gundolf S. Freyermuth and Hanns Christian Schmidt. Bielefeld: transcript, 2021. Williams, Kathleen Amy. “Fake and fan film trailers as incarnations of audience anticipation and desire.” Transformative Works and Cultures 9 (2012). Young, Bryan-Mitchell “The Disappearance and Reappearance and Disappearance of the Player in Videogame Advertising.” DiGRA 2007 – Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play, Tokyo, September, 2007: 235–242. Accessed March 1, 2021. http://www.digra.org/ digital-library/publications/the-disappearance-and-reappearance-and-disappearance-of-theplayer-in-videogame-advertising/

Alison Harvey

Making sense of gameswork: University marketing materials as games paratexts A richly detailed rendering of a digital spaceship hurtles across an asteroidstrewn sky, pixels streaming behind it, suggesting pursuit and a mission to accomplish. This colourful graphic provides an action-packed backdrop for the overlaid description of the product, text similarly driven by evocations of activity, referring to “transformation” and “competition.” While it might appear that the visual and text-based paratext outlined here could be used to market any number of contemporary or historical video games, this is not a promotion for a playable object. Rather, it is a marketing document for higher education courses at a United Kingdom-based university on video game development, and such imagery and rhetorical flourish is typical of how these programmes are presented to potential audiences of students and their parents. This visual and textual background for university-level education in games provides a glimpse into the values and norms circulated and reinforced within these contexts about the student experience and the nature of gameswork promised to these potential future gamesworkers. The above-mentioned marketing document explicitly refers to student success in “a competitive industry” at the cuttingedge of technological development via their exposure to “industry-standard” techniques and tools as well as contacts in the UK game-making sector. As will be discussed in this chapter, this framing of gameswork is not unique but part of a consistent and historical narrative about the shape of the games industry and the skills and mindset needed to work in it. As I will argue, it is also a visual and textual strategy serving to maintain and perpetuate exclusions in gameswork. In what follows, I consider university marketing materials for undergraduate and (post)graduate programmes focusing on games in the UK to explore what these documents convey about two specific and interlinked subjectivities – the games student and the gamesworker. My argument about methodology based on the study of games higher education is two-fold: that the call for paratextual analysis set in conversation with empirical analysis of relevant community members1 is vitally important for insight and relatedly, that the research design enabling

 Tom Apperley, “Counterfactual Communities: Strategy Games, Paratexts and the Player’s Experience of History,” Open Library of Humanities 41 (2018): 1–22. Alison Harvey, York University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-010

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this may entail a much broader set of stakeholders and paratexts than perhaps initially suggested. The case of my research demonstrates in particular the relevance of both policy-making and industry discourse and their role in constructing a vision of games that is overall neither inclusive nor diverse. In doing so, the paratexts herein offer a historical indicator of values considered by the industry to be relevant and even necessary, just as we can see in other media-making sectors such as film.2 Overall, I posit that multi-method approaches to the study of games paratexts sensitive to local contexts as well as the broader cultures from which they derive their meanings are essential for situating these materials in what are often still exclusionary cultures.

Get into games! The role of games education Much has been written about the shape of gameswork, from independent gamemaking3 to that occurring within larger studios4 to studies considering its circulation across global and local sites of production.5 However, while research on gameswork and production contexts in games has a long history in game studies,6 games education and its relationship to game-making industries is a relatively recent area of scholarly interest. In 2007, Deuze, Martin, and Allen7 explored the shape of work in the games industry and detailed a range of structural and cultural factors specific to this occupational sector, including how at that time formal games degrees were becoming recognised entryways into gameswork. In an

 Janet Staiger, “Announcing Ware, Winning Patrons, Voicing Ideals: Thinking about the History and Theory of Film Advertising,” Cinema Journal 29, no. (1990): 3–31.  Paolo Ruffino, ed., Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Technics and Politics (London: Routledge, 2021). Bart Simon, “Indie Eh? Some Kind of Game Studies,” Loading . . . The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association 7 (2013): 1–7.  Ergin Bulut, A Precarious Game: The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry (New York: Cornell University Press, 2020). Casey O’Donnell, Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators (Boston: MIT Press, 2014).  Olli Sotamma and Jan Švelch, eds. Game Production Studies (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021).  Mia Consalvo, “Crunched by Passion: Women Game Developers and Workplace Challenges,” in Beyond Barbie & Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming, ed. Yasmin B. Kafai et al. (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2018). Richard Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter, Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003).  Mark Deuze, Chase Bowen Martin and Christian Allen, “The Professional Identity of Gameworkers,” Convergence 13, no. 4 (2007): 335–353.

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industry known for the homogeneity of its workforce, an additional access point represented by education is a significant shift, particularly given how the more traditional routes into games – working as a tester, participating in modding, and networking – could easily replicate homophilic patterns. In other words, the recognition of post-secondary degrees as relevant qualifications in games suggests that colleges and universities could play a role in diversifying the industry, challenging what has been called the “hegemony of play,”8 wherein the exclusions in games culture are linked to historical industrial norms, including a global workforce that is still predominantly white and male9 and a sector-wide prioritisation of investment in technological advancement. The research on which this chapter is based was premised on a desire to explore this possibility of higher education enabling gameswork to become more diverse, asking what kinds of working subjectivities games higher education produces. Focusing on university degree programmes expands my previous research, which explored these opportunities for inclusion through informal modes of education within community organisations.10 In tandem with the rise of grassroots initiatives, my collaborators and I noted discourse disparaging the skills and training developed in these inclusivity-focused activities, emphasising the need for formalised and often high-tech education pathways (specifically computer science and programming). This replicates some of the explanations Fron and colleagues11 noted in their interviews with industry figures about a lack of diversity in the workforce, particularly the rationale that it is the “most qualified” person that should be hired, a justification presuming that “diversity” and “merit” are contraindicated in hiring. Through this, a lack of certified and validated skills, undefined and dynamic in their character, becomes an alibi for a homogenous workforce in games and the ongoing relative uniformity of their (competitive, militaristic, violent, and hypermasculine) designed products. However, understanding higher education as key to resolving this dynamic is a fraught endeavour when research in other technical fields indicates that these contexts have not so far resolved what is  Janine Fron et al., “The Hegemony of Play” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Digital Games Research Association, Tokyo, Japan, September 24–28, 2007).  Johanna Weststar, Eva Kwan and Shruti Kumar, “Developer Satisfaction Survey 2019 Summary Report,” International Game Developers Association, accessed July 1, 2021.  Stephanie Fisher and Alison Harvey, “Intervention for Inclusivity: Gender Politics and Indie Game Development,” Loading . . . Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association 7, no. 11 (2013): 25–40. Alison Harvey and Stephanie Fisher, “Growing Pains: Intergenerational Feminisms in Digital Games,” Feminist Media Studies 16, no. 4 (2016): 648–662. Alison Harvey and Tamara Shepherd, “When Passion isn’t Enough: Gender, Affect and Credibility in Digital Games Design,” International Journal of Cultural Studies, 20, no. 5 (2016): 492–508.  Fron et al., “The Hegemony of Play.”

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called the “leaky pipeline” connecting training to work in male-dominated fields,12 with women in particular struggling with masculinist norms in these courses.13 Furthermore, research by Ashton14 on UK-based games courses demonstrates that the subjectivities cultivated within these spaces of training and learning are often linked to the normalisation of the perpetual upgrade of both technology and the self-disciplining and enterprising student, not a context suggesting a necessarily reflective or progressive ethos. In the context of cuts to funding and rising tuition fees in the UK, an emphasis on a university degree can also present its own barriers to inclusion in terms of class and economic privilege. Based on the increasing importance of games education and recognition of the challenges of relying on these institutions to address a lack of diversity, my study sought to understand the role of games higher education in cultivating inclusion in games through a mixed-method approach. The methodology included 49 in-depth semi-structured interviews with students, instructors, and administrators from five higher education institutions across the UK, and observations of the working spaces in these programmes. While these methods are primarily ethnographically informed, the thematic discourse analysis I drew on to support interpretation of the data necessitated engagement with a range of paratexts to gain insight into the repertoires participants draw on in explaining their perspectives, choices, and plans.15 For this reason, paratextual data became an essential corpus of data for the study, including marketing materials for games courses. These comprised promotional materials – primarily university websites and printed brochures advertising games courses – generated by my case study institutions. I also included in my analysis the promotions of other universities and courses to maintain anonymity and gain a sense of shared patterns and trends. What I gleaned from engaging with these materials is that they play a key role in shaping a particular understanding of games supporting a limited range of engagement and hindering potentially diverse modes of participating in education and work.

 Heidi B. Carlone and Angela Johnson, “Understanding the Science Experiences of Successful Women of Color: Science Identity as an Analytic Lens,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 44, no. (2007): 1187–1218.  Becky Francis et al., “Femininity, Science, and the Denigration of the Girly Girl,” British Journal of Sociology of Education 38, no. 8 (2016): 1097–1110.  Daniel Ashton, “Making it Professionally: Student Identity and Industry Professionals in Higher Education,” Journal of Education and Work 22, no. 4 (2009): 283–300. Daniel Ashton, “Upgrading the Self: Technology and the Self in the Digital Games Perpetual Innovation Economy,” Convergence 17, no. 3 (2011).  Norman Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketisation of Public Discourse: The Universities,” Discourse and Society 4 (1993): 133–168.

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In what follows, I will introduce four dominant patterns identified in my sample of games education paratexts. I then discuss the context in which these marketing documents operate, which is vital for understanding the images and discourses I examine from my sample and how they operationalise these in their appeals to potential applicants. My analysis of the messaging in these paratexts demonstrates that they reflect not only ludic discourses but also a broader policy and industrial set of influences, forces shaping the potential for games education to cultivate greater inclusion. Overall, I illustrate how it is not possible to fully understand the ongoing delimitation of the gamesworker-in-becoming without setting these paratexts into conversation with a rich range of empirical and textual sources of data.

You are a game designer: Portraying the game student and the future gamesworker In this chapter, I present a sense of the trends in games university paratexts, an overview of their shared textual practices and tendencies. I do not present a detailed textual analysis of the online and printed materials for the programmes that constituted my sample. One reason is pragmatic – such a discussion would allow the identification of specific institutions and courses, including those who participated in my study. This loss of anonymity would not be fruitful for the second reason, which is that these documents are more important for their similarities and collective repertoires of visuals and discourses rather than their individual traits. Therefore, within these materials and in line with previous analysis of university marketing materials,16 I pay particular attention to the promises they make, the students, careers, and industries they imagine, and the subjectivities and practices they performatively highlight. Of the range of courses available, I examined a subset of online and print material from ten institutions offering a combined total of 67 undergraduate and postgraduate (MA, MSc, and PhD level) courses. Analyzing promotional documents, both paper-based and online, from this range of diverse organisations allowed me to gain a sense of discursive trends across the range of programmes, institutions, and local contexts in the UK. In my analysis I did not distinguish

 Lynne Pettinger, Kirsten Forkert and Andrew Goffey Pettinger, “The Promises of Creative Industry Higher Education: An Analysis of University Prospectuses in Malaysia,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 24, no. 4 (2018): 466–484.

