Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Videogame Forms and Contexts

by Geoff King, Tanya Krzywinska

This book focuses on key formal aspects of video games and the experiences and pleasures offered by the activities they require of the player. A wide range of games are considered, from first-person shooters to third-person action-adventures, strategy, sports-related and role-playing games. Lively and accessible in style, this book is written for both an academic readership and the wider audience of gamers and those interested in popular culture.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Geoff King is lecturer in film and television Studies at Brunel University, London.

Reviews

[Mjhancock · Rating 3 out of 5]

King and Krzywinska's book examines games and gameplay within wider cultural contexts. If that sounds like a rather vague description, well, the book's purpose is somewhat vague as well. Luckily, the individual chapters are a little more clear. Chapter one looks at gameplay and context in general, considering first what makes a game and then how cultural notions of genre and story come into play, and concluding with a discussion on gameplay and psychological flow. Chapter two is on the player experience of space, both in terms of how the game encourages exploration and how it signifies presence. The authors make a useful distinction here between psychological immersion and perceptual immersion (ie. flow of the game vs. the feeling that you're physically in the gamespace). The third chapter is on realism and spectacle, with another useful distinction between visual realism (how much the game looks like the real world) and functional realism (how the game's mechanics imitate the real world). The final chapter is on political and ideological influences of games, including visual issues (setting, player character, gender and race) and gameplay (ideology of games in general, subject interpollation, and violence), with a brief conclusion on the game industry that leans very heavily on Dyer-Witheford, Kline, and De Pueter's Digital Play.

As I said, the book introduces a lot of really useful ideas. But it's a little too much breadth at times and not enough depth--they use a lot of game examples, but it feels more like they're using the games the authors happen to familiar with rather than the best examples for their points. Additionally, the book could use more subheadings within chapters, and more outlining in general--it moves from topic to topic very quickly sometimes, often without a clear indication of where the argument is going, or how what's at hand fits with what's passed. A good book, but it has some large organizational issues.