Search results
This book is dedicated to the study of computer games in terms of the stories they tell and the manner of their telling. It applies practices of reading texts from literary and cultural studies to consider the computer game as an emerging mode of contemporary storytelling. The book contains detailed discussion of narrative and realism in four of the most significant games of the last decade: ‘Tomb Raider’, ‘Half-Life’, ‘Close Combat’, and ‘Sim City’. It recognises the excitement and pleasure that has made the computer game such a massive global phenomenon.
2 Fantastically real: reading Tomb Raider Tomb Raider [inc. Tomb Raider (1996), Tomb Raider II: The Dagger of Xian (1997), Tomb Raider III: The Adventures of Lara Croft (1998), Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (1999), Tomb Raider: Chronicles (2000)] Third-person action/adventure. The player controls the actions (running, jumping, walking, climbing, crawling, shooting etc.) of Lara Croft, usually from a third-person perspective. Progress through the game involves frequent jumping of the protagonist from platform to platform. Jump distances are often precise, and
evasion theme, with protagonists attempting escape from both human and alien opponents after a scientific experiment goes badly wrong. Occasional excursions are made into an alien dimension. The three versions of Half-Life offer three varying perspectives on events: those of Gordon Freeman, a scientist involved in the experiment, Adrian Shepherd, a member of a military team sent in response to events, and Barney Calhoun, a security guard. Any notion that game-fictions such as Half-Life and Tomb Raider might point, however vaguely, towards the eventual development of an
game-fictions driven forwards by their move from moment to moment of extreme violence might chap5.p65 111 13/02/03, 14:23 112 More than a game also come as something of a surprise. Forms of conflict and confrontation have always played a major part in the structuring of both games and popular fictions, after all. We know where we are, in story terms, where there is a loaded gun available and a slavering alien or shambling zombie in front of us. How we ‘should’, or how we ‘can’, read such a plot fragment is obvious. Where Tomb Raider and Half-Life had obvious
Matters of structural organisation inevitably contribute to meaning, and what might appear to have been an odd or even eccentric ordering of the chapters of this volume would probably benefit from some belated explanation. Faced with the task of looking in detail at four specific examples, the simple question of the order in which to place the individual readings comes to the fore. To fall chap6.p65 147 13/02/03, 14:24 148 More than a game back on the standard of chronological sequence (sequels aside, something like SimCity, Tomb Raider, Close Combat, Half
, of conflict. Of all the game-fictions selected as primary examples in this study, Close Combat is the least likely to be an instantly recognisable brand name even to those who spend their leisure time staring at a computer monitor. Its relative popularity as a games franchise might be indicated by the longevity of a series that had seen five episodes released by the year 2000, but it has hardly become a household name in the same way that Half-Life, Tomb Raider, or SimCity have. Its profile even among other real-time strategy games, itself an extremely popular sub
might become, rather than address the mundanity of the object we actually have access to. This is not that potentially oxymoronic thing, an ‘untheorised reading’. Rather, it is a reading that draws on narratological and structuralist thinking and criticism for the most part, and tries to leave its more speculative digressions until the closing chapter. Those who wish to read chap1.p65 10 13/02/03, 14:00 The computer game as fictional form 11 about Tomb Raider, Half-Life, Close Combat, or SimCity are advised to skip ahead to the beginning of Chapter 2 and read on
digital action heroine of the internationally successful CD-ROM adventure game Tomb Raider (Eidos Interactive). This three-dimensional pixel girl comes with her own romantic legend: the fallen daughter of an English aristocrat, she becomes a fighter in Tibet; she is always un- attainable, her only romance is with the player whose joystick steers her through her virtual adventure
husband. Her face has sadness; she seems diffident but strong’ (Diary 23 May 2002). Meeting the actors and the ‘small cheerful crew’ generated a buzz of excitement. Daniel Craig, last seen as Lara Croft's rival in Tomb Raider and four years before his incarnation as James Bond, eventually agreed to play May's lover. Cathryn Bradshaw was cast as Bobby's sister Paula and Peter Vaughan as Toots. Four-year-old Kier was an extra, though eventually his scene was cut. Nine-year-old Carlo and Sachin shared the part of Paula's son in different scenes, even though as Kureishi
textual interpretation. Mr Corbeck, an archaeologist who accompanied Trelawney in his excavation of Tera’s tomb, explains that the hieroglyphics outside the tomb were written by priests to warn any tomb raiders of the danger of disturbing the ‘Nameless One’ (p. 107), who has been deserted by the gods because the gods had been insulted. Corbeck was able to decipher the other hieroglyphics, which identified