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Dragon's Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity

MJ Clarke

Perhaps no arcade game is so nostalgically remembered, yet so critically bemoaned, as Dragon’s Lair. A bit of a technological neanderthal, the game implemented a unique combination of videogame components and home video replay, garnering great popular media and user attention in a moment of contracted economic returns and popularity for the videogame arcade business. But subsequently, writers and critics have cast the game aside as a cautionary tale of bad game design. In Dragon’s Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity, MJ Clarke revives Dragon’s Lair as a fascinating textual experiment interlaced with powerful industrial strategies, institutional discourse, and textual desires around key notions of interactivity and fantasy. Constructing a multifaceted historical study of the game that considers its design, its makers, its recording medium, and its in-game imagery, Clarke suggests that the more appropriate metaphor for Dragon’s Lair is not that of a neanderthal, but a socio-technical network, infusing and advancing debates about the production and consumption of new screen technologies. Far from being the gaming failure posited by evolutionary-minded lay critics, Clarke argues, Dragon’s Lair offers a fascinating provisional solution to still-unsettled questions about screen media.

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Lexington Books
Pages: 150 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-7936-3603-4 • Hardback • June 2022 • $100.00 • (£77.00)
978-1-7936-3604-1 • eBook • June 2022 • $45.00 • (£35.00)
Subjects: Social Science / Media Studies, Games & Activities / Video & Electronic, Computers / Digital Media / Video & Animation

MJ Clarke is associate professor in TV, film, and media studies at California State University, Los Angeles.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Dragon's Lair: The Hardware

Chapter 2: Dragon's Lair: The Business

Chapter 3: Dragon's Lair: The Disc

Chapter 4: Dragon's Lair: The Fantasy

References

About the Author

Vibrant prose, detailed research, and a holistic methodology make Clarke’s Dragon’s Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity a fascinating look at a game that became an iconic pinnacle of both a technology and a genre of video games, laserdisc games, and led to a discussion of the very nature of interactivity. For a tour of Dragon’s Lair, one cannot find a better guide.


— Mark J. P. Wolf, Concordia University Wisconsin


Dragon's Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity

Cover Image
Hardback
eBook
Summary
Summary
  • Perhaps no arcade game is so nostalgically remembered, yet so critically bemoaned, as Dragon’s Lair. A bit of a technological neanderthal, the game implemented a unique combination of videogame components and home video replay, garnering great popular media and user attention in a moment of contracted economic returns and popularity for the videogame arcade business. But subsequently, writers and critics have cast the game aside as a cautionary tale of bad game design. In Dragon’s Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity, MJ Clarke revives Dragon’s Lair as a fascinating textual experiment interlaced with powerful industrial strategies, institutional discourse, and textual desires around key notions of interactivity and fantasy. Constructing a multifaceted historical study of the game that considers its design, its makers, its recording medium, and its in-game imagery, Clarke suggests that the more appropriate metaphor for Dragon’s Lair is not that of a neanderthal, but a socio-technical network, infusing and advancing debates about the production and consumption of new screen technologies. Far from being the gaming failure posited by evolutionary-minded lay critics, Clarke argues, Dragon’s Lair offers a fascinating provisional solution to still-unsettled questions about screen media.

Details
Details
  • Lexington Books
    Pages: 150 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9
    978-1-7936-3603-4 • Hardback • June 2022 • $100.00 • (£77.00)
    978-1-7936-3604-1 • eBook • June 2022 • $45.00 • (£35.00)
    Subjects: Social Science / Media Studies, Games & Activities / Video & Electronic, Computers / Digital Media / Video & Animation
Author
Author
  • MJ Clarke is associate professor in TV, film, and media studies at California State University, Los Angeles.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Acknowledgments

    Introduction

    Chapter 1: Dragon's Lair: The Hardware

    Chapter 2: Dragon's Lair: The Business

    Chapter 3: Dragon's Lair: The Disc

    Chapter 4: Dragon's Lair: The Fantasy

    References

    About the Author

Reviews
Reviews
  • Vibrant prose, detailed research, and a holistic methodology make Clarke’s Dragon’s Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity a fascinating look at a game that became an iconic pinnacle of both a technology and a genre of video games, laserdisc games, and led to a discussion of the very nature of interactivity. For a tour of Dragon’s Lair, one cannot find a better guide.


    — Mark J. P. Wolf, Concordia University Wisconsin


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