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between types of universities, such as Russell Group as compared to post-92 universities, and I suggest that this would be an interesting direction for further study given their historically different approaches to higher education and divergent emphasis on academic versus professional skills. Beyond my sample, browsing UCAS demonstrates a wide diversity of games courses available, and depending on the institution, these can include a range of specialisms in games, a focus on business skills, a complement of critical game studies options, or degrees that do not overtly reference games in their names. But despite this diversity of offerings, there is a strong similarity in the visual and textual communicative strategies deployed in these paratexts across institutions, indicating that they participate in the creation of a default consumer identity for their programmes. Four noteworthy patterns emerge from my analysis: 1) Emphasis on “state of the art” technologies: Within these paratextual images and videos, activities are centred on technological artifacts. Students are portrayed sitting around computers, smiling or focusing intently, and working with a range of “industry-standard” devices such as tablets and headsets and in “highspec” environments from motion capture studios to classrooms with massive screens, with the support of encouraging instructors (the words in quotation marks in this chapter are those that appear regularly across diverse paratexts). These visuals and shared descriptors reinforce the framing of games education and work as premised on access to specialist software, particularly named game engines, used to develop games within high-tech industries. The technological imperative characterises course promotions regardless of area of focus, from those with technology in the course name to those focused on art, design, or specific elements of game development. 2) Figuration of work as exclusively within mainstream games development: Many course pages and brochures also include de-contextualised images of digital environments, suggesting games but typically not providing details on the provenance of these texts (though the implication is that this is student work). While diverse in terms of their content (from dimly lit space stations to rainy alleyways, stern-faced muscular avatars to cute robots), these images portray fully rendered, perfectly executed 3D objects and settings reminiscent of a limited range of tripleA game objects and elements. The implication that these courses will support the production of such materials is reinforced with the textual descriptions of the learning environment promising skills training enabling students to create video games ready to bring to market and/or get a job in named UK-based studios with which programmes have connections or alumni in the workforce.

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3) Ambiguous references to gameplay: It is not uncommon to find within course brochures and web materials the inclusion of images of young people playing games on arcade machines and consoles, wearing headsets or in groups clutching controllers. These images are, however, somewhat ambiguous, as the text for these courses typically does not refer to gameplay as part of the teaching and learning in the programme. Furthermore, the appeal to the potential student subject in these materials actually rarely interpellates a gameplaying consumer. Instead, the orientation is towards the student as a gameworkers-in-becoming, a “you” that is both creative and technically minded, a nascent worker in whatever role (game designer, concept artist, etc.), ready to be imbued with the skills and knowledge required to enter into the UK games industry, which is consistently described as popular, dynamic, lucrative, and growing. Those playing in these images therefore may represent students as consumers or their future audiences, aligning both of these subjects with the idealised student in these materials, portraying games along the lines of triple-A mainstream productions created within a singular video game industry. 4) Consistent attention to diversity in students and staff: In paratexts advertising games-related degrees, one can find a range of individuals pictured, including quite prominently women and racialised people. From the out-of-focus image of a brown-skinned man working within a game engine to the group photo of students that features five women, including one wearing a hijab, one gets the sense from these promotions that the student body making up games education is inclusive of a range of people. In videos and testimonials, there is a strong focus on women and racialised people speaking about the skills they have enjoyed learning, the opportunities they have benefitted from, and the careers they have launched based on their experiences on the course. These images illustrate the neutrality of the game student and gamesworker-in-becoming being spoken to in these tasks – the “you” that will learn, progress, and work in the games industry does not come from a particular background and needs only a “fascination” with making games or a “desire” to launch a career in the industry. Diversity is not overtly referenced in the body of the text, and the implication is that this is an innate and taken-forgranted feature of these courses. As we will see, this is a contradictory feature given the previous three points. Now that I have provided a sketch of the common visualisations and discourses characterising my corpus of games education paratexts, I turn to a discussion of the context required to understand their meaning. As I will illustrate, engaging in empirical research and broader paratextual analysis enables a rich understanding of the confluences of forces at play that shape these materials and that impact on the work they do in providing formation to the next generation of gamesworkers.

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There are a number of threads on the portrayal of gameswork emerging here that I have considering in other venues. These paratexts support in particular the exclusions and exploitation normalised in emphasising the industry standard17 and the presumption of work in a triple–A industry that is often problematised.18 In what remains of this chapter, I want to focus in particular on how the framing of games in these paratexts interfaces with the experiences discussed in my interviews and with broader policy related to university education and gameswork. As I will show, setting these sources of data into conversation demonstrates the complications entailed in the promise of universities contributing to the diversification of the talent pool in games.

(False) promises: The place and work of games education paratexts As with paratexts attached to specific games, those associated with games higher education circulate in a growing and increasingly lucrative market, in this case of potential incoming cohorts of students. In 2021–2022, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), an organisation that manages the application processes for universities across the UK, lists 643 undergraduate games courses from 153 providers, and 73 postgraduate games courses from 43 providers. These numbers are slightly inflated by how the UCAS site lists options with foundation and/or placement years separately for the same course, but even with this duplication the rising popularity of games courses in the UK is evident. When the Higher Education Statistics Agency began collecting statistics on enrolments and qualifications in games–related subjects in the UK higher education institutions in 2012–2013, they recorded 595 qualifiers. In 2018–2019, this number had more than doubled to 1,380 qualifiers.19 The press release announcing this growth quotes Dr Richard Wilson OBE, the CEO of the game development trade body TIGA, who asserts: Another increase in graduate numbers with industry relevant skills is important for the video games sector. The industry’s headcount is growing on average by 8.9 per cent per annum.

 Alison Harvey, “Becoming Gamesworkers: Diversity, Higher Education, and the Future of the Game Industry,” Television and New Media 20, no. 8 (2019), 756–766.  Alison Harvey, “Freedom from the Industry Standard: Student Working Imaginaries and Independence in Games Higher Education,” in Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Technics and Politics, ed. Paolo Ruffino (London: Routledge, 2020), 253–267.  Gamasutra, “Number of Computer Games Graduates at a Seven Year High,” accessed July 1, 2021.

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With the end of free movement and UK’s post-Brexit immigration system changing how companies can recruit talent from abroad, a growing cohort of skilled graduates is essential.20

Wilson’s interest in formal games higher education relates to his work with TIGA, which operates a university accreditation programme that straightforwardly notes as its top criteria courses that “teach skills required by the games industry.”21 Despite these types of articulations of demand for a supply of talent, the UK and the global games industry is notoriously competitive. If the game development workforce is at 18,279 employees with its fastest growth since 2007 in 2020,22 it is not difficult to see how expanding numbers of games courses and resulting graduates intensify the competitiveness for workers-in-becoming in games. In addition to the growth in course options and the relative scarcity of opportunities for graduates, another set of statistics is relevant for situating games education paratexts, and this is the ever-broadening audiences of games players. The massive scale of gameplay globally is relevant here because its establishment as a part of everyday leisure opens the door for individuals to consider games as a subject at university. Newzoo’s projection of a global games market of 2.9 billion players generative of revenues of $175.8 billion23 indicates not only the profitability of the sector but also the cultural relevance of gaming, a significant shift given that students in games programmes in my study typically recount their gameplay biographies as strong factors in their decision to pursue studies and a career in games. As I noted above, recruitment materials for games programmes are informed by these features of games, all related to their growth as a major media, technology, and creative industry. They are also linked to the changing role of the university. Pettinger, Forkert and Goffey24 note the value of examining university marketing documents, which they argue provide insight into the production of particular subjectivities appropriate for work in the creative industries. These promotional materials also emphasise  Suzi Stephenson, “Number of Computer Games Graduates at a Seven Year High”, February 5, 2021, accessed January 6, 2022, https://tiga.org/news/number-of-computer-games-graduates-at-aseven-year-high.  TIGA, “TIGA University Accreditation,” accessed January 6, 2022, https://tiga.org/education/ tiga-university-accreditation.  Daniel Higginbotham, “Video Game Careers,” Prospects, October 2022, accessed December 9, 2022, https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sectors/information-technology/ video-game-careers.  Tom Wijman, “Global Games Market to Generate $175.8 Billion in 2021; Despite a Slight Decline, the Market Is on Track to Surpass $200 Billion in 2023,” NewZoo, May 6, 2021, accessed January 5, 2022, https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market-to-generate-175-8-billion-in-2021-de spite-a-slight-decline-the-market-is-on-track-to-surpass-200-billion-in-2023.  Pettinger, Forkert and Goffey, “The Promises of Creative Industry Higher Education.”

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the “becomings” of students into both workers and consumers, a transformation that they frame as a choreography between industry, labour markets, and the university. This absolutely informs the first pattern identified above, of an emphasis on “state of the art” technologies, as a key actor in the experience promised within games programmes. At first glance, an emphasis on cutting-edge technologies for advertising games courses is unsurprising; this mirrors other programmes related to the media and creative industries where images of cameras, soundboards, and computers proliferate. As Pettinger, Forkert and Goffey note, technology is an important figure in policies related to creative work and the global economy, a signifier of modernity and development, and in these paratexts an emphasis on technologies “contribute to the ‘future facing university’ and to the promises of transformation.”25 But within games-specific texts, the centrality of technology has other resonances, particularly in terms of the industry’s investments in technological advancement as a core component of the hegemony of play wherein the high-tech dominates discussions of art, creativity, and craft, often at the exclusion of experimental, interdisciplinary, avant-garde and otherwise varied modes of making that are often associated with a diversity of creators.26 The emphasis on the most updated technologies was revealed to be a site of tension within games courses. My interviews revealed challenges related to the promises of “state-of-the-art” technology in a domain where the “industry standard” is continually shifting at a pace that institutional realities and budgets in universities cannot match. I do not point out the differences between the promises made in games education marketing paratexts and the lived experiences of students and instructors as itself as useful insight – promotional documents are rarely reflections of reality. Instead, I wanted to indicate how this framing of games as a technological domain legitimates a particular, historically informed understanding of what gameswork is meant to be, despite the broadening of games depending precisely on a diversity of types of play, especially mobile games that remain strikingly absent in these paratexts and in discussions of pathways to work according to my interviews. This emphasis has consequences where the association between technological mastery and masculinity remains normative, and this was revealed in my interviews where “hard skills” in technical areas was celebrated by students as supreme and some female students and instructors articulated how this focus contributed to the feelings of not having a culture fit within games. This was

 Pettinger, Forkert, and Goffey, “The Promises of Creative Industry Higher Education,” 478.  Alison Harvey, “Twine’s Revolution: Democratization, Depoliticization, and the Queering of Game Design,” GAME: The Italian Journal of Game Studies 3 (2014): 95–107.

