Game On, Hollywood! ─ Essays on the Intersection of Video Games and Cinema

The 14 essays in Game on, Hollywood take on several points of game and film intersection. They look at story lines, aesthetics, mechanics, and production. The book is about adaptation (video game to film, film to video game) but it is even more about narrative. The essays draw attention to the ways, workings and possibilities of telling a story in the present moment. They consider differences and similarities across modes of storytelling (showing, telling, interacting), explore the consequences of time, place and ideological underpinnings, and propose critical approaches to the vastness of narrative in the age of multiple media storytelling. Ideas of genre and discussions of art play through the essays, highlighting other issues of adaptation and media convergence. The video games and film texts discussed include The Warriors (1979 film; 2005 video game), GoldenEye (1995 film), i (1997 and 2011 video games), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2000-2004, television show), Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds (2003 video game), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003 video game; 2010 film), the Star Wars franchise empire (1977 on), Afro Samurai (2009 video game), and Disney's Epic Mickey (2010 video game).

Gretchen Papazian is an associate professor of English at Central Michigan University. She has published essays on food and 19th–century American literature, anorexia in film, representations of parents in children’s picture books, and narrative structures of video games. Joseph Michael Sommers is an assistant professor of English at Central Michigan University. He is the coauthor of two McFarland books and has published essays on such topics as Judy Blume, Spider-Man, and The Chronicles of Narnia.