| Taking its cue from practices of reading texts in literary and cultural studies, this book considers the computer game as a new and emerging mode of contemporary storytelling. In a carefully organized study, Barry Atkins discusses questions of narrative and realism in four of the most significant games of the last decade: Tomb Raider, Half-Life, Close Combat and SimCity. This is a work for both the student of contemporary culture and those game-players who are interested in how computer games tell their stories.
The origins of this project can be located in an experience that could not have been further distanced, at the time, from the academic practice and teaching of cultural and literary criticism which usually fills my days: the successful conclusion of Close Combat II: A Bridge Too Far (1997), a strategic wargame set in the Second World War. In addition to the usual feelings of unease at the amount of potentially productive research time that I had spent in solitary ‘communication’ with the intriguingly named, and necessarily limited, ‘artificial intelligence’ that was produced at the intersection between the game’s designers and my even then lowly Pentium 166 MHz processor, I had a growing feeling of disquiet at what I had been engaged in as the final clip of film rolled. Black and white archive footage of a ceremony at which bearded and exhausted Wehrmacht soldiers received decorations in the field was accompanied with a stentorian voice-over delivered in a thick Hollywood-German accent. Apparently, my leadership qualities had earned me the personal thanks of Berlin. In destroying the bridgehead at Arnhem, and stalling the Allied armoured advance well before it reached Nijmegen, I had been responsible, potentially, for altering the course of the war in the West. Bully for me. |
