In an earlier post I speculated that Star Wars and the multiverse might be the future of books. This miniseries I’m creating will examine the ways in which video games offer new ways to engage with books. In this post we’ll look at two direct connections of games offering new ways to engage with a text; in future posts we’ll consider book to game adaptations, games as extensions of books and the worlds created therein, and how games offer reader interactions similar to commonplace books and marginalia.
I know everyone thinks of tablets and Kindles when they think about electronic reading, but video games have been innovating book interaction for even longer. According to Gizmodo, the first Kindle was launched by Amazon in 2007 and Apple Insider dates the iPad back to 2010. My own experience with electronic book engagement {via a video game} was in the mid-nineties and the earliest example I could find was Spectrum Computing’s 1985 arcade game based on Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. For an extra £1.45, you could even get the paperback along with the game, a demonstration of just how connected the game was to the literature (Home Computing Weekly, 1985). So, move over tablets, it’s time we take a look at how video games have adapted the reader experience.
I haven’t mentioned him yet but Robert Darnton is a renowned book historian. He created something called the “book communications circuit” that places readers, the users of books, as a key part of the lifecycle of a book. To put this in perspective, other key players in the circuit include the author, bookbinder, publisher, printer, and booksellers (Darnton, 1982). The reader is integral and it’s safe to argue that a video game is nothing without it’s player, drawing a direct connection between games and books as far as their lifecycle is concerned. The reader experience is difficult to define because it’s unique to each individual. The experience can be a lot of things from where a book is read and whether it is read aloud or silently, to the book plate claiming ownership, to the marginalia or writing in the margins of books (Lamb, 2021). Really it comes down to how an individual interacts with a text. Do you read quitely to yourself then return the book to the library or do you take notes for future reference? Both action are engagement and part of the reader experience. If you are playing a video game, there is no way to avoid interacting with the story.
Cover of the Encarta ‘95 CD ROM
As a child I was obsessed with my father’s World Book Encyclopedia collection. Encyclopedias as we know them date back to the Enlightenment which is the first time they were in book form containing as much knowledge as possible from a variety of authorities. Prior to this, an encyclopedia could be just a very smart person walking the streets and talking about what they knew (Yeo, 2007). Key to encyclopedias is the organization of knowledge and H. G. Wells went as far as to claim that “effective storage and communication of knowledge was a precondition of international peace and scientific progress” (Yeo, 2007, p. 59). Eventually there would be the alphabetical ordering of information that we are familiar with today, but maps and charts of information organization were played around with as well to tell the reader how to proceed. Diderot had strong feelings about the organization of encyclopedias and thought that “adventurous browsing could be an analogue of creative thinking that found unexpected things” (Yeo, 2007, p. 56). Hold onto this thought because it brings us to video games.
My dad would became a computer scientist and after building a computer for me, he gave me the most amazing gift a nerdy 90s kid could hope for: Encarta ‘95. This was no paper encyclopedia to read cover-to-cover, this CD ROM was meant to be explored as you clicked from topic of interest to subtopic to related topic. Best of all was the Mind Maze game included on the disk, the game was built in encouragement to explore the contents of the volume. Without the game I would have spent some time doing targeted research for school projects but with the game I spent hours testing my knowledge and learning what I did not know; reading passages and listening to sound bites. I would go through every answer even if they were wrong to learn what the wrong answers meant as well. I can imagine Diderot cheering from his grave as I absorbed information just the way I wanted.
Drawing of a very tall Alice alongside the text in Lewis Carroll’s manuscript of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (British Library, Digitised Manuscripts).
Image of a John Tenniel illustration and the creative typesetting of the mouse’s tale, reprinted in a 2000 edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll, [1865] 2000).
Whether via the original story book(s), the Disney animated film, or one of the multiple live-action adaptations, everyone knows Alice in Wonderland/Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass; or at least they’ve used a phrase like “down the rabbit hole” before. I became enamored in high school when I attempted to thwart an assignment about researching the life of an author. Instead of choosing someone who wrote serious grown-up literature like Homer or Shakespeare, I chose children’s author and mathematician Lewis Carroll/Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
The story of this book’s creation is one of creative engagement and interaction from the get-go: it began as an oral story told to a child who begged that it be written down (Lastoria, 2019). The marginalia included on Carrolls manuscript draft is reminiscent of what would become John Tenniel’s illustrations for the print runs (see image from the British Library above). Carroll’s involvement in the creation of the final books would go far beyond imagining the content and writing it down: he would supervise the interior layout of the printed book and illustrations as well as oversee the binding design, and would aid in the design of multiple versions of the story for various income levels. He would even contribute to creative typesetting techniques with the famous mouse’s tale that is both a tale and a tail visually on the page (Lastoria, 2019; Carroll, [1865] 2000, p.37). This type of engagement in a book’s creation, in addition to the nonsensical adventures of a female protagonist who rescues herself with creativity and wit was just begging for electronic adaptation.
There are a lot of Alice games out there {many with questiontionable reviews in app stores}, but I think Lewis Carroll would be delighted by Johani Paaso’s Story of the Lost Dot, a game for mobile devices, like iPads and iPhones, created in 2019 (Apple App Store). Rather than take you down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland, Paaso’s game takes readers into the text in a way that would not be possible with a physical book. Players become the period, or dot, at the end of The End in the story. Beginning back at the beginning they must roll around the rational serifs, straight legs, and counters that comprise the words of the story (Coles, 2012). Players work their way through the text by touching as many letters as possible to score points; falling off the page is a game over.
For lovers of Alice’s adventures, this game provides a new way to use the text, a level of engagement unimaginable before electronic devices. For those new to the story, the engagement is enticing and could spark the desire to learn more. For those who struggle with reading, this fun adaptation allows them to still engage and turns the text into an obstacle course that is possible to overcome.
While the debate on ereaders and electronic text is still very active, games like Encarta’s Mind Maze and Story of the Lost Dot offer levels of reader engagement that just are not possible with printed pages. With reading for pleasure an acceptable hobby today {it didn’t used to be, seriously}, it might be time to expand our understanding of the reading experience to a full leisure activity.
Citations*
British Library. (n.d.). ALICE’’S ADVENTURES UNDER GROUND: “‘A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer Day’”. The autograph manuscript, written and illustrated by “‘Lewis Carroll’” ( the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson; b. 1832, d. 1898 ) of the story afterwards rewritten and published in 1865 as “ ‘Alice’’s Adventures in Wonderland”’. https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_46700
Carroll, L. (2000). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. Signet Classic.
C.J. (1985). Reviews: Charlie and the chocolate factory. Home Computing Weekly #114, Special Week #4.
Coles. S. (2012). The anatomy of type: A graphic guide to 100 typefaces. Harper Design.
Darnton, R. (1982). What is the history of books? Daedalus. (3)111, pp. 65-83.
Lamb, A. (2021). The book as reader experience. Course reader for S681: The Book - 1450+ at IUPUI.
Lastoria, A. (2019). Lewis Carroll, art director: Recovering the design and production rationales for Victorian editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Book History #22, pp. 196-225.
Yeo, R. (2007). Lost encyclopedias: Before and after the Enlightenment. Book History #10, pp. 47-68.
*Some citations for web resources are linked directly in the post (in blue).