Call for Abstracts: Video Game Monsters Edited Collection
MultiPlay is delighted to announce that we are working on a new edited collection – Video Game Monsters: A Compendium
Monsters have been the foundation of the video game industry. They’ve been the bosses to beat, the enemies to avoid, the NPCs we’ve sometimes forged unlikely bonds with. Monsters are the true avatar of video games, and there has been an increase of work and attention in this area, such as Player v.s Monster (Svelch, 2023). MultiPlay feels the time is right for a special collection examining monsters in all of their video game forms, creating a thorough compendium of the monstrous history of video games. As Martin points out, video games studies has barely began to reckon with monsters (2023, np)
MultiPlay is currently seeking abstracts for chapters for this collection. As ever, we have a list of prompts below but please feel free to send all your monstrous ideas to us.
Ideas for your consideration:
- What makes a monster (boss)?
- Monsters: friends, foe, the future of video games?
- The overlooked werewolf
- The avatar-player monster
- The evolving history of video game monsters
- Modern monsters
- Monstrous borders and environments
- Arcade monsters
- Bowser as a cultural icon
Please send 200 word abstracts and 100 word author bios to networkmultiplay@gmail.com by 26 July 2024.
References
Martin, P. (2023) ‘Review: Player vs. Monster: The Making and Breaking of Video Game Monstrosity’, in Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research, vol. 23, no. 3, December, [Online] Available from: https://gamestudies.org/2303/articles/martin_review_svelch [Accessed 5th January 2024]
Švelch, J. (2023) Player Vs. Monster: The Making and Breaking of Video Game Monstrosity. Cambridge: The MIT Press.