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particularly true for participants interested in the overlap between games and art, an instantiation of how the framing and execution of games education and its role within broader games culture and work can lead to a feeling of misalignment for women.27 The commitment to representing games as a technological domain perpetuates exclusionary discourses and visions of the field even while emphasising delimited futurities. As I noted above, these technological promises create issues of access that are institutionally difficult to reconcile while undervaluing other approaches to teaching and learning game-making. Instructors who taught games from other perspectives (typically female course directors) often received pushback as these were not seen as relevant to work in the games industry. I will return to the ambivalences of this imagery when I discuss the emphasis on diverse staff and students below, but first I want to note how this relates to another dimension of the student-cum-worker subjectivity, the emphasis on a triple-A, mainstream games industry that is not necessarily representative of the kinds of work graduates are expected to encounter after their studies. The second identified pattern, a focus on work in mainstream games development, can be linked to the increased marketisation of university education in the UK specifically and internationally more broadly. Growing emphasis on commercialisation via “knowledge-transfer”28 and the normalisation of employability and industry-readiness found in these paratexts to be part of curriculum development reflect the positioning of the university as a future-facing actor in process of innovation and economic growth, a role emphasised in both educational policy as well as industry discourse discussing the need for skilled talent in the creative and technology industries. But these trends pose real challenges in terms of meaningful relations between education institutions and the creative economy, with some of the dangers including the instrumentalisation of education, the framing of students as simply marketised commodities in relations of supply and demand, blurring lines between teachers and practitioners, and overall a reliance on economic discourses when framing these interactions.29 Marketisation in games education limits the possibilities for teaching games in diverse ways, and

 Alison Harvey, “Making the Grade: Feminine Lack, Inclusion, and Coping Strategies in Digital Games Higher Education,” New Media & Society 24, no. 9 (2021): 1986–2002. doi:10.1177/ 1461444820986831.  Owen Livermore, “The Academic Grind: A Critique of Creative and Collaborative Discourses Between Digital Games Industries and Post-Secondary Education in Canada” (PhD diss., Western University, 2013).  Roberta Comunian and Abigail Gilmore, “Beyond the Creative Campus: Reflections on the Evolving Relationship between Higher Education and the Creative Economy,” King’s College London, London (UK), accessed July 1, 2021.

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creates challenges for instructors who wish to highlight other possible working futures in more lucrative areas such as financial technology or less specifically creative domains where skills in programming, digital art, and design would be in high demand. Despite these very real challenges documented in multiple studies30 of the actual relations in industry-university partnerships within the context of the “digital” and “creative” economies, university paratexts frequently make promises related to industry contact and work-readiness through experiential learning. While this is not necessarily unique to games paratexts, what is interesting is how this is configured in relation to working in this field – as participating within what is framed as a singular games industry. As with the emphasis on the technological as a core element of games, this emphasis reinforces the hegemony of play and belies the wide range of ways of engaging with gameswork, particularly those modes that do not resemble a narrow, market-driven approach. Reinforcement of a rigid pathway for the gamesworker-in-becoming into the mainstream industry focused on technology as a driver is further supported by the references to gameplay in these paratexts. The portrayal of gameplay that continues to characterise games education paratexts is one that Brendan Keough31 has discussed as a by-product of the banal nature of game-making in practice. I also posit that they serve to appeal to a specific type of student subject, the fan of mainstream games. The vast majority of participants in my study recounted lengthy gaming biographies and a “love” and “passion” for gaming, often illustrated with examples from the blockbuster games industry. These affective commitments to the best-selling and best-known games reinforce a well-documented issue in games labour, that of the normalisation of exploitative work patterns through appeals to “do-what-you-love” and to bring an investment of no less than absolute passion for the making of games, injunctions that support crunch and the resulting short career lengths endemic in games. On the other hand, for the limited range of students for whom gaming is not a key passion but an interesting medium for creating stories or experiences, these appeals to the gamer could be alienating, creating potential points of attrition.32

 Livermore, “The Academic Grind.” Sean Gouglas et al., “Computer Ggames and Canada’s Ddigital Eeconomy: The Role of Uuniversities in Ppromoting Iinnovation.” Report to the Social Science Humanities Research Council Knowledge Synthesis Grants on Canada’s Digital Economy.  Brendan Keough, “Student Expectations, Course Marketing, and the Invisible Labour of Game Development,” personal blog, May 7, 2018, accessed 2 February, 2022, https://brkeogh.com/2018/ 05/07/student-expectations-course-marketing-and-the-invisible-labour-of-game-development/.  Harvey, “Making the Grade.”

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In light of these norms in games education paratexts, the fourth pattern of showcasing diverse smiling young people in marketing materials is quite a contradictory message. Patterning an appeal to students based on traits of the historical hegemony of play – the centring of technology, the myopic emphasis on the “industry standard,” and the suggestion of the shared pleasures of mainstream play – aligns with expectations that the audience for these images are in line with the historical vision of game-players and game-makers: white, male, heterosexual, oriented towards violence and competition, and contented with the status quo in the domain. Still, a superficial celebration of diversity is common in university marketing materials, where images of smiling non-white students create an aura of inclusivity, supported by institutional diversity discourse that is prevalent in the UK as indicated by the Athena Swan initiative awarding institutions tiered recognition for gender advancement. These norms in the university context are what Kat Gupta calls “icing on the cake”33 diversity. In this metaphor, the cake (the university) remains fundamentally unchanged in terms of practices that are exclusionary and its culture is presented in a fashion more positive than may be experienced by diverse students and staff members (here, the icing is these paratextual images). Furthermore, as within Teo’s34 analysis, these images of carefully balanced mixed student groups are linked to the centring of technologies, suggesting that technology is key to transforming these young people into mobile workers ready for the global economy. Within games, this assemblage of diversity and technicity is a particularly fraught one as the relationship between masculinity and technological subjectivities is a historical one,35 one that informs both the still low levels of female students in games programmes and their clustering within arts-related degrees. In line with Gupta’s use of the cake metaphor, considering games education paratexts in tandem with my interviews indicates that the superficial diversity found in these promotional materials is the greatest false promise of all. The student bodies of these courses remain homogenous, bearing little resemblance to these photos, and even more concerningly, at times the students showcased as exemplars in marketing materials are those who articulated feelings of not belonging or exclusion in their courses. Within the programmes I studied, the second level of diversity, what Gupta calls “diversity as chocolate chips,” is sometimes apparent. This

 Cited in Ruth Pearce, “Certifying Equality? Critical Reflections on Athena SWAN and Equality Accreditation,” Coventry: Centre for the Study of Women and Gender, accessed July 1, 2021.  Peter Teo, “The Marketisation of Higher Education: A Comparative Case-Study of Two Universities in Singapore,” Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines 1, no. 1 (2007): 95–111.  Judy Wajcman, Feminism Confronts Technology (London: Polity, 1991).

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refers to small spaces of good practice operating within a structure that does not operate in a diversity-oriented manner, and in games courses, this included in some cases recognition of the importance of women in mentorship, teaching, and leadership roles, and overt efforts to recruit students from diverse backgrounds. However, these diversity practices occurred within a context – the university oriented towards employability, an industry oriented towards a delimited vision of what game-making looks like, and a still exclusionary culture of games – that do not mirror these initiatives. Therefore, diverse students operating beyond courses where diversity and inclusion were priorities were apt to face a deep and potentially shocking rift in subsequent support for their participation, particularly those female students who told me about sexist interactions in their internships and at games events. As Sara Ahmed’s discussions of barriers to diversity and inclusivity within the university context illustrates,36 fully integrated structural diversity, or diversity as a chocolate cake in Gupta’s terms, was not likely to be evidenced in any of the programmes in my study. This would entail not only best practices within games programmes but across the institutions in which they are embedded and the industry they interface with. To end this chapter, I will consider how marketing paratexts in conversation with other data points indicates that such integrated diversity is improbable at this time in games education.

Conclusion: Making sense of games education paratexts As we have seen, understanding the meaning of these paratexts is not possible without setting them in conversation with stakeholders within these organisations – students, instructors, and administrators – and also beyond – through policy and industry documentation related to the UK games industry, education, talent development, and diversity and, more broadly, materials related to the positioning of universities in the contemporary economy in the UK. University marketing materials, including of games courses, are not typically produced by instructors within these programmes but centrally by marketing teams. This is important because in my interviews I learned that for many in these courses there is a strong desire to recruit more diverse students, increasing

 Sara Ahmed, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012).

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the “supply-side” of the “talent pipeline” to games. But outside of these desires and actions in the form of active recruitment of female and racialised students, the promotional materials that convey what it is to be a game student and worker continue to support the hegemony of play, a vision of the ideal player and developer sustained over many years. This occurs not because there is a desire to exclude in these courses but instead because of visions and promises of the role of the university in the digital and creative economies shaped by government, policy-makers, and the lobbying of powerful industrial actors, many of whom have a historical rather than contemporary vision of what constitutes gameswork, or vested interests in maintaining the long-term status quo hardcore gamer. Paradoxically, these varied influences are deeply invested in the training of “diverse” and “skilled” talent within economies hinged on knowledge work. Their priorities are exerted as real pressure on teachers and students: to focus on employability to the industry standard at the expense of encouraging interdisciplinary engagement with games, critical perspectives on dominant modes of gameplay constructed within a risk-averse industry, or exploration of less exploitative modes of working through engagement with co-operatives or labour organising. Methodologically, my key argument is that it would have been impossible to see these influences and pressures as they are exerted and experienced without both interviews with those operating within games programmes and engagement with the documents and statements made by these stakeholders. These diverse sources of data support Livermore’s argument that games education paratexts are performative promotional materials that do more than recruit students but also “mediate the public face of an academic program within an educational institution, relaying its program offerings and future plans to businesses and to the surrounding community.”37 He notes that the tendency to think of university spaces as microcosms of the workplace environment constructs the student as a source of cheap labour, the instructor as an entrepreneur, and higher education as nothing more than a cog within market processes. Exclusionary norms within games, therefore, are supported not just by existing practices and cultures in a closed circuit of games but by neoliberal capitalism’s impact on policy related to higher education. Recognition of these influences is vitally important as discussions of the relationship between education and work emphasise the role of these institutions in contributing more diverse workers to the industry, but this vision of a linear pipeline presumes that education operates without the constraints imposed within commercialised universities and narrow expectations and historical valuations of what gamesworkers should be. Multi-sited paratextual analysis is

 Livermore, “The Academic Grind,” 27.

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useful for providing a view of the origins of the games labour force and how diverse influences shape potential change in both the context of production and culture. Overall, taking a closer look at games education paratexts has provided insight into how difficult the project of inclusion in education can be, and further evidences the challenges of relying on these institutions for diversification of the “talent pipeline” in games.

