The Paratexts of Video Game Production

The Paratexts of Video Game Production: Playing Behind the Scenes critically examines how the making-of media - from documentaries to concept art - shapes our understanding of videogame development and history, revealing their powerful role in constructing meaning beyond the games themselves.

This book engages with the notion of paratextual play to show how making-of material has increasingly manifested within and even as games themselves, directly affecting the gaming experiences. Through the in-depth analysis of historical and contemporary making-of paratexts of games, the author analyses and demonstrates how the game industry shapes and reshapes itself by remaking and commodifying its own history, inviting players to play with and within it. The chapters discuss multiple types of paratexts such as game magazine, previews and reviews, ‘making-of’ books, special editions and remakes and remasters with a wide array of examples ranging from the earliest days of videogames to current times. Readers will gain critical insights into the meaning-making capacity of these often-overlooked materials and learn to recognize how they shape interpretations of what and why we play.

An essential contribution to the study of paratextuality as one of the key frameworks for studying computer games, this book will appeal to game studies scholars, media and cultural studies researchers, and advanced students exploring videogame production, industry practices, and paratextual theory.