Digital Games and the American Gothic: Investigating Gothic Game Grammar

Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2014) Digital Games and the American Gothic: Investigating Gothic Game Grammar. In: A companion to American Gothic. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 503-516. ISBN 9780470671870

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Abstract / Summary

This essay shows that the American Gothic has a powerful presence in digital games and that it has become a part of contemporary game grammar. The enquiry is geared around answering the question: what is the effect of translating the American Gothic into digital game form? To this end, there is close investigation into the ways in which the formal, participatory characteristics of games shape the ways in which the American Gothic appears. Close textual analysis is made of two specific examples of American Gothic in games, that of Alan Wake and The Secret World. In addition to analysis of their ludic dimensions, their principle themes, intertextual borrowing and means of delivering story, there is also consideration of the way that these games produce certain styles of Gothic reading, in the case of The Secret World, what will be termed a conspiracy-style hermeneutic. The essay demonstrates that in the case of digital games, the American Gothic is defined by the use of textual tropes such as setting and theme rather than in terms of national authorship. It concludes that digital games are shaping the American Gothic into new forms and provides new ways of engaging with it.

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