References Ahmed, Sara. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012. Apperley, Tom. “Counterfactual Communities: Strategy Games, Paratexts and the Player’s Experience of History.” Open Library of Humanities 41 (2018): 1–22. Ashton, Daniel. “Making it Professionally: Student Identity and Industry Professionals in Higher Education.” Journal of Education and Work 22 (2009): 283–300. Ashton, Daniel. “Upgrading the Self: Technology and the Self in the Digital Games Perpetual Innovation Economy.” Convergence 17 (2011): 307–321. Bulut, Ergin. A Precarious Game: The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry. New York: Cornell University Press, 2020. Carlone, Heidi B. and Angela Johnson. “Understanding the Science Experiences of Successful Women of Color: Science Identity as an Analytic Lens.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 44 (2007): 1187–1218. Comunian, Roberta and Abigail Gilmore. “Beyond the Creative Campus: Reflections on the Evolving Relationship between Higher Education and the Creative Economy.” King’s College London, London (UK). Accessed January 7, 2022. http://www.creative-campus.org.uk/finalreport–beyond-the-creative-campus.html Consalvo, Mia. “Crunched by Passion: Women Game Developers and Workplace Challenges.” In Beyond Barbie & Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming, edited by Yasmin B. Kafai, Carrie Heeter, Jill Denner and Jennifer Y. Sun, 177–191. Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2018. Deuze, Mark, Chase Bowen Martin and Christian Allen. “The Professional Identity of Gameworkers.” Convergence 13 (2007): 335–353. Fairclough, Norman. “Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketisation of Public Discourse: The Universities.” Discourse and Society 4 (1993): 133–168. Fisher, Stephanie and Alison Harvey. “Intervention for Inclusivity: Gender Politics and Indie Game Development.” Loading . . . Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association, 7 (2013): 25–40. Francis, Becky, Louise Archer, Julie Moote, Jen de Witt and Lucy Yeomans. “Femininity, Science, and the Denigration of the Girly Girl.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 38 (2016): 1097–1110. Fron, Janine, Tracy Fullerton, Jacquelyn Ford Morie and Celia Pearce. “The Hegemony of Play.” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Digital Games Research Association, Tokyo, Japan, September 24–28, 2007. Gamasutra. “Number of Computer Games Graduates at a Seven Year High.” Gamasutra, May 2, 2021.

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Gouglas, Sean, Jason Della Rocca, Jennifer, Jenson, Kevin, Kee, Geoffrey, Rockwell, Jonathon, Schaeffer, and Ron Wakkary. “Computer Games and Canada’s Digital Economy: The Role of Universities in Promoting Innovation.” Report to the Social Science Humanities Research Council Knowledge Synthesis Grants on Canada’s Digital Economy. Harvey, Alison and Stephanie Fisher. “Growing Pains: Intergenerational Feminisms in Digital Games.” Feminist Media Studies 16 (2016): 648–662. Harvey, Alison and Tamara Shepherd. “When Passion isn’t Enough: Gender, Affect and Credibility in Digital Games Design.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 20 (2016): 492–508. Harvey, Alison. “Twine’s Revolution: Democratization, Depoliticization, and the Queering of Game Design.” GAME: The Italian Journal of Game Studies 3 (2014): 95–107. Harvey, Alison. “Becoming Gamesworkers: Diversity, Higher Education, and the Future of the Game Industry.” Television and New Media 20 (2019): 756–766. Harvey, Alison. “Freedom from the Industry Standard: Student Working Imaginaries and Independence in Games Higher Education.” In Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Technics and Politics, edited by Paolo Ruffino, 253–267. London: Routledge, 2020. Harvey, Alison. “Making the Grade: Feminine Lack, Inclusion, and Coping Strategies in Digital Games Higher Education.” New Media & Society (2021). Accessed July 1, 2021, doi: 10.1177/ 1461444820986831 Higginbotham, Daniel. “Video Game Careers.” Prospects, February 2021. Keough, Brendan. “Student Expectations, Course Marketing, and the Invisible Labour of Game Development.” Personal blog. https://brkeogh.com/2018/05/07/student-expectations-coursemarketing-and-the-invisible-labour-of-game-development/. Kerr, Aphra. The Business and Culture of Digital Games: Gamework/Gameplay. London: Sage, 2006. Kline, Stephen, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig de Peuter. Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. Livermore, Owen R. “The Academic Grind: A Critique of Creative and Collaborative Discourses Between Digital Games Industries and Post-Secondary Education in Canada.” PhD diss., Western University, 2013. O’Donnell, Casey. Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators. Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2014. Pearce, Ruth. “Certifying Equality? Critical Reflections on Athena SWAN and equality accreditation.” Coventry: Centre for the Study of Women and Gender. Accessed January 7, 2022. https://warwick. ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/research/centres/gender/calendar/certifying_equality_a/certifying_ equality_-_critical_reflection_on_athena_swan.pdf Pettinger, Lynne, Kirsten Forkert, and Andrew Goffey. “The Promises of Creative Industry Higher Education: An Analysis of University Prospectuses in Malaysia.” International Journal of Cultural Policy 24 (2018): 466–484. Ruffino, Paolo, ed. Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Technics and Politics. London: Routledge, 2021. Simon, Bart. “Indie Eh? Some Kind of Game Studies.” Loading . . . The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association 7 (2013): 1–7. Sotamaa, Olli and Jan Švelch, eds. Game Production Studies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. Staiger, Janet. “Announcing Wares, Winning Patrons, Voicing Ideals: Thinking about the History and Theory of Film Advertising.” Cinema Journal 29 (1990): 3–31.

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Stephenson, Suzi. “Number of computer games graduates at a seven year high.” TIGA. Accessed January 7, 2022. https://tiga.org/news/number-of-computer-games-graduates-at-a-seven-yearhigh Teo, Peter. “The Marketisation of Higher Education: A Comparative Case-Study of Two Universities in Singapore.” Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines 1 (2007): 95–111. TIGA. “TIGA University Accreditation.” Accessed January 7, 2022. https://tiga.org/education/tigauniversity-accreditation Wajcman, Judy. Feminism Confronts Technology. London: Polity, 1991. Weststar, Johanna, Eva Kwan and Shruti Kumar. “Developer Satisfaction Survey 2019 Summary Report.” International Game Developers Association. Accessed January 7, 2022. https://s3-useast-2.amazonaws.com/igda-website/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/29093706/IGDA-DSS-2019_ Summary-Report_Nov-20-2019.pdf. Wijman, Tom. “Global Games Market to Generate $175.8 Billion in 2021; Despite a Slight Decline, the Market Is on Track to Surpass $200 Billion in 2023.” NewZoo, May 6, 2021.

Section 5: Paratextual practices of play

Esther MacCallum-Stewart

“On a scale of 1–5, what floor are you on?” Practising methodologies of fun and play with transformative communities Introduction This chapter examines how playfulness emerges at science fiction and gaming conventions. It argues that attendees and organisers use playful techniques to avoid boredom, provide emergent solutions and overcome difficult situations. This is possible because these people come from a position of experience which incorporates an awareness of playful activities and direct experience of games and gaming cultures. They not only know how to game situations when they become difficult or challenging but see playfulness as an everyday activity. In doing so, organisers curate an event that feeds into a wider experiential narrative of experiences and forms a wider paratext of experience. In addition, these events are facilitated by a shifting pool of volunteers who are attendees themselves. Their paratextual experience of these people (“conrunners”), of organisational practices, as well as their joint role as participants who want to enjoy the event, provides a background experience that allows them to playfully rework solutions. Švelch writes that paratexts can be seen as transcendent artefacts which move beyond previous textual/media focussed readings.1 The chapter case studies the Dublin 2019 Worldcon as a place in which several problems were diffused by playful behaviour and discusses ways in which this can be theorised. These behaviours do not reach the formalised extent or lasting impact of Gamification, but instead rely on an ethos and appreciation of playfulness which often disperses without lasting consequence when the event concludes. These practices have further implications for organisational fun and play across a wider textual network.  Jan Švelch, “Paratexts to Non-Linear Media Texts: Paratextuality in Video Game Culture” (PhD diss., Charles University, Prague, 2017). Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 319932075_Paratexts_to_Non-Linear_Media_Texts_Paratextuality_in_Video_Game_Culture. Thanks: Thanks to Ben Yalow and Tammy Coxen for their assistance in creating this chapter. I’m not sure whether to thank James Bacon, Chair of the Dublin 2019 Worldcon, for supporting me during the event, encouraging me to become a Chair in my own right, and finally calling me a “challenging person,” but I probably should. Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Staffordshire University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-011

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An autoethnographical account of Worldcon worlds I am fascinated by communities and subcultures, especially how they evolve and change. The pathways these groups make through adversity are complex and often surprising. Observing how they make difficult situations into fun, or comedy, and how they experiment joyfully to make things better demonstrates an innately positive approach to overcoming difficulty. For me, this emphasises the fundamental good of people – the willingness to play, explore and have fun together. The belief that a learning process also involves mistakes. It’s a vital part of what makes us creative, thinking beings, and it’s also a way of lightening the load – of making things less hard for each other. And like everyone, just like all these people, I love to goof around. Writing during the COVID Pandemic, locked in my house for 12 weeks, not able to get a delivery slot, relying on friends to let me know which supermarket has flour, and sometimes crying in frustration at the sheer lethality of governments around the world, this paper makes me smile as I remember someone giving me a ribbon about Martha Wells’ Murderbot-series, or watching Tammy Coxen rush up to me with her “I hope I remember this in the morning”-idea about solving queueing. It gives me hope. People often describe coming into the Worldcon community as “finding their tribe.” Attendees comprise a wide variety of well-educated professions; lawyers, doctors, professors, Hugo award winners, Nobel prize nominees, international conflict negotiators, authors, train drivers and the odd “doctor trying to get a professoriate” count themselves amongst these ranks. The community often self-identifies as having a wide spread of neurodiverse members. The volunteer nature of the organisation means that crossover between organiser and event manager is highly interchangeable, with 1 in 6 members volunteering for convention organisation roles.2 The community has Big Name Fans3 who get angry on social media and incite hundreds of other fans to support them. Everyone thinks they could do a better job of the organisation of this chaotic group, and convention management is an active part of conversations, gossip and news. This is encouraged within the community. Websites like File 770 (Glyer, 1990-present) bring daily news and debate to fans and “conrunners” around the world. Events like “The Fannish Inquisition” (which everyone expects) grill organisers about their future convention plans. What are they doing about diverse representation? Are there support systems for people who want visas to attend? How are they dealing with overcrowding at

 Kevin Roche, “Chair’s Speech,” Closing Ceremony, Worldcon 76 (California: San Jose, 2018).  Matt Hills, Fan Cultures (London: Routledge, 2002).

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popular events? What is the policy on harassment, and “of course,” how cannily have they negotiated with their surrounding hotels – what deals have been inveigled for the benefit of attendees? Being an active volunteer, especially on a convention committee, means becoming a person of all trades. Conrunners often move over time between the organising teams within a convention – usually known as “divisions” – learning everything from which fire regulations come into play when they need to hang a canoe from a venue ceiling, understanding how a DISTRO box alternates in different countries, or learning how to be smart on a budget when feeding 650 fans whisky from only 6 bottles (hint: a 75cl bottle holds 75 x 10ml samples. Use disposable communion “shot glasses” and everyone feels like they got a taster. Also hide a bottle down your pants). As an example, in the ten years, I’ve been involved with conventions, I’ve worked for Programme (panels and discussions), Exhibits (parties by night, trade hall dealers and art shows by day), Facilitation (wrangling an incalcitrant Chair, running committee events and meetings), Social Media (Blog posts, answering questions, coercing people into writing things) and Facilities (hotel contracts and hanging that darned canoe). I’m now the Chair of the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon. I’m not sure how good an idea this was. Conrunners comprise a crucible of talent, enthusiasm, walking disasters and brilliant innovators. They are solution-based. At the not-for-profit conventions I attend, all conrunners are volunteers and perhaps more crucially, we are often friends. We’re headstrong, opinionated, used to working in teams with “challenging people” (when often those “challenging people” are ourselves), and we’ve made lasting connections we might not otherwise have managed with the people around us that mean at the end of the day, we still want to hang out, drink beer, and shoot the breeze about the recent Witcher series.

