Game Time: Understanding Temporality in Video Games

Pausing, slowing, rewinding, replaying, reactivating, reanimating . . . Has manipulating video game timelines altered our experience of time? “Compelling.” —Choice

Video game scholar Christopher Hanson argues that the mechanics of time in digital games have presented a new model for understanding time in contemporary culture, a concept he calls “game time.” Multivalent in nature, game time is characterized by apparent malleability, navigability, and possibility while simultaneously being highly restrictive and requiring replay and repetition. When compared to analog tabletop games, sports, film, television, and other forms of media, Hanson demonstrates, the temporal structures of digital games provide unique opportunities to engage players with liveness, causality, potentiality, and lived experience that create new ways of experiencing time.

Features comparative analysis of key video games titles—including Braid, Quantum Break, Battle of the Bulge, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Passage, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, Lifeline, and A Dark Room.

“The text is well-researched, and the introduction is an excellent, focused overview of video game studies.” —Choice

© 2018 Indiana University Press (Ebook): 9780253032836

Release date

Ebook: 8 March 2018