Semioclast

In this installation of DiGRA’s Hardcore series, “Un-Situated Play? Textual Analysis and Digital Games,” Diane Carr takes up a textual studies approach to digital games:

The shortcomings associated with analysis that focuses ‘on the game itself’ are widely and casually acknowledged, yet ‘textual analysis’ as a methodology remains rarely or broadly defined in Game Studies literature. Sometimes broad definitions are appropriate, but when the topic under discussion is a methodology (or its limitations) something more specific is probably called for. I don’t think that we can satisfactorily critique textual analysis just by listing the things that it does not do, and I suggest that defining the textual analysis of games should involve making reference to theories of text. Otherwise, why call it ‘textual’ analysis? In fact, various versions of textual analysis could be proposed, depending on the theory of text that’s being evoked in each case.

The whole piece is well worth a read. I think that many of us who study games from within English departments take for granted that games can be read as “texts.” Carr’s piece argues (as I have recently) that textual analysis has its problems when applied to the analysis of digital games, but that we should look towards textual analysis as a model that can be integrated into game studies.

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