Game On, Hollywood!

The 14 essays in Game on, Hollywood! take on several points of game and film intersection. They look at storylines, aesthetics, mechanics, and production. The book is about adaptation (video game to film, film to video game), but it is even more about narrative. The essays draw attention to the ways and possibilities of telling a story. They consider differences and similarities across modes of storytelling (showing, telling, interacting), explore the consequences of time, place and ideology, and propose critical approaches to the vastness of narrative in the age of multimedia storytelling.

The video games and film texts discussed include The Warriors (1979 film; 2005 video game), GoldenEye (1995 film), GoldenEye 007 (1997 and 2011 video games), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2000–2004, television show), Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds (2003 video game), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003 video game; 2010 film), the Star Wars franchise empire (1977 on), Afro Samurai (2009 video game), and Disney’s Epic Mickey (2010 video game).

Gretchen Papazian is an associate professor of English at Central Michigan University. She has published essays on food and 19th–century American literature, anorexia in film, representations of parents in children’s picture books, and narrative structures of video games.

Joseph Michael Sommers is an assistant professor of English at Central Michigan University. He is the coauthor of two McFarland books and has published essays on such topics as Judy Blume, Spider-Man, and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Edited by Gretchen Papazian and Joseph Michael Sommers

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 232
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, filmography, index
Copyright Date: 2013
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7114-0
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0185-4
Imprint: McFarland

Preface and Acknowledgments 1
Introduction: Manifest Narrativity—Video Games, Movies, and Art and Adaptation
Gretchen Papazian and Joseph Michael Sommers 8

Part I. The Rules of Engagement: Watching, Playing and Other Narrative Processes
1. Playing the Buffyverse, Playing the Gothic: Genre, Gender and Cross-Media Interactivity in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds        
Katrin Althans 20
2. Dead Eye: The Spectacle of Torture Porn in Dead Rising        
Deborah Mellamphy 35
3. Playing (with) the Western: Classical Hollywood Genres in Modern Video Games        
Jason W. Buel 47
4. Game-to-Film Adaptation and How Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Negotiates the Difference Between Player and Audience        
Ben S. Bunting, Jr. 58
5. Translation Between Forms of Interactivity: How to Build the Better Adaptation        
Marcus Schulzke 70

Part II. The Terms of the Tale: Time, Place and Other Ideologically Constructed Conditions
6. Playing (in) the City: The Warriors and Images of Urban Disorder        
Aubrey Anable 86
7. When Did Dante Become a Scythe-Wielding Badass? Modeling Adaption and Shifting Gender Convention in Dante’s Inferno        
Denise A. Ayo 101
8. Some of This Happened to the Other Fellow: Remaking GoldenEye 007 with Daniel Craig        
David McGowan 115
9. Zombie Stripper Geishas in the New Global Economy: Racism and Sexism in Video Games        
Stewart Chang 129

Part III. Stories, Stories Everywhere (and Nowhere Just the Same): Transmedia Texts
10. “My name is Alan Wake. I’m a writer”: Crafting Narrative ­Complexity in the Age of Transmedia Storytelling        
Michael Fuchs 144
11. Millions of Voices: Star Wars, Digital Games, Fictional Worlds and Franchise Canon        
Felan Parker 156
12. The Hype Man as Racial Stereotype, Parody and Ghost in Afro Samurai        
TreaAndrea M. Russworm 169
13. Epic Nostalgia: Narrative Play and Transmedia Storytelling in Disney Epic Mickey        
Lisa K. Dusenberry 183

List of Selected Critical Sources, Films and Video Games 197
About the Contributors 214
Index 217

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