Hollywood Gamers

Video game design and the video gaming community share the limelight in this study of the convergence of video games and movies such as Lord of the Rings, The Godfather, Kingdom Hearts, Spiderman, and Ironman. Robert Alan Brookey addresses video games as both narrative text and lived practice to argue that video games based on movies use a rhetoric in which game play involves the players in the construction of narrative messages that support corporate interests. Rather than escaping the influences of traditional media or passively receiving such messages, players are incorporated into the political economy of the video game or film franchise.