Poetics and Ludology: Literary Research vs. Studies of Games

Abstract

One of the current types of discourse produced by the representatives of various academic disciplines in Poland and abroad serves the purpose of isolating from among the many branches of the humanities a separate interdisciplinary field of research on the games and plays present in our culture. The need for forming a separate domain of studies focused on such an extensive range of interests and competences was postulated first by the researchers of audiovisual programs who noticed the semiotic and communicative nature of computer games, which inspired them to resort to analytical procedures and concepts of literary origin too. The purpose of the article is to show the transformations in the evolution of poetics which have made it a discipline perfectly applicable to the study of the textual and “literary” aspects of multimedia games and, in consequence, has resulted in its status of one of the essential components of the methodological tools of the fledgling academic discipline in question.