Making Sense of Video Games: A textual Analysis of Tomb Raider II

This dissertation is a textual analysis of the hard- profile computer game Tomb Raider II. After reviewing and discussing the literature related to computer games and associated action movies, I shall outline Dowling's social activity theory and apply it exploratively to a range of computer game texts. I shall then apply the language of description more thoroughly to a sample of Tomb Raider II and a related walkthrough in order to analyse how they construct author and reader positions and to describe the nature and mechanisms of the distribution of practices between these positions. My work also includes an account of my personal engagement with the game. Finally, in my conclusion I shall give suggestions for further research.