Video games have become increasingly interesting for various fields and target audiences — but regarding academic research, the foundling of literary studies still faces many difficulties. Yet, video games can offer information on the respective cultural context and illustrate novel methods of storytelling.

Besides answering the questions what kinds of stories are being told in video games, how they are received, and which narrative devices are being employed, this book deals with the issue of analysing these narratives from a literary studies’ perspective. Why does the story of Resident Evil 4 seem familiar without ever having played the game? What exactly makes the otherwise cheerful Final Fantasy 12 somewhat eerie and how does ABZÛ tell a story about a lost civilization without uttering a word? In general, how do video games tell us more and how can we analyse this?