Hollywood Gamers: Digital Convergence in the Film and Video Game Industries

For years, major film studios have licensed products related to their most popular films; video game spin-offs have become an important part of these licensing practices. Where blockbuster films are concerned, the video game release has become the rule rather than the exception. In Hollywood Gamers, Robert Alan Brookey explores the business conditions and technological developments that have facilitated the convergence of the film and video game industries. Brookey treats video games as rhetorical texts and critically examines several games to determine how specific industrial conditions are manifest in game design. Among the games (and films) discussed are Lord of the Rings, The Godfather, Spider-Man, and Iron Man.

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.