Player vs. Monster: The Making and Breaking of Video Games…

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An ode to the gruesome characters in the games we love to defeat—from the monsters of D&D to the mutants of The Last of Us—and what they tell us about ourselves.

Since the earliest days of video games, monsters have played pivotal roles as hazards to avoid, level bosses to defeat, or targets to destroy for extra points. But why is the figure of the monster so important in video games, and how have video games come to shape our culture’s conceptions of monstrosity? To answer these questions, Player vs. Monster explores the past half-century of monsters in video games—from the dragons of early tabletop RPGs and the pixelated aliens of Space Invaders to the malformed mutants of The Last of Us and the strange beasts of Bloodborne—and reveals the commonalities between them.

Jaroslav Švelch examines the art of monster design, spanning from aliens to zombies, and traces its influences in mythology, visual arts, popular culture, and tabletop role-playing games. At the same time, he demonstrates that video games follow the Cold War-era notion of clearly defined and calculable enemies, portraying monsters as irredeemably evil figures yet invariably vulnerable to defeat. He explains the appeal of such simplistic video game monsters, but also explores how the medium might evolve to present more nuanced depictions of monstrosity.

ASIN: B09ZRNXT8Y
Editorial: The MIT Press (February 7, 2023)
Publication date: February 7, 2023
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size: 14484 KB
Text to speech: enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Compatible
Enhanced Typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-rays: Not enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky Notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length: 225 pages
Source of page numbers ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0262047756