Whole books have been written about Hamlet\u2019s famous six words, \u201cTo be or not to be,\u201d yet not one page has been published on the implications of Mario\u2019s even more economic proclamation, \u201cIt\u2019s-a me, Mario!\u201d That literature is an art form worthy of analysis is a fact we take for granted; we teach novels in school, we memorize poetry, we sit in book clubs and try to figure out what it all means. But what would happen if we turned that lens of \u201cclose reading\u201d onto video games?<\/p>\n
A different kind of art form, games may not always be as serious as Hamlet\u2019s brooding over life and death — but they have just as much offer the scholar (or even the average player) who takes them seriously. Katamari\u2019s roll becomes a metaphor, a character\u2019s CGI rendering becomes a symbol, and enormous unexplored worlds of interpretation open up to us in games we may have played again and again but we have never really read<\/em>.<\/p>\n Note: the Mario as Hamlet picture was created by Benjamin Burger<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Opening KeynoteFRIDAY, MAY 27TH, 10:00 Whole books have been written about Hamlet\u2019s famous six words, \u201cTo be or not to be,\u201d yet not one page has been published on the implications of Mario\u2019s even more economic proclamation, \u201cIt\u2019s-a me, Mario!\u201d That literature is an art form worthy of analysis is a fact we take for … Read more<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sessions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotlandgameconference.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotlandgameconference.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotlandgameconference.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotlandgameconference.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotlandgameconference.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gotlandgameconference.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":892,"href":"https:\/\/gotlandgameconference.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions\/892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotlandgameconference.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotlandgameconference.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotlandgameconference.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}