Are we having fun yet? In the ludic century, we cannot have a passive relationship with the system we inhabit.4

In their chapter “The Problem with Fun,”5 Sharp and Thomas wrangle with understanding fun. Critics have hitherto found fun so problematic that they will

 Eric Zimmermann, “Manifesto for a Ludic Century,” in Steffen Walz and Sebastian Deterding, The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), 21.  John Sharp and David Thomas, “The Problem with Fun,” in Fun, Taste and Games: An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2019), 27–43.

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ignore it, assume it is present, or simply leave it to the reader to decide what fun might be. Fun is difficult to define, something we are told (often forcibly) that we are experiencing in order to convince us that yes, we are having fun now. Whilst play might be fun, fun is not always playful – the two are separate entities both forming part of the text. This is a key element when observing communities who may be experiencing situations that are not inherently fun-filled, but may have playfully created elements that mean their experiences are, in fact, great fun to take part in. Fun is happening, whether they intended it or not. Similarly, people may not be having any fun at all, but may play or make up games to alleviate this tension. Sharp and Thomas take us down a number of fun routes whilst exploring this, but ultimately conclude that Bernie De Koven might just be right: “maybe [. . .] freedom itself is fun. Maybe fun itself is freedom.”6 Games, they conclude, need to be “just enough – just enough to allow players a place to play, and a place to have fun.” It is this “just enoughness” that takes place within convention running. This chapter also treats the convention itself as a text – one that is reformed, played with and explored by its participants in the process of being created, and during the time it takes place. In this respect, it uses the idea that a text is transcendent and that the convention itself is a text that can be studied.7 In order to break the rules of the convention, or overcome problems that are created by social action, cultural difference or temporal locality, the participants of the convention playfully refigure the world around them. Many times, this involves the creation of small game-like spaces – minigames in the larger sphere of the grand game that is the convention itself. At conventions, attendees are at the event for the express intention of having fun – the convention is often considered a holiday, and they attend not only to take part in science fiction and fantasy-related events and to see experts discuss something they are passionate about, but also to meet friends. This is reflected in many other activities that take place during each event – for example tours, parties, meet-ups and socialising in the fan bar. When coupled with their own objectives and textual engagement, this fun element becomes embedded within the wider experience of convention-going, and thus wider (para)textual interaction. A comparable, although more serious counterpoint to the science fiction convention is an academic conference. Peers might meet after considerable time apart, enjoy the stimulating environment of the conference space, and socialise in the conference bar. They are also there to show off, argue, meet new people (to show off and argue with) and demonstrate their own abilities. Each event is a spectacle,

 Bernard De Koven, A Playful Path (Pittsburgh: ETC Press, 2014), 220.  Švelch, “Paratexts to Non-Linear Media Texts.”

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with all of these things taking place at the same time in a messy network of overlapping experiences. Whilst these groups may not have turned up to play, fun is baked into their expectations of each event and thus each event is potentially consumed through this lens. Attendees at science fiction conventions are playful. Whilst they may or may not be fans of video games or board games – which may be elements of individual events but do not always take centre stage – science fiction and fantasy are inherently experimental genres, and there is a strong thematic overlap. Miguel Sicart argues that: Play is the force that drives these cultural expressions together and makes them matter [. . .] we need play precisely because we need occasional freedom and distance from our conventional understanding of the moral fabric of society. Play is important because we need to see values and practice them and challenge them so they become more than mindless habits.8

The reflective, interpretive nature of play is similar to the experimental precepts of science fiction and fantasy. These narratives are invested in worlds where difference is a core element of a story’s novum.9 Changing a core aspect of the knowable world and working it into a narrative in order to explore and appreciate how this affects humans, culture and society is a core element of Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF) writing. As I have argued elsewhere, gamers are hardwired to play and play games as part of their daily lives – and game-like or playful activities are embedded into contemporary cultural capital and production, often creating meaning as a result.10 However, despite this space of playful exploration and gathering together to enjoy a shared passion, attendees and organisers may not actually have any fun at all. They may be volunteers working too hard to see any of the events, celebrities or papers, or being shouted at when mistakes happen. They may attend events, meet celebrities or discuss papers that are boring or boorish, and criticise them in turn (or just leave, bored and irritated). They may even be one of those celebrities who gives a popular paper or performs in a stunning event that brings huge pleasure to others but find that this takes up all of their time and leaves them too exhausted to do anything else. Or, most likely, they are involved with a combination of these things that leave them alternately tired, full of enjoyment and possibly slightly hungover.

 Miguel Sicart, Play Matters (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), 5.  Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).  Esther MacCallum-Stewart, “The Gaming of Players: Jamming Azad,” in Nick Hubble, Esther MacCallum-Stewart and Joseph Norman, The Science Fiction of Iain M Banks. SF Storyworlds: Critical Studies in Science Fiction (Canterbury: Glyphi Press, 2018), 121–142.

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Literature review – transforming play To boldly go, there and back again [. . .] where no Worldcon has gone before.11

I use this chapter to apply the ideas of fun and playfulness to the behaviour of convention organisers (“conrunners”) as they try to troubleshoot, accommodate or simply endure the inevitable occurrence of problematic, boring or challenging events at conventions. In order to do this, they create small games or game-like spaces where transformative action can take place. I work through the idea that the convention can be just as playful as the game, and that it forms a paratext of wider experience. Throughout this work, I have focussed on the idea that these people may not necessarily be playing, nor may they be having fun. However, they are engaging with fundamental tenets of these principles in order to overcome their current situations. Furthermore, they are systemically primed to do this, as they exist within communities of practice that are hardwired to play. As a result of this, I envisage these communities as adhering to both the principles of Bahktin’s Carnivale,12 whereby the convention is seen as a liminal, carnivalesque space where the world is turned upside down, and those of Miguel Sicart, who sees play as a holistic experience and as linked specifically to a historicised moment (in this case, the moment of the convention).13 The carnival is a place of exploration and subversiveness, populated by unruly participants who work with a spirit of joyful experimentation since they know that this space is short lived, liminal, and relatively repercussion-free. I have previously used these ideas to position the convention as an enabling playful space where a specific game event at a convention – a games jam honouring science fiction author Iain M Banks – iterated playfulness, spilling out into, and reforming the environment around it.14 The playful behaviours of convention organisers can be methodologically linked with the theoretical precepts of fun and play through work drawn from the Well-Played Game,15 discussions on emergent play,16 and transformative  Amended strapline for CoNZealand, the 78th Worldcon, post COVID-19, April 2020.  Mikhail Bahktin, Rabelais and his World (Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1984).  Sicart, Play Matters.  MacCallum-Stewart, “The Gaming of Players.”  Bernard De Koven, The Well-Played Game: A Player’s Philosophy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013).  Joris Dormans, “Integrating Emergence and Progression,” Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 – Think Design Play. http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/11310.25319.pdf. Josh Bycer, “Examining Emergent Gameplay,” Gamasutra, September 16, 2015. https://www.gamasutra.com/ blogs/JoshBycer/20150916/253682/Examining_Emergent_Gameplay.php. Jesper Juul, “The Open

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play.17 All of these ideas present playfulness as a result of engaged action, and as having a flexible approach to change and rapid iteration. Transformative play sees play and design as melded: “enabling the players to contribute to defining and changing the structures framing play, and ultimately to decide how and what they want to play.”18 I see the enacting of these methodologies at conventions as inadvertent or emergent, rather than drawing from gamification theory which takes a more structured, long-term approach19 and sees the effects of play as more long lasting. This is for several reasons. The play that emerges at these events is often spontaneous, without fully directed purpose or outcome. It is instead intended to relieve boredom, express frustration, subvert systems that participants are unhappy with or know that they can facilitate through playfulness. It is not used as a learning experience (much to the detriment of convention management, but this is a different essay). Finally, playful circumstances are sometimes created simply for sociality and fun. There is some long-term learning; providing coping mechanisms for how to playfully engage with non-playful situations, but within the volunteer organisers (“conrunners”), this is not always carried from event to event; instead, reinvention and reimagination within each management team is commonplace. Gamification theory points itself more towards designing interactive systems to enhance user engagement,20 whilst this study saw a series of short-term systems being developed in response to situations perceived as boring, frustrating or simply ineffective. At conventions, which are short-lived, liminal spaces, participants’ chief objectives tend to be less about learning, and more directed to enjoying themselves and existing within a playful environment. This might include a displacement activity in which the playfulness created is an attempt to distract, rather than educate, and is not

and the Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of Progression,” in Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings (Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2022), 323–329.http://www. jesperjuul.net/text/openandtheclosed.html.  Olli Sotamaa, “Let Me Take You to The Movies: Productive Players, Commodification and Transformative Play,” Convergence 13, no. 4 (2007): 383–401. Jon Back, Elena Marquez Segura and Annika Waern, “Designing for Transformative Play,” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 24, no. 3 (2017): 1–38. John Sharp and David Thomas, Fun, Taste and Games: An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019).  Back, Marquez Segura, Waern, “Designing for Transformative Play,” 18.  Brian Burke, Gamify: How Gamification Motivates People to do Extraordinary Things (New York: Bibliomotion, 2014).  Gabriel Barata et al., “Improving Participation and Learning with Gamification,” in Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Gamification, October 2013.

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properly documented – or simply forgotten about – when the convention ends. It represents, then, an ephemeral element of industrial paratext.

Worldcon: “I would be perfectly responsible with a flamethrower” The World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), and the smaller satellite Science Fiction conventions that both support and engender it, exhibit a number of specific behaviours which are slightly different from commercial “on the gate” conventions such as Comicon.21 An on the gate convention is usually run by a commercial events management team, and is more focussed around celebrity guests whom attendees pay to receive photographs and autographs. On the gate events often give preferential space to commercial and artisanal vendors selling relevant products. Science fiction conventions are structured more around talks, panels and discussions. This changes the demographics of attendance and member movement – science fiction conventions attendees tend to remain on-site, usually in hotels, for considerable amounts of time (up to five days), then spend high amounts of money on off-site evening entertainment such as restaurants, whereas on the gate conventions deal with a high volume of more transitory traffic and eat from on-site fastfood outlets during the day. Worldcon is the longest-running science fiction convention in the world, having begun in 1939. The event has a specific focus on the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. Worldcon and science fiction conventions are a crossover between an academic conference, with many tracks running panels, workshops, poster sessions and scholarly talks, where fans meet and socialise with authors and publishers who give readings, autograph their work and launch their new publications. In addition, science fiction conventions may feature an exhibit space which showcases a mixture of scientific stands, themed displays celebrating Guests of Honour, art from science fiction and fantasy creators, and dealers selling books and associated products. Worldcon also hosts the Hugo Awards (the science fiction and fantasy Oscars), and attendees who have paid in advance (known as “members”) are eligible to nominate and vote for these awards since the attendance fee grants short term membership of the World Science Fiction Society, the organisation responsible for the administration of the Hugo Awards. Attendance rates of American Worldcons tend to run to about 4,000 to 5,000 people, whereas those in non-American countries are becoming

 Camille Bacon-Smith, Science Fiction Culture (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Press, 2010).

