Ed Vollans

‘Not Game Footage’, ‘Coming soon’, ‘only on selected platforms’. These phrases often found within paratextual promotion serve to create a distinction between the (forthcoming) text, and the (present) paratext. Yet as media scholars elsewhere have noted, product experience is multifaceted, and can begin prior to, and separate from the text itself (Chin & Gray; 2001, Heath 1977). Our awareness of texts, including videogames, is heavily mediated, curated and framed by a promotional and paratextual surround – as Consalvo noted, gameplay ‘does not exist in a vacuum’ (2007, 176). Elsewhere, Couldry (2000) has called for definitions of the text to extend beyond the boundaries of finite individual elements, into that which audiences consider to be a discrete unified whole. This throws the onus of textual definition onto the perceived relationship between different elements and offering up the possibility of considering the game text as an assemblage of textual experiences, echoing the work of T.L Taylor (2009). Yet despite developments to the paratextual ontology debate in other fields, game studies scholars still frequently affirm a binary between text and paratext. By focusing on game trailers, this paper explores the ways in which paratexts present, and represent the game itself. It draws on the work of Genette (1987), Johnston (2009), Gray (2010), Vollans (2014; 2017), and Barker (2017) to synthesise a framework grounded within examples that better allow us to see how these trailers function at an intertextual level, and offers audience-centred consideration of textual experiences. Ultimately, this paper argues that game paratexts are as much a part of the game as the act of play, and that just as games are an assemblage, so too are they an assemblage of textual experiences. It resultantly makes the case for a dedicated shift in games studies to explore the textual assemblage rather than paratextual divide.