Game Studies Summit: Games and Literature

Towards the end of the 1980s digital games developed their so-called “Hollywood envy” (Chris Crawford) and started to strive for near-photorealistic imagery. Prior to that games, particularly the successful genre of text adventures, had primarily oriented themselves by literature’s example. On the other hand, literary studies explore playful elements of narrative texts, for example in the context of the possible worlds theory and the discourse on fictionality.

The Game Studies Summit will illuminate the relationship between games and literature under intermedial or rather transmedial considerations. We will reflect on the influence of literature on digital games and on the reverse influence of analog as well as digital games on literary production. Finally, we will ask how the historically grown interdependence of the two media is changed and deepened in their creative collaboration under the requirements of digital, i.e., transmedial production – meaning, how games and literature (can) profit from each other artistically and economically.

Contact Program Managers:
Gundolf S. Freyermuth:gsf(at)colognegamelab.de
Hanns Christian Schmidt:schmidt.c(at)uni-koeln.de
Benjamin Beil