Computer Games on the Playground: Ludic Systems, Dramatised Narrative and Virtual Embodiment

Abstract

This chapter focuses specifically on the form of computer games and its relation to the games of the playground. The Opies were unable to study this connection, of course, though a little more recent work has begun to touch on it. Curtis, for example, notes how the narratives and structures of specific computer games were beginning to appear in boys’ imaginative play; and how these games form part of the shared ‘lore’ which migrates across and between groups of children:

It was not only football which surmounted the school-class barrier. One group of boys played imaginative games based on computer games: Metal Gear Solid, Predator, Alien Resurrection and Tunnel Number One.

(Curtis, 2001: 69)