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Palgrave Macmillan

Video Games and Comedy

  • Book
  • © 2022

Overview

Editors:
  1. Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone

    1. University of Malta, Msida, Malta

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Tomasz Z. Majkowski

    1. Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  3. Jaroslav Švelch

    1. Department of Media Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czechia

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Provides the first book length study on the intersection of comedy and games studies
  • Brings together comedy studies, game studies, media studies, philosophy, anthropology, and folkloristics
  • Can be used in teaching a wide range of classes at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Comedy (PSCOM)

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Table of contents (18 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xx
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Ludo-Comedic Consonance: An Introduction to Video Games and Comedy

    • Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone, Tomasz Z. Majkowski, Jaroslav Švelch
    Pages 1-31

  3. Scaffolding and How to Fall Off It: Theories and Concepts

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 33-33
      Download chapter PDF

    2. Comedy and the Dual Position of the Player

      • Nele Van de Mosselaer
      Pages 35-52

    3. Press X to Punch(line): The Design and Cognition of Interactive Gags

      • Dooley Murphy
      Pages 53-70

    4. The Rubber Chicken’s Ergodicity: On Puzzle Punchlines in The Secret of Monkey Island

      • Daniel Heßler
      Pages 71-91

    5. On Nintendo’s Visual Humour: Slapstick Cinema and Comic Theatre in Super Smash Bros

      • Manuel Garin
      Pages 93-112

    6. Benign Trials, Vexing Violations: Reading Humour in Puzzle Games

      • Wyatt Moss-Wellington, Paul Martin
      Pages 113-130

  4. Clowning Around: Contexts, Cultures, and Communities

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 131-131
      Download chapter PDF

    2. The Illuminatus Space Game: From an April Fools’ Joke to Digital Cultural Heritage

      • Petri Saarikoski, Antti Lindfors, Jaakko Suominen, Markku Reunanen
      Pages 133-151

    3. Red Comrades Save the Galaxy: Early Russian Adventure Games and the Tradition of Anecdote

      • Alesha Serada
      Pages 153-172

    4. “Sorry, You Had Won”: Satirical French Digital Games Responding to National Sociopolitical Crisis (1984–1986)

      • Filip Jankowski
      Pages 173-190

    5. Making Fun of Tetris: Humour in Parodies of a Computer Game Classic

      • Sebastian Möring
      Pages 191-213

    6. Ridiculing the Player: Live-Action Visualisations of Game Experience in YouTube Parody Videos as an Ambivalent Strategy of Self-Fashioning

      • Agata Zarzycka
      Pages 215-232

    7. Emergence and Ephemerality of Humour During Live Coverage of Large-Scale eSports Events

      • Mateusz Felczak
      Pages 233-250Open Access
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Keywords

About this book

Video Games and Comedy is the first edited volume to explore the intersections between comedy and video games. This pioneering book collects chapters from a diverse group of scholars, covering a wide range of approaches and examining the relationship between video games, humour, and comedy from many different angles. The first section of the book includes chapters that engage with theories of comedy and humour, adapting them to the specifics of the video game medium. The second section explores humour in the contexts, cultures, and communities that give rise to and spring up around video games, focusing on phenomena such as in-jokes, player self-reflexivity, and player/fan creativity. The third section offers case studies of individual games or game series, exploring the use of irony as well as sexual and racial humour in video games.

Chapter “Emergence and Ephemerality of Humour During Live Coverage of Large-Scale eSports Events” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Editors and Affiliations

  • University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone

  • Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

    Tomasz Z. Majkowski

  • Department of Media Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czechia

    Jaroslav Švelch

About the editors

Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone is Visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of Malta, and a Research Fellow with the University of Kent, UK. She has written extensively on comedy, including comedy in video games. 

Tomasz Z. Majkowski is Associate Professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, where he teaches and researches games, the carnivalesque and popular culture among other areas. 

Jaroslav Švelch is Assistant Professor of media studies at Charles University, Prague, the Czech Republic. A media scholar and linguist by training, his research focuses on game history, humour in video games, and video game monsters. He is the author of Gaming the Iron Curtain (2018), a history of computer gaming in 1980s Czechoslovakia. 


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Video Games and Comedy

  • Editors: Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone, Tomasz Z. Majkowski, Jaroslav Švelch

  • Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Comedy

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88338-6

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-88337-9Published: 29 March 2022

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-88340-9Published: 30 March 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-88338-6Published: 26 March 2022

  • Series ISSN: 2731-4332

  • Series E-ISSN: 2731-4340

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XX, 362

  • Number of Illustrations: 3 b/w illustrations, 37 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Comedy Studies, Popular Culture, Media and Communication

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