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significantly larger at 5,000 to 8,000 people.22 Crucially, Worldcons are run by groups of volunteers and not by professional event management teams, and everyone, barring the Guests of Honour, pays to attend. The location of the event, and the groups managing each event change every year. The demographic of Worldcon attendees is different from commercially run on the gate events. Attendees are relatively affluent, as international travel is often required.23 Approximately 65 percent of all attendees at a USA located Worldcon are from the USA,24 changing to approximately 35 percent at a non-US event.25 The age group of attendees skews towards a middle-aged bracket of between 40 to 60 years. Tickets are bought in advance and cover attendance to all on-site events (although some may be ticketed to control numbers). The event is volunteer organised and run, and one in six attendees volunteer in some capacity, either during or before the event.26 The volunteer ratio of Worldcon members is important because it means that attendees are frequently involved in the running and organisation of events. Many attendees have prior or current experience of volunteering for a science fiction convention and therefore know at least some of what goes on behind the scenes. This additionally means that their experience allows them to make (semi-)informed commentary on the current event and how it is manifesting. In a community where volunteering is so commonplace, everyone has an opinion about the running of the event at hand. Everybody.

 Wikipedia, “List of Worldcons” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Worldcons, accessed May 23, 2022. Note that these figures show the amount of people who have bought memberships as well as those estimated to have attended. Figures for 2015 were skewed by a faction of people who had no intention of attending, but who bought supporting memberships in order to try and manipulate the results of the Hugo Awards. This is a form of creative play, however the ill intent of these actions means that they will not be discussed here.  Vincent Docherty and Colin Harris, “Application for Release of Final Subvention Payment,” Interaction 2005 (Personal File). Vincent Docherty, Colin Harris and Mark Meenan, “RPF for Glasgow 2024,” Glasgow in 2024 (2018, Personal File).  René Walling, “Worldcon Membership Demographics 1961–1980,” Adastra.com, August 31, 2018, accessed April 16, 2020 https://www.adastrasf.com/report-worldcon-membership-demo graphics-1961-1980/.  Dublin 2019, “Membership Statistics: Where our Members are Coming From,” Dublin 2019, accessed April 16, 2020https://dublin2019.com/whos-coming/membership-list/membership-statis tics/.  Kevin Roche, “Chair’s Speech,” Closing Ceremony, Worldcon 76 (California: San Jose, 2018).

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Emergence: The convention ribbon Being playful is the engine of innovation and creativity: as we play, we think about thinking and we learn to act in new ways. As a cultural form, games have a particularly direct connection with play.27

Much as the paratext, as threshold, science fiction conventions are liminal spaces. Participants may have come from many different places and institutions, and thus their shared experiences relate not to who they are, their social demographics or their cultural experiences, but the thematic nature of the convention itself. This means that a microcosmic environment is created for each individual event where rules and codes of behaviour must be re-established and cannot be taken for granted. Attendees create ritualistic practices in order to engender a sense of belonging and to instantly connect with new people or those they may not have seen for some time.28 The convention space itself echoes Huizinga’s idea of a magic circle: a new, unfamiliar space with different rules, codes of behaviour and practices that dissipate once the event is over. It is therefore a space of textual negotiation. Directly applying these precepts to issues within the convention space allows playful problem-solving to be initiated. A ribbon is a piece of cloth with a sticky edge that allows it to be stuck to a convention name badge (usually a rectangular laminate displaying the participant’s name and possibly affiliation), or to other ribbons. There are various different claims as to when ribbons were first introduced to conventions, but an early image of ribbons can be seen at Norwescon (Worldcon) in 1950 – an image taken by Martin Alger shows Mel Korshk wearing at least one on stage.29 Several companies specialising in conference goods sell ribbons online, allowing buyers to upload their own designs, or quickly create personalised ribbons through an easy design tool. Ribbons are sold in batches, with the minimum purchase being around 50 to 100. They are relatively cheap to buy in bulk and are available in a wide variety of colours and fonts. Ribbons are extensively used at all Worldcons. These ribbons also serve the purpose of establishing paratextual relationships between the volunteers and the convention. Ribbons were intended in the first instance to delineate a role – for example “Chair” or “Hotel Liaison,” but also to facilitate more general requirements such as “Access All Areas.” Since a convention’s volunteer pool is both large and transitory,

 Zimmermann, “Manifesto for a Ludic Century,” 21.  John Goodger, “Ritual, Solidarity and Sport,” Acta Sociologica 29, no. 3 (1986): 219–224.  Martin Alger, “Norwescon 1950 – photos,” Fanac.org, November 8, 2007, accessed April 20, 2020, https://www.fanac.org/photohtm.php?worldcon/NorWesCon/w50-028.

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Figure 1: Ribbons on a name badge at Dublin 2019 (image by the author).

ribbons gradually began to differentiate further roles through both explicit (words) and indicative (colours) representation in order to help groups identify each other. For example, colour-coded ribbons might all be linked to one team or division so that volunteers could recognise each other, such as “Tech Team” or “Programme.” Differentiation of members also became useful – demonstrating if a person was exhibiting in the “Art Show,” speaking as a “Programme Participant” or perhaps being a “Guest of Honour.” Thus, not only did ribbons become an expression of status, but a volunteer or member of the convention might need several different ones in order to depict their various roles and activities during their time at the convention. Figure 1., for example, demonstrates that the attendee is a staff member, has roles in the Facilitation Division and Chair’s Team, but is also a “Party Organiser.” Convention attendees quickly saw playful alternative uses for ribbons beyond simply the demarcation of organisational roles, refiguring their meaning as cultural artefacts. Ribbons are very visible to other participants and denote belonging. This is a particularly salient need amongst groups that are internationally networked, and

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thus may not know each other’s likes, dislikes or affiliations on sight. Ribbons were quickly repurposed by non-host groups to promote other conventions and demonstrate affiliations, such as membership of a society or fandom of a TV series. In-jokes or fannish quotes and puns also became popular as again, they suggested clannishness and signified a sense of place. The act of giving out and collecting ribbons immediately pivoted towards a more social occupation – attendees might pick a ribbon up gratis on a fan table advertising another convention, or they may have to seek out someone giving out a specific ribbon and say a codeword or phrase in order to gain it. Ribbon givers might spot “their tribe;” for example, I was once given a ribbon in an elevator after another occupant spotted me playing Pokémon Go on my phone. As a result of this, at large conventions, it is easy to acquire a significant amount of ribbons in a short period of time, as well as having an opportunity to hunt for the more discreetly dispatched ones. The act of ribbon collecting is playful, and the display and swapping of them closely mimics gamified practices of achievement, representation and effort needed to obtain them. Members must choose how to display them on their badges, and this can quickly become chaotic. The “ribbon beard” is a long tail of ribbons that stretches downwards to excessive length, and for many people, this accumulation becomes competitive. In particular, children like to collect as many individual ribbons as possible and compare numbers. These are sometimes repurposed – I have seen a ribbon corset, and a member wearing a cloak made of ribbons, which must have taken some time to accumulate. I have used the backs of ribbons (usually blank, and porous) to acquire signatures when nothing else was to hand and have given out fannish ribbons both for my own conventions, to celebrate author Chuck Tingle, and in exchange for dramatic short readings of Guy N. Smith’s Night of the Crabs series. Whilst ribbons are a well-established tradition, they are constantly inventive, changing in content if not in format. Contextualising within the concept of paratexts, we can see that goal-oriented engagement can shape the wider convention experience, as well as providing indication of otherwise hidden or ephemeral roles. Hamari found that awarding badges to participants resulted in an increase in engagement,30 and there is consistent evidence to show that rewards enhance learning,31 and encourage players

 Juho Hamari, “Do Badges Increase User Activity? A Field Experiment of Effects of Gamification,” Computers in Human Behavior 71 (2017): 469–478. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.03.036.  Lucas Blair, “The Use of Video Game Achievements to Enhance Player Performance, Selfefficacy, and Motivation.” Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Orlando: University of Central Florida, 2011).

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to spend more time on tasks that may be subsidiary to their central goals.32 Ribbon production and collecting is a member-generated form of this. There is no formalised game or set of rules, and the act of wearing ribbons is usually voluntary (unless convention organisers have stated that volunteers must wear ribbons describing their roles – even then, people often take these off or turn them around to signal that they are “off duty”). Ribbon wearing demonstrates the longterm adaptability and transformation of a practical exercise into something more playful and fun, with participants continuing to iterate on the original (the “ribbon beard,” the secret ribbon of Team Mystic). Whilst not a troubleshooting activity per se, the repurposing of the ribbon towards a social signifier demonstrates the innate ability of convention attendees to repurpose a practical artefact for their own ends.

Transformative play and game design: The Dublin queue problem Play and game design are fundamental literacies required if we want to build and use these systems to solve the challenges of our time.33 For such a systemic society, games make a natural fit.34

As demonstrated via ribbon repurposing, organisers and participants come to conventions with an expectation of play and of fun, which bleeds into their behaviours as well as their consumptive practices of the event itself. Their appropriation of ribbons also shows a relative fearlessness and challenge to authority – there is no consideration by attendees that playfully refiguring an organisational aspect of the convention might result in repercussions or detrimental effects. Figure 1 demonstrates a reciprocal awareness of this – the plastic badge itself now says “STAFF” in large letters to avoid the problem of the ribbon contents below blurring the lines between functional and fun. Emergent practices refigure each other as they unfold. The paratextual ribbons then serve a purpose to shape the experience of the

 Mickael Jakobsson, “The Achievement Machine: Understanding Xbox 360 Achievements in Gaming Practices,” Game Studies 11, no. 1 (2011).  Steffen P. Walz and Sebastian Deterding, “An Introduction to the Playful World,” in The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications, ed. Steffen P. Walz and Sebastian Deterding (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015), 15.  Eric Zimmerman, “Manifesto for a Ludic Century,” in The Gameful World. Approaches, Issues, Applications, ed. Steffen P. Walz and Sebastian Deterding (Cambridge: MIT Press), 20.

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convention, while also providing a touchstone for nostalgia and indications of community status. This second example demonstrates that playful solutions are not always engendered by fun. At the Dublin 2019 Worldcon, attendee numbers caused an unforeseen level of queuing. This was partly due to the layout of the convention centre itself, partly a result of the convention being a victim of its own success (panels were much more popular than anticipated), and partly bad spatial planning by the convention team. Queueing is not a familiar element to science fiction attendees, who are used to walking into a panel before it starts and easily finding a seat. Instead, attendees found themselves unable to get into the sessions they wanted to and waited for considerable amounts of time before each session. Queues formed on top of each other, causing confusion, congestion and further difficulty in getting into rooms. Whilst the second aspect was quickly solved by putting down marker tape and barriers to manage the space better, attendees were still left waiting outside their chosen sessions. With unexpected time on their hands, they quickly took to social media in order to complain. These complaints bolstered the perception that queues were long and disorganised. Despite room capacity markers added to the floor, attendees were still surprised that sessions were filling up, and found themselves being turned away from sessions, causing disappointment and frustration. People with accessibility issues, or unused to waiting outside sessions for them to begin, were upset and angry. This was an unfamiliar and disruptive experience. Rooms were at capacity, with Health and Safety and accessibility requirements meaning more seats could not be added. Frustrated people were still having to wait in advance and were disappointed to find queues filled in advance, meaning they missed multiple sessions (to queue meant attending the desired session, but missing the slot before). Queuing is probably one of the least fun experiences one can have at an event that specifically promised hundreds of easily accessible events, panels, talks and more and comprised a significant number of people with physical needs that made standing an unpleasant experience. Worldcon divisions are rather like workplace departments in that various groups have overall responsibility for tasks within the organisation. Tammy Coxen, an experienced convention runner, was the Dublin 2019 Division Head for “Member and Staff Services,” which looked after front-facing concerns from attendees and volunteers. Her team was also responsible for the Information Desk, which bears the brunt of queries, complaints and concerns from members. Dealing with angry people who wanted to voice their distress at the queue situation rapidly became the main topic, and this in turn caused its own logjam at the desk – stopping people with other queries from being able to ask questions.

