The Medium of the Video Game

by Mark J.P. Wolf, Ralph H. Baer (Foreword)

Over a mere three decades, the video game became the entertainment medium of choice for millions of people, who now spend more time in the interactive virtual world of games than they do in watching movies or even television. The release of new games or game-playing equipment, such as the PlayStation 2, generates great excitement and even buying frenzies. Yet, until now, this giant on the popular culture landscape has received little in-depth study or analysis. In this book, Mark J. P. Wolf and four other scholars conduct the first thorough investigation of the video game as an artistic medium. The book begins with an attempt to define what is meant by the term "video game" and the variety of modes of production within the medium. It moves on to a brief history of the video game, then applies the tools of film studies to look at the medium in terms of the formal aspects of space, time, narrative, and genre. The book also considers the video game as a cultural entity, object of museum curation, and repository of psychological archetypes. It closes with a list of video game research resources for further study.

Genres: Games, Video Games, Gaming, Design, Nonfiction, Theory

223 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2002

About the author

Mark J. P. Wolf is Professor in the Communication Department at Concordia University Wisconsin.

Reviews

[Oliver Tierney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wolf's work fails to dive into much analysis. However, it does provide a somewhat interesting insight into the relationship between video games and other forms of media. The book contains a rather thorough segment on the specific mechanics of video games and game engines. It seemed like it would be useful to someone studying the topic, but these extend beyond my focus of study so I won't comment there. The use of the term "surrogate character" to describe played characters in video games is one that I thought gave the meaning of the term "player-character" but in a more academic way and is definitely a term that I will be borrowing in future.

Good for citation, not terribly interesting overall.

[Timothy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a disappointment. The chapters by Wolf (who edited the volume and proceeded to write half of it) are uninspired but occasionally useful: he likes to define and list things, which does make him a good source for throwaway citations if you're writing a paper. He doesn't engage with much of the critical theory on videogames that you would expect to encounter, although he provides some helpful links with film theory. This book was published in 2001, but I suspect that he did most of his research in the early 90s and haphazardly updated it for conclusion here. This is a decent book to browse, but probably not to read.

I won't say much about the chapters not authored by Wolf: they are uniformly cute but insignificant. They felt very much like last-minute submissions; I wonder if the publisher insisted that the book needed to be bulked up.