Games and Literature published!

We are very happy to announce that our edited volume Games and Literature, co-edited by Dîlan Canan Çakir, Anna Kinder, and myself, has just been published in open access with Wallstein Verlag (DOI: https://doi.org/10.46500/83536017). It appears as volume 23 in the series DLAschriften / DLAwritings, and the full PDF is freely available.

The volume grew out of an international conference at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach and asks a deceptively simple question: how do computer games relate to literature? Bringing together literary scholars, game researchers, and representatives of collecting institutions, the book explores the intersections of literary studies and digital games — examining games as narrative media, as cultural artefacts, and as objects of scholarly preservation and archiving. With 92 illustrations across 354 pages, it contributes to ongoing debates on how cultural artefacts evolve through digital media.

I’m personally very happy that the volume also includes my own chapter, “The Care Motif in Life is Strange.” The book is published entirely in English and is available as a free open-access download here: https://www.wallstein-open-library.de/9783835360174-games-and-literature.html

Contents

• Dîlan Canan Çakir, Anna Kinder, Sebastian Möring — Games & Literature: Introduction

I. Interplay Between Books and Games

• Bruno Dupont, Hélène Sellier — Visual References to Game Culture in Gamer Literature Book Covers: Two Studies
• Astrid Ensslin, Maud Ceuterick — “I Was the Person Who Wasn’t There”: Absence-in-Presence and Empathy in Readers of Literary VR Fiction
• Dipannita Ghosh — Big Worlds on Small Screens: A Look at Interactive Digital Narratives Playable on Mobile Applications
• Manoj Jayakumar — Bildung and Gothic as Playful Perspectives in Spec Ops: The Line and The Wanderer: Frankenstein’s Creature
• Niklas Nylund — From Fantasy Classic to Vernacular Video Game: LORD as a Participatory Adaptation of Tolkien’s Legendarium
• Anna Seidel — Staging the Right to the City and its Impossibility: A Comparative Analysis of Spatial Strategies in Literary Texts and Video Games about War
• Stefan Köhler — Speaking Entire Worlds Into Existence: Generative AI as (Co-)Author(?) in Game Development
• Christian A. Bachmann — The Garden of Folding Paths: Interactive Toy Books and Digital Games
• Lena Falkenhagen — Quartet of Games Culture: The Garden of Forking Paths
• Sebastian Möring — The Care Motif in Life Is Strange: True Colors

II. Video Games as Cultural Assets

• Andreas Lange — The Digital Transformation of the Cultural Heritage Sector
• Vera Piontkowitz — Video Games as an Archive for Intangible Cultural Heritage
• Yu Hao, Jiadong Qiang — Re-materialising Immortality: Intermaterial Relations in Cultivation Game Design

III. Sustainable Archiving of Games

• René Bauer, Beat Suter — Archiving Digital Interactive Games: From the Perspective of Game Design
• Alex Holz, Heinz Werner Kramski — To Preserve and Provide: Games at the German Literature Archive Marbach, an Interim Report
• Csongor Baranyai — Save the Trees! Or: The Importance of Preserving the Process
• Gyoonho Kong — Emulating the Experience: Walter Benjamin’s Constellated Archiving of Video Games
• Mario Donick — Retro-Romanticism or Preservation of Cultural Memory? Forms and Significance of Archiving and Providing Access to Old Digital Games
• Joy DuBose — Video Game Cataloging: A Never-Ending Struggle of Technology Growth
• Eugen Pfister, Adrian Demleitner — Why We Thought It Was a Good Idea to Build a DACH Games Database

IV. Diverse Analytical Methods Relevant to the Study of Games

• Hanns Christian Schmidt — How to Read a Game: Game Literacy in the Distortion Mirror of Participatory Culture
• Mário Gomes — Cave and Code: A Poetological Reading of “Colossal Cave Adventure”
• Stefan Höltgen — Reading the Subtexts of Games: Philological Perspectives on Game Source Codes as a Contribution to Software and Knowledge Preservation

Citation

Çakir, D. C., Kinder, A., & Möring, S. (Eds.). (2026). Games and Literature. Wallstein. https://doi.org/10.46500/83536017

[Deutsche Version]

Wir freuen uns sehr, dass unser Sammelband Games and Literature — herausgegeben von Dîlan Canan Çakir, Anna Kinder und mir — nun im Open Access beim Wallstein Verlag erschienen ist (DOI: https://doi.org/10.46500/83536017). Der Band erscheint als Band 23 der Reihe DLAschriften / DLAwritings; das vollständige PDF steht kostenlos zur Verfügung.