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Tammy’s solution did not solve the queue problem, it refigured it into a game. On the first day of the convention, a member of the Irish Tourist Board (Fáilte), attended the event in order to canvas attendees about their wider experiences in Dublin and at the Convention Centre (CCD). She was delighted to find a captive, vocal audience standing in long queues, more than willing to break up this monotony by speaking to a sympathetic ear about how the venue could improve their experience. The Fáilte representative left the venue at the end of the day having spoken to over 100 people, far more than usual, and with a wealth of data about logistics in the CCD. Tammy realised that complaining had allowed these members not only to express their frustrations but that the Tourist Board canvasser had distracted the queuers, giving them something to do during the times and inadvertently providing a pressure valve which stopped issues repeatedly being brought to the Information Desk. In the absence of the canvasser, she decided to create her own questionnaire to divert attendees. By the end of the second day, survey results were being displayed over the Information Desk like leader boards. These documented the day’s survey results, the results of which were later published as “Results of the Highly Scientific Queue Surveys Conducted at Dublin 2019: An Irish Worldcon.”35 These were also posted on the convention website and published in the convention newsletter. The questions were largely nonsensical (“Please rank this survey on a scale of 7–42”), fan-related (“What is your favourite Star Wars Movie – Wrath of Khan or ET?” – neither are Star Wars movies), and situational (“On a Scale of 1–5, which floor are you on?” – not only are US and European floors designated slightly differently – US floors start at 0, whereas UK and Irish ones start at “Ground,” with 0 being the basement, but the CCD used a confusing system of naming which was flummoxing attendees). Answers were posted in a similarly ridiculous way – for example the question “Pineapple on pizza – threat or menace?” produced the answer “74% of respondents properly identified the threat of pineapple on pizza, 26% seemed not to understand the question,” and was accompanied by a pi(n)e(apple) chart which did not tally with these statistics (Figure 2). The utter lack of seriousness of this survey changed the atmosphere in the queues. After a certain amount of confusion, attendees began to enjoy the experience of being asked silly questions and on the second day, started to take part more fully by providing comparably odd answers. Salen and Zimmerman argue that transformative play happens when “the free movement of play alters the

 Tammy Coxon, “Results of the Highly Scientific Queue Surveys Conducted at Dublin 2019: An Irish Worldcon,” 2019. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYcISPVtP8h_tpTlyDDcboW-O4F8aHXR/ view.

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Figure 2: The dangers of pineapple.36

more rigid structure in which it takes place.”37 In this case, queuers were encouraged to be more light-hearted, and usually responded in kind. The queues were now being “gamed,” with platers vying to give the daftest answer and get on to the boards in the lobby. Whilst queues were still boring and long, the convention management had signalled a way of making them a little easier to endure, acknowledged the problem, and provided a playful response which, while it did not solve the problem, at least made it easier to bear. This fix was not a gamified solution, nor did it provide long-term positive benefits. It simply transformed a localised issue into something playful. Interestingly, the convention centre itself responded in kind, changing digital signs around the building to show science fiction characters enacting and offering further organisational instructions “Hide from Daleks – use the stairs!,” or “Keep elevators for those who need them most” (a sign showing wheelchair-bound Doctor Who villain Davros entering a lift), to help foot traffic move more effectively. This reciprocal behaviour showed play transforming official structures, as more official groups saw how playful responses diffused some of the tensions caused by elements like overcrowding that could not be changed.

 Coxon, “Results of the Highly Scientific Queue Surveys Conducted at Dublin 2019,” reproduced with permission.  Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 305.

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Conclusion This is a community where the expectation of fun is endemic to the experience of attending an event, but the behaviours that I have described are not unique to conventions. Instead, conventions provide a liminal space where these activities are visibly encouraged. A group that expects to enjoy itself and has an element of awareness of organisational processes behaves as a critical, learning community, welcoming transformative play when it takes place. Short-term fixes to problems are therefore implemented in a way that allows reciprocal development – organisational signifiers become a game of collecting, and frustrating moments are replaced with distractions, later taken up by institutional bodies when they are seen to work. Tammy Coxen’s solution did not teach anyone a lesson, instead it alleviated a problem through distraction; but it was reflected in the CCD’s recognition that this technique worked and adopting it in turn to develop further spatial management. The implication for study and further dissemination is also something that needs to be considered. The Worldcon community tries to learn from itself; for example through fannish events such as SMOFcon (an annual convention for convention runners), but does not always pick up on the playful aspects that underscore this behaviour. Circulating this information more effectively is something that is both needed and recognised as needed by the community. The volunteer aspect of conventions additionally means that the “just a volunteer” moniker sometimes avoids deeper dissemination of these practices (for example for events management on a wider scale, or at different forms of large-scale organised events). As many gaming scholars often opine, maybe it is time to take this form of play much more seriously. However, allowing the flexibility of play to happen demonstrates a transformative approach to organisation, which ultimately provides a useful pathway through difficult situations, and also demonstrates how unconscious practice can have a hugely beneficial effect on community development – even if this is only short-term.

References Alger, Martin. “Norwescon 1950 – Photos.” Fanac.org. November 8, 2007. Accessed April 20, 2020. https://www.fanac.org/photohtm.php?worldcon/NorWesCon/w50-028. Bacon-Smith, Camille. Science Fiction Culture. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Back, Jon, Elena Marquez Segura, and Annika Waern. “Designing for Transformative Play.” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 24, no. 3 (2017): 1–28. Bahktin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World. Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1984.

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Barata, Gabriel, Sandra Gama, Joaquim Armando Pires Jorge, and Daniel Gonçalves. “Improving Participation and Learning with Gamification.” Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Gamification. October 2–4, 2013. https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/2583008, accessed May 23, 2022. Blair, Lucas. “The Use of Video Game Achievements to Enhance Player Performance, Self-efficacy, and Motivation.” PhD diss., Orlando: University of Central Florida, 2011. Burke, Brian. Gamify: How Gamification Motivates People to do Extraordinary Things. New York: Bibliomotion, 2014. Bycer, Josh. “Examining Emergent Gameplay.” Gamasutra. September 16, 2015. Accessed April 20, 2022. https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoshBycer/20150916/253682/Examining_Emergent_ Gameplay.php. Coxon, Tammy. “Results of the Highly Scientific Queue Surveys Conducted at Dublin 2019: An Irish Worldcon.” 2019. Accessed May 23, 2022. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYcISPVtP8h_ tpTlyDDcboW-O4F8aHXR/view. De Koven, Bernard. The Well-Played Game: A Player’s Philosophy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013. De Koven, Bernard. A Playful Path. Pittsburgh: ETC Press, 2014. Docherty, Vincent, and Colin Harris. “Application for Release of Final Subvention Payment.” Interaction 2005. Personal File. Docherty, Vincent, Colin Harris, and Mark Meenan. “RPF for Glasgow 2024.” Glasgow in 2024. 2018. Personal File. Dormans, Joris. “Integrating Emergence and Progression.” Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 – Think Design Play. Hilversum, The Netherlands. September 14–17, 2011. Accessed March 12, 2022. http://www. digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/11310.25319.pdf. Dublin 2019. “Membership Statistics: Where our Members are Coming From.” Dublin 2019. Accessed January 4, 2022. https://dublin2019.com/whos-coming/membership-list/membership-statistics/, Glyer, Mike. File 770. 1990. Accessed April 20, 2020. www.file770.com. Goodger, John. “Ritual, Solidarity and Sport.” Acta Sociologica 29, no. 3 (1986): 219–224. Hamari, Juho. “Do Badges Increase User Activity? A Field Experiment of Effects of Gamification.” Computers in Human Behavior 71 (2017): 469–478. Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge, 2002. Hubble, Nick, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, and Joe Norman. The Science Fiction of Iain M Banks. London: Glyphi Press, 2018. Jakobsson, Mickael. “The Achievement Machine: Understanding Xbox 360 Achievements in Gaming Practices.” Game Studies 11, no. 1 (2011). Juul, Jesper. “The Open and the Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of Progression.” Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings, 323–329. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002. Accessed December 4, 2021. http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/openandtheclosed.html. MacCallum-Stewart, Esther. “The Gaming of Players: Jamming Azad.” The Science Fiction of Iain M Banks. SF Storyworlds: Critical Studies in Science Fiction. Edited by Nick Hubble, Esther MacCallumStewart and Joe Norman, 121–142. London: Glyphi Press, 2018. Roche, Kevin. “Chair’s Speech.” Closing Ceremony, Worldcon 76. San Jose, CA: 2018. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. Sharp, John, and David Thomas. Fun, Taste and Games: An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019. Sicart, Miguel. Play Matters. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014. Sotamaa, Olli. “Let Me Take You to The Movies: Productive Players, Commodification and Transformative Play.” Convergence 13, no. 4 (2007): 383–401.

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Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Walling, René. “Worldcon Membership Demographics 1961–1980.” Adastra.com. August 31, 2018. Accessed April 16, 2020. https://www.adastrasf.com/report-worldcon-membershipdemographics-1961-1980/. Walz, Steffen P. and Sebastian Deterding. “An Introduction to the Playful World.” In The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications. Edited by Steffen P. Walz and Sebastian Deterding, 1–15. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015. Wikipedia. 2022. “List of Worldcons.” Last edited April 1, 2022. Accessed May 23, 2022. https://en.wiki pedia.org/wiki/List_of_Worldcons. Zimmerman, Eric. “Manifesto for a Ludic Century.” The Gameful World. Approaches, Issues, Applications. Edited by Steffen P. Walz and Sebastian Deterding, 19–23. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Regina Seiwald, Ed Vollans

Conclusion The chapters within this volume have individually outlined and collectively discussed the range of challenges faced by those seeking to conduct work within the field of paratextual studies. Challenges highlighted range from the theoretical conceptualisation of the work, the hierarchies of space and place, to the ways in which we read, make sense of, and collate the fragments of a media text that exists as a network across both time and space. To explore the paratext is to inherently explore the nature of a text fragmented across time and space. It follows then that all paratextual scholars are both mapping and building a history of their chosen text, drawing together evidence from a range of spaces into a clear meta-narrative for the purposes of scholarly intervention. In part, the challenges encountered, indeed the very reason for this volume, remain. One scholar’s text will be another’s paratext, and the specifics of individual study while perhaps not explicitly historical, adds to a meta-narrative that may survive long after the subject itself. No amount of scholarship, no matter how incisive, can unify texts, fields, or individual academic stances; after all, disagreement is the lifeblood of academia and is required for robust, sustained discourse. While the authors in this volume may not always agree on terminology, or approach, the individual chapters have been sourced as they represent the widest possible modes of studying media, and media history, as well as history-within-and-through-media, specifically games. In doing so, these authors are adding their voices to a growing body of work that is slowly but steadily standardising methodological practice for making sense of fragmented texts. While a lack of standardisation is not noticeably slowing the field, from the perspective of scholars new to the field, significant time is spent re-working the debates surrounding the very nature of paratexts, and of how to collate them for study. While many of the core elements for research remain the same, reflecting on the specifics of the debates within this volume allows for the reflective researcher to make decisions knowingly and in accordance with the wider debates of the field, rather than of the methodology alone. As part of this volume’s attempt to draw together existing debate in a manner that may support scholars new to the field and students alike, these concluding notes include a step-by-step account of the considerations within this volume.

