espen aarseth

Literature scholars eager to understand gaming have made early inroads. Markku Eskelinen sets up serious checkpoints.

J. Yellowlees Douglas adds more titles to Eskelinen's catalog of limnal games.

Stuart Moulthrop complicates the idea of self-contained games.

Chris Crawford adduces the algorithms of games against dramatic conventions.

First Person, second section: What is Ludology? Editors Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin see a disciplinary shift away from ill-advised analogies toward analyses of the gaming situation itself.

Stuart Moulthrop (re)mediates the interpretation (narrativists) vs. configuration (ludologists) debate by going macropolitical.

"Playing with play," John Cayley sets ludology on an even playing field with literature, but without literary scholarship's over-reliance on 'story,' 'closure,' and 'pleasure.'

Luc Herman reviews the collection, Cyberspace Textuality by Marie-Laure Ryan, and warns against the creation of a false dichotomy between the digital and traditional print text.