A special issue of the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds has come out titled Games, Books and Gamebooks. To paraphrase the editorial the focus of the articles within the special issue is to explore the intersections of games and books (and not as usual games and literature or games and narratives) as sites for interesting cross-disciplinary work.
The special issue was co-edited by Utrecht University researcher René Glas together with Souvik Mukherjee, Hanna-Riikka Roine and Jaakko Stenros. Their editorial, which can be read via open access on the journal’s website, does not just provide an overview of the interdisciplinary foundations on which thinking about the hybrid nature of game books is possible. It also produces a basic typology to distinguish between books, games and related phenomena on the axes of book/game, and reading/playing – see figure below.
For more information about the various articles within the special issue see the table of contents. As an example to show just one of the perspectives on games and books which the special issue offers, below is the abstract from the contribution by Glas, titled “Playing with the gamebook: The Final Hours interactive storybooks as playful paratexts”.
This article discusses an interactive storybook series titled The Final Hours which provides behind-the-scenes perspectives on the creation of certain video games. The focus is on how the specific interactive, playful elements which make up the reading – or playing – of these books provide forms of engagement which deviate from more traditional paper-based books on the making-of games. The analysis is situated within ongoing discussions about the role of paratextuality in and around games, in this case focusing on the question how these storybooks give shape to players’ understanding of games and game production through playful interactions with the making-of games. To account for the medium specificity of this type of interactive books, the paratextual analysis also connects to studies on paper-based pop-up or ‘movable’ books, a genre often associated with play, providing not just insights into paratextual functions but also highly ludic form.