Regina Seiwald, University of Birmingham Ed Vollans, University of Leicester https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732924-012

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This guide cannot encompass every possible instance of scholarship, nor every possible paratext, but it can offer a starting point for framing methodological decisions. As the previous chapters have shown, different approaches to data collection require different tools and objectives, some archives may exist prior to study, in many other instances we may have to build our own. In the first instance we need to consider the object of study: Are you looking at a textual network of different media objects unified by a single intellectual property, or are you looking at different paratexts with similar feature? (See Wright, Chapter 2, and Vollans, Chapter 8). In essence, this initial decision is as much about the materials of study as it is about the material’s location. Consider that a textual network may be connected either physically (such as with ephemera included with physical copies of a game) or intertextually (such as through a studio’s social media feed). The relative positioning of the paratexts within a network may dictate how you collate data. If, however, you are considering a range of paratexts with unifying features, then considerations surrounding inclusion, exclusion, and sampling more generally apply. Think about what your paratexts require to be relevant to your study, what the implications of a priori definitions are, and how you might limit or otherwise define your study. Defining your parameters, determining how many paratexts are enough and how many are too much necessitate the consideration of the research goals and questions. Studying all of a textual network is just as impossible as studying all of anything, and one of the wider issues within paratextual studies is itself the definition of the corpus (see Seiwald, Chapter 1). Here, timeframes, search tools, and researcher intervention may be needed. You might want to consider focusing on a specific timeframe to limit your study. This has drawbacks in that it situates the paratexts within a temporal context, but this can also be a benefit if combined with analysis that takes this into account. Within this volume, MacCallum-Stewart has engaged with this directly by taking paratextual accounts of paratextual events (see Chapter 10). Perhaps you seek to study across a large timeframe, in which case you may need to employ some form of sampling (see Harvey, Chapter 9). Whatever your paratext, as soon as you decide to study it you have to take significant decisions to define it and in doing so shape academic discourse surrounding that definition. With your paratexts to hand, the question then turns to analysis and the frameworks employed to unpack meaning. This is perhaps where many scholars find the key methodological challenge because in studying a text, some form of analytical method is (understandably) required. How might we make sense of our paratexts at a micro or macro level comes down to the research questions. Making sense of our paratexts needs to take into account their dual nature as both text and paratext simultaneously. They can therefore be studied as any other source, as Pennington (Chapter 5) and Stevens

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(Chapter 6) have shown. Analysis of these paratexts offers both micro and macro commentary on more than just the “central” text, and it does so in a manner that reflects media and cultural politics as well as the limitations of the medium itself. The mode of analysis depends on the kind of study on offer, and as those within this volume have shown, analysis of textual networks can demonstrate how a text was brought into being, was positioned, and manifested to the public. At the same time, those very paratexts offer commentary on how a text is received, how an industry sees itself, how its ontological roots manifest and shape it. Depending on the nature of study – discursive, visual, semiotic, narrative or other – a whole host of analytical tools can be employed, and it is only through sustained employment of studies within a paratextual construct that the discourse can be developed. The bigger questions, namely what is a text, what can we learn from it, and how do we archive and secure ephemera, will never truly be answered because of the ever-shifting nature of communication, because of the nature of value attribution for any given text, and because of the nature of intellectual inquiry. What is certain, though, is that without sustained exploration of paratexts we risk overlooking the very systems that allow “texts” to exist.

Glossary Architext/Architextuality a form of transtextuality offered by Gérard Genette; a designation of textual relationships that indicates belonging to a wider over-arching category. Born-Digital any text or paratext that is inherently digital-first, e.g. social media comments (they can be printed out and made analogue but they are digital first and inherently). Developer-Historian term coined by Adam Chapman; the role of the games developer as generating historical commentary and thus public-facing history through creating historical games; this is connected with Player-Historian, which sees players of historical games as creating history. Epitext/Epitextuality a category of spatial paratextual relation offered by Genette that is not physically connected to the text and might not be authorised by the text’s creator, e.g. a free poster with a physical game. See Paratext. Ephemeral/Ephemerality fleeting; texts and paratexts that exist within a brief window of time. Horizon of Expectation from reception studies, the ephemeral window and schema by which a text is interpreted. Hypertext/Hypertextuality the retrospective connection of one text with another of a different timeframe. Intertext/Intertextuality category of transtextual relation offered by Genette; two texts existing at the same time in the same textual space, e.g. through quoting. Liminal transitional boundary or threshold; many paratexts are considered to be the liminal space between text and context as liminality is embedded within Genette’s understanding of paratexts. Metatext/Metatextuality a form of transtextuality offered by Genette that links the paratext as interpreter, or comment with the subject of commentary, i.e. a “text about a text.” Ontology/Ontological of or relating to being existence; to discuss paratexts in the classic sense is to discuss something which would not exist without a central or originating text that constitutes the reasons for the paratext’s existence. Peritext/Peritextuality a spatial category of paratextual relation offered by Genette; that which is closest spatially to the text that constitutes that text. See Paratext. Paratext Genette offers the notion that a paratext is made up of both epitexts and peritexts; it is a debated term which has had problems being applied in a digital age and outside the realm of physical book studies; common usage of paratext means, in effect, anything connected by meaning or space to a central text that is not that text in its own right.

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Glossary

Phenomonology/Phenomological the study of an object of study as it is related to it being experienced. Textual Network from Nick Couldry; the collection of peritext and epitexts that make up a unified text; this is linked inherently with phenomenology and bypasses the useful and sometimes problematic nuances of Genette’s spatial relations. Transtext/Transtextuality spanning different or multiple texts; all epitexts, peritexts, and hypertexts are implicitly transtextual, as is Couldry’s notion of the textual network. Text two competing uses: (1) the object of study, with the implicit notion that text has ontological priority over any associated paratexts; (2) written word.

Author information Iain Donald is Lecturer in Design and User Experience at Edinburgh Napier University. Iain gained his PhD in the field of History, an MSc in Information Systems and worked in the Games Industry prior to joining academia in 2010. His research examines the intersection of games, digital media and history with a focus on commemoration and memorialisation, using game design and technology to explore collective and communal memory in communities impacted by war, the veterans who fought in them, and to consider how we represent conflict in virtual worlds. Ellen Forget is a SSHRC-funded PhD candidate at the University of Toronto in the Faculty of Information and the Book History and Print Culture specialization. Ellen’s research focuses on accessible book production, braille, indie publishing, and speculative fiction genres. They are a graduate of the Master of Publishing and Editing Certificate programs at Simon Fraser University. Ellen also works as a freelance editor specializing in science fiction and fantasy as well as academic work. Alan Galey is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, crossappointed to the Department of English. He is the author of The Shakespearean Archive: Experiments in New Media from the Renaissance to Postmodernity (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and articles appearing in journals such as Games and Culture, Textual Practice, Archivaria, and The Canadian Journal of Communication. He is presently working on a book titled The Veil of Code: Studies in Born-Digital Bibliography (www.veilofcode.ca), part of a project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Alison Harvey is Associate Professor in the Communications program at Glendon College, York University. Her research and teaching focuses on issues of inclusivity and accessibility in digital culture, with an emphasis on gender and labour in digital games. She is the author of Gender, Age, and Digital Games in the Domestic Context (Routledge, 2015) and Feminist Media Studies (Polity, 2019). Her work has also appeared in a range of interdisciplinary journals, including New Media & Society, Games & Culture, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Information, Communication & Society, Social Media & Society, and Studies in Social Justice. Esther MacCallum-Stewart is Professor of Games Studies at Staffordshire University. Her work examines the ways that players understand the games they play, and how they create playful experiences from the worlds around them. She is also the Chair of Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon for Our Futures. Michael Pennington is an Associate Lecturer in Historical and Critical Studies at Bath Spa University. His PhD explored how videogames present uniquely curated expressions of historical interpretation. He is the lead-convenor of the Videogame Heritage Society. His current research focuses on the challenges of game preservation, depictions of football history, and representations of modern Japanese history in digital games. Andrew James Reid is Lecturer in Games Production at Abertay University. His research activity focuses mainly on the design, production, and evaluation of “applied games” with particular sectoral interests in education and training, cultural heritage, awareness and campaigning, and the role of games in the third sector. Through practice-based research and game analysis, Dr Reid continues to

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explore the ways in which games can be developed and used in contexts beyond pure entertainment, and understanding their growing ubiquity, boundaries, and potential in modern society. Regina Seiwald is the subject lead for Languages for All German at the Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham. Her research interests lie with video game studies as well as literary theory and narratology in English and German literature. In her PhD thesis, she researched metafiction in the postmodern British novel based on a comparative analysis of English-speaking and German-speaking theories of narratology. During her three-year post-doctoral fellowship at Birmingham City University, she studied the textuality of video games and Cold War narratives in games. She is an active member of the Historical Games Network and the Canadian Game Studies Association. E. Charlotte Stevens is Lecturer in Media and Communications at Birmingham City University, and is the author of Fanvids: Television, Women, and Home Media Re-Use (Amsterdam University Press, 2020). She has also published on videogame fan histories, 1980s television fanzines, and screen vampires. Her current research focuses on Chinese television: tomb-raiding dramas, predatory kinaesthetics of drone-camera filming, and remediation of games into television. She holds a PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of Warwick. Ed Vollans is Lecturer in Advertising within the School of Media, Communication and Sociology at the University of Leicester. His work focuses on promotional texts, and promotional contexts of contemporary entertainment media. He attained his PhD from the University of East Anglia, has worked as a Bollywood Film journalist, and has worked across the UK at a number of Institutions. Nick Webber is Associate Professor in Media, and Director of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, at Birmingham City University, UK. He is co-convenor of the Historical Games Network and his research focuses on (video)games, cultural history and identity. His recent work explores the historical practices of player and fan communities, the impact of games and virtual worlds on our understanding of the past, and the relationship between national cultural policy and video games. Esther Wright (FRHistS) is Lecturer in Digital History at Cardiff University, where she researches and teaches historical video games. She is the author of Rockstar Games and American History: Promotional Materials and the Construction of Authenticity (De Gruyter, 2022), and co-editor (with John Wills) of Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth and Violence in the Video Game West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2023). She is co-convenor of the Historical Games Network.