Overview
- Builds a bridge between Games Studies and Children’s Literature Studies
- Catalogues and critiques child characters in contemporary videogames
- Demonstrates that videogames are key arenas in which definitions of childhood are being created & contested
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
About this book
Drawing across Games Studies, Childhood Studies, and Children’s Literature Studies, this book redirects critical conversations away from questions of whether videogames are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for child-players and towards questions of how videogames produce childhood as a set of social roles and rules in contemporary Western contexts. It does so by cataloguing and critiquing representations of childhood across a corpus of over 500 contemporary videogames. While child-players are frequently the topic of academic debate – particularly within the fields of psychology, behavioural science, and education research - child-characters in videogames are all but invisible. This book's aim is to make these child-characters not only visible, but legible, and to demonstrate that coded kids in virtual worlds can shed light on how and why the boundaries between adults and children are shifting.
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
Table of contents (8 chapters)
Reviews
"The Child in Videogames is remarkable. Its ground-breaking approach to scholarship on videogames and, more broadly, textual representations of children stands to transform how both are studied. Its brilliant analysis of the childly and childness across videogames designed for both younger and mature players will shape thinking—both academic and industry, I believe—for years to come." (--Professor Gretchen Papazian, Central Michigan University, USA)
“Reay has effortlessly pulled together a large-scale survey, sophisticated textual analyses, and novel auto-ethnographic approaches to both expose and address a critical blind spot of both game studies and children’s literature studies. Equal parts insightful, provocative, and humorous, The Child in Videogames is a masterclass of how to conduct interdisciplinary work, and a true intervention in debates around games and representation. This is a book that will be of great value to anyone interested in taking the critical and cultural implications of videogames seriously.” (--Dr. Brendan Keogh, Queensland University)
“Reay's definitive and delightful book bursts with creative approaches for understanding and reframing classic concepts in
game studies—agency, morality, heroism, nostalgia—by focusing on the way videogames construct "the child." Through her
analysis of hundreds of games, she identifies 7 archetypical tropes, which the subsequent chapters illuminate with wideranging
reference to relevant interdisciplinary theory. A brilliant and thought-provoking book.” (--Dr. Melissa Kagen, Worcestor
Polytechnic Institute)
“Reay has effortlessly pulled together a large-scale survey, sophisticated textual analyses, and novel auto-ethnographic approaches to both expose and address a critical blind spot of both game studies and children’s literature studies. Equal parts insightful, provocative, and humorous, The Child in Videogames is a masterclass of how to conduct interdisciplinary work, and a true intervention in debates around games and representation. This is a book that will be of great value to anyone interested in taking the critical and cultural implications of videogames seriously.” (--Dr. Brendan Keogh, Queensland University)
“Reay's definitive and delightful book bursts with creative approaches for understanding and reframing classic concepts in
game studies—agency, morality, heroism, nostalgia—by focusing on the way videogames construct "the child." Through her
analysis of hundreds of games, she identifies 7 archetypical tropes, which the subsequent chapters illuminate with wideranging
reference to relevant interdisciplinary theory. A brilliant and thought-provoking book.” (--Dr. Melissa Kagen, Worcestor
Polytechnic Institute)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dr. Emma Reay is a Senior Lecturer in Emerging Media at the University of Southampton.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Child in Videogames
Book Subtitle: From the Meek, to the Mighty, to the Monstrous
Authors: Emma Reay
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42371-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-42370-3Published: 17 October 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-42373-4Due: 17 November 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-42371-0Published: 16 October 2023
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 222
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 3 illustrations in colour
Topics: Popular Culture , Media and Communication, Children's Literature, Youth Culture, Digital/New Media