First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (review)

First Person is not (only) a book in the traditional or narrow sense of the word: It is part of a multimedia research program that combines a hard-copy publication form (the volume I shall review here) and a web site "in progress" that defines itself as a "remediation" of the book. This web site is not run by the publisher of the book, although MIT Press now has solid experience in this type of bi-medial enterprise, but by the e-journal electronic book review <http://www.electronicbookreview.com/>, where one will find part of the editorial material of the book, color versions of the printed black-and-white illustrations and a whole series of debates, controversies and discussions that were already opened, albeit in very inchoate way, in the different sections of First Person. It is important to take into account this double structure when evaluating the form and content of First Person, first, because most of the dialectical and dialogical opportunities of the book only reach real maturity in combination with the web site, and second, because the structure of the book itself is in many ways an anticipation of the argumentative and scholarly network constructed by ebr.

What strikes the reader at the very first contact with the book is its wonderful balance of closure and openness. Closure, indeed, since the attempt to define and organize a new field (roughly speaking, the intersection of games and stories, of new media theory and narrative theory) is organized here around eight topics or issues, all of them obeying the same format. We find an editorial introduction of one or two pages presenting the history of the research in the field, its most important scholars and literatures, and the essential current debates; then three, or occasionally four, often very personalized essays reflecting upon the major interrogations of the field; finally a number of responses, generally one or two per essay, some of them already hinting at the ongoing discussions on the ebr site. This exemplary composition, reinforced by a very clear layout, helps readers not only to find their way in a book that might have become a labyrinth but also to familiarize themselves with a kind of intellectual map of the emerging field. One could, of course, always discuss the relevance of the structure adopted by the editors, but it would be unfair not to thank them for their distinction of the following eight fields: "Cyberdrama," a section exploring in detail the implications of the "Aristotelian" approach of, for instance, Janet Murray, marked by the importance of the notions of plot, character and catharsis; "Ludology," which makes a claim for the absolute medium-specificity of gaming; "Critical Simulation," with more politically or cultural studies-oriented texts on issues of representation; "Game Theories," inevitably focusing on themes such as interactivity, but also, more surprisingly, paying great attention to temporality; "Hypertexts & Interactives," reactivating discussions on literature on-line or literature on and for the Web; "The Pixel/The Line," a chapter mainly devoted to matters of design and visual/visible literature; "Beyond Chat," a section gathering studies on the visual representation of on-line community conversations, on strategies of collaboration and on voice chips; and finally "New Readings," emphasizing the role of the interactive reader and repurposing questions of readerresponse criticism.

Closure, however, is balanced by openness, thanks to the presence of systematic debate, although the critical aspects of many responses and replies are rather judicious: Some readers might have preferred harsher discussions in some sections of the book. This openness is due also from the rightly eclectic choice of collaborators—of course, readers will remark that one of their fetish authors is missing, but in general the range of contributors reflects nicely the status quaestionis. This openness is thanks finally to the many cross-sectional links and discussions— and this is, of course, to the credit of the editors, who have managed...