Ringbearers

Ringbearers" collects together essays by established and leading figures within Game Studies, each focused on different aspects of the Massively Multiplayer Online game "The Lord of the Rings Online". The collection is essential reading for those looking to better understand the adaptation into online game form of Tolkien's fictional world, as well as those seeking to comprehend the design and uses of online games. This makes "Ringbearers" an ideal textbook for students and scholars of interactive fictional media. The authors played the game extensively, yet they each come to it with different questions. Some essays focus on what players do with and in the game, whether that means asking about the opportunities provided for role-play or asking how the knowledge that fans bring to the game informs their experience of it. Others focus on the design of the game: for example the handling of narrative and its temporal dimensions, the articulation of core themes into ludic form, or the representational and aural strategies used by the game.