The Co-Creative Evolution of Video Game Instructions

This book describes how video game manuals transformed from rudimentary instructions to multimodal tutorials, and finally to an entire industry of player-created instructional wikis and videos, using current theories of technical communication. This book describes how video game manuals transformed from rudimentary instructions to multimodal tutorials, and finally to an entire industry of player-created instructional wikis and videos, using current theories of technical communication. It engages theories of tactical and strategic communication, design thinking, and co-creation to chart how video games progressed from simple paper manuals to an often lucrative player-created industry. Offering a historical overview, it investigates instructional content in video games of each decade, beginning in the 1960s, that are representative of the inexorable move toward co-creative practices in teaching players how to play video games.