Doing Game Studies: A Multi-Method Approach to the Study of Textuality, Interactivity and Narrative Space

The emergence of game studies is provoking a struggle between adapted older disciplines in the effort to forge a new, discrete field of study. This paper reports on a two-year project titled Textuality in Video Games 1 and the range of research techniques that were employed in order to begin answering questions about role-play, pleasure, agency and narrative. The paper outlines how narratology and film theory, social psychology and social semiotics were deployed separately and in various combinations to analyse computer role-play games, the interaction between player and text, and the cultural work of player and fan communities.