Throw your books away

People, stand atop your desks! Throw your books aside! Why? Because Dr Souvik Mukerjee, from the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent, tells you to. He says that video games can at last be read as literary texts.

To investigate a video game's storytelling potential, this guy analysed a number of genres, from FPSs to adventure games. These ranged from the first Wolfenstien to recent games like Fallout 3. He explored how the deep involvement in a video game narrative might match or even better the narratives of older mediums, such as books and film. He even believes that research into gameplay can help our understanding of narrative across all mediums:

'Though often unfairly dismissed as toys for children, computer games are far more complex than that. Most gamers, adults and children alike, play these games because of the stories they tell. So, whilst many focus on the violence in video games, the narrative potential of these games should also be explored.'

Dr Mukherjee also suggests that some books can even offer a close experience to that of the video game: 'I believe it has always been the case that games can be read and books can be played. For example, the 1969 novel by John Fowles, 'The French Lieutenant’s Woman,' offers multiple endings and therefore prefigures the format of video games.'

Okay, he does sound like a bit of a crackpot, but it's worth pointing out that he's been proven right in the past. The recent announcement of Dante's Inferno backs up his prediction, made many years ago, that 'Dante's Inferno' could be read as a video game. Something to get thinking about ain't it?