Hollywood Gamers

Brookey (communication, Northern Illinois Univ.) offers an expansive book that does much more than its modest title promises. Applying, extending, and interrogating ideas from Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (CH, Jun'07, 44-5465), he looks at the economic, aesthetic, industrial, rhetorical, technological, and narrative implications related to the synergistic practices of film and video-game industries. In doing so, he provides a comprehensive transdisciplinary history of ideas, performing a necessary critical convergence in order to encompass the complexity of his topic. Focusing on the Lord of the Rings and Godfather franchises, and also using the Marvel and Disney corporations as touchstones, Brookey successfully harnesses media and cultural studies approaches to create an evolutionary, next-generation game-studies methodology--one that carefully seeks to understand the processes and products of this industrial cross-pollination. Among the important ideas this book explores: the connection between game interactivity and incorporation and consumption practices; author/auteur tensions and reconfigurations within studio systems; and the relationship between intertextuality, fan cultures, 'glocalization,' and cultural imperialism. But this small sample does not do justice to this book's true scope. And Brookey uses game summaries and detailed media and franchise histories to contextualize his ideas. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels. -- ChoiceJ. A. Saklofske, Acadia University, June 2011 Highly recommended. All levels. -Choice, June 2011 In touring the half-world of film-games, Brookey shows how brands are cross-marketed and why the production of multimedia brands has failed to live up to the talk. -Edward Castronova, Indiana University With his clear, concise, and enthusiastic writing, Robert Alan Brookey provides an informative and timely contribution to the new and emerging fields of game studies and media industry studies... Hollywood Gamers proves to be a rich source for scholars interested in the various levels of parallels and interdependence that goes on between the film and vieo game industries. -Convergence