[TEST] Hamlet on the Holodeck – Janet Murray (1997)

An instant classic the moment video games became the focus of academic inquiry. Murray picks up a shotgun and blasts you with a bunch of terms so that inevitably some of it strikes you. Somehow awkwardly disconnected from a larger field of media theory, this book considers computers as “the child of print culture.” (8) Wow. Never mind that since the invention of the printing press the dominant mode of communication uses moving images (i.e. television, cinema). Somehow Murray seems unaware of any of this, and insists on analyzing video games as text. “Critics have condemned the too-easy stimulation of electronic games as a threat to the more reflective delights of print culture.” (22) Sure. And Murray condemns video games as a glitzy form of “dinner theatre” as if to say that every media technological invention since 1455 is nothing but a text-creating device.

Murray manages to talk about video games in such terms that you wonder why she never heard of some other obvious literature. Almost halfway through she references Winnicott’s ideas of the “transitional object” (100) as a way to describe our relationship to computers. She must not have heard of Roger Silverstone (1994) who deployed the exact same theory to explain the role of television in everyday life. In any case, it is odd that a book that is considered fundamental to understanding video games simply steps over their visual dimension and its place in our lives.

Although I do think this book is a good introduction to understanding some of the parallels between print culture and the way in which computers reorganize it, it must be read with the understanding that it is somewhat myopic. There’s more to life than text.