“Reading Video Games like Literature”

I’m headed back to Sweden in just a few days to deliver the opening keynote at the Gotland Game Conference, “Reading Video Games like Literature.” Here’s the gist:

Whole books have been written about Hamlet’s famous six words, “To be or not to be,” yet not one page has been published on the implications of Mario’s even more economic proclamation, “It’s-a me, Mario!” That literature is an art form worthy of analysis is a fact we take for granted; we teach novels in school, we memorize poetry, we sit in book clubs and try to figure out what it all means. But what would happen if we turned that lens of “close reading” onto video games

Needless to say, I’m super excited to be preaching the combination of close reading and gaming. Somewhere between Mimesis and Plants vs. Zombies I’m hoping to pull off an entire academic revolution.