Editorial: Games, Books and Gamebooks

Abstract

Games and books, understood in the broadest possible sense, interrelate in numerous different ways. Books and games can take each other’s form; they inspire and augment, expand and specify, contextualize and transform one another. We can ‘read’ games, and we can ‘play’ books. This article is an editorial to a Special Issue that discusses game-book hybrids, gamebooks, as complex entities worthy of their own attention. The focus is specifically on the intersections of games and books (instead of, for instance, games and literature, or games and narratives) as these offer a site for a fruitful cross-disciplinary work. The editorial briefly surveys the field and lays out the basics of games and books as interdisciplinary sites of research. It then introduces a tentative typology for mapping out the interconnectedness of games and books. Finally, the editorial introduces and briefly contextualizes the articles in the Special Issue.