Special Section: Paperless text: Digital Storytelling in Latin America and Spain (1976-2016): Letters, Text, and Dialogue in Contemporary Latin American Videogame Design

This article examines the use of literary and narrative elements including letters, text, and dialogue in recent works from Latin American videogame designers. Beginning with a review of scholarship on the so-called “crisis in written expression,” the essay then turns to an examination of the relationship between textual and ludic modes of analysis and their relative usefulness for game studies. Bringing this scholarship to bear on real-world examples of video games from Latin America, the article then offers an examination of games categorized as Horror, Science Fiction, Neomedievalism. Based on an examination of these examples, this essay ultimately argues that since the relationship between games and narrative continues to evolve in previously unforeseen ways, textual analysis remains both insufficient and indispensable to game studies.