Der Band ist aus einer internationalen Konferenz am Deutschen Literaturarchiv Marbach hervorgegangen und untersucht die Schnittstellen von Literaturwissenschaft und digitalen Spielen. Literaturwissenschaftler:innen, Spieleforscher:innen und Vertreter:innen sammelnder Einrichtungen beleuchten Games u. a. als narrative Medien, als kulturelle Artefakte und als Objekte wissenschaftlicher Bewahrung und Archivierung. Der Band erscheint vollständig in englischer Sprache und enthält auch mein eigenes Kapitel “The Care Motif in Life is Strange.”

Kostenloser Open-Access-Download: https://www.wallstein-open-library.de/9783835360174-games-and-literature.html

Inhalt

• Dîlan Canan Çakir, Anna Kinder, Sebastian Möring — Games & Literature: Introduction

I. Interplay Between Books and Games

• Bruno Dupont, Hélène Sellier — Visual References to Game Culture in Gamer Literature Book Covers: Two Studies
• Astrid Ensslin, Maud Ceuterick — “I Was the Person Who Wasn’t There”: Absence-in-Presence and Empathy in Readers of Literary VR Fiction
• Dipannita Ghosh — Big Worlds on Small Screens: A Look at Interactive Digital Narratives Playable on Mobile Applications
• Manoj Jayakumar — Bildung and Gothic as Playful Perspectives in Spec Ops: The Line and The Wanderer: Frankenstein’s Creature
• Niklas Nylund — From Fantasy Classic to Vernacular Video Game: LORD as a Participatory Adaptation of Tolkien’s Legendarium
• Anna Seidel — Staging the Right to the City and its Impossibility: A Comparative Analysis of Spatial Strategies in Literary Texts and Video Games about War
• Stefan Köhler — Speaking Entire Worlds Into Existence: Generative AI as (Co-)Author(?) in Game Development
• Christian A. Bachmann — The Garden of Folding Paths: Interactive Toy Books and Digital Games
• Lena Falkenhagen — Quartet of Games Culture: The Garden of Forking Paths
• Sebastian Möring — The Care Motif in Life Is Strange: True Colors

II. Video Games as Cultural Assets

• Andreas Lange — The Digital Transformation of the Cultural Heritage Sector
• Vera Piontkowitz — Video Games as an Archive for Intangible Cultural Heritage
• Yu Hao, Jiadong Qiang — Re-materialising Immortality: Intermaterial Relations in Cultivation Game Design

III. Sustainable Archiving of Games

• René Bauer, Beat Suter — Archiving Digital Interactive Games: From the Perspective of Game Design
• Alex Holz, Heinz Werner Kramski — To Preserve and Provide: Games at the German Literature Archive Marbach, an Interim Report
• Csongor Baranyai — Save the Trees! Or: The Importance of Preserving the Process
• Gyoonho Kong — Emulating the Experience: Walter Benjamin’s Constellated Archiving of Video Games
• Mario Donick — Retro-Romanticism or Preservation of Cultural Memory? Forms and Significance of Archiving and Providing Access to Old Digital Games
• Joy DuBose — Video Game Cataloging: A Never-Ending Struggle of Technology Growth
• Eugen Pfister, Adrian Demleitner — Why We Thought It Was a Good Idea to Build a DACH Games Database

IV. Diverse Analytical Methods Relevant to the Study of Games

• Hanns Christian Schmidt — How to Read a Game: Game Literacy in the Distortion Mirror of Participatory Culture
• Mário Gomes — Cave and Code: A Poetological Reading of “Colossal Cave Adventure”
• Stefan Höltgen — Reading the Subtexts of Games: Philological Perspectives on Game Source Codes as a Contribution to Software and Knowledge Preservation

Literaturangabe

Çakir, D. C., Kinder, A., & Möring, S. (Hrsg.). (2026). Games and Literature. Wallstein. https://doi.org/10.46500/83536017