Resumen de Enthusiast books and academic books: on ludoliteracy and the transference of its skills through the medium of print

Víctor Navarro Remesal

• Books about video games have become common in the Catalan and Spanish ambits. In this text, I present a first approach at them, distinguishing non-scholar enthusiast books and academic books, through the texts in their back covers, flaps and websites, and compare the main ideas in both types. It is my view that books are being used for negotiating their role of video games in culture, and the tensions between fans and scholars are made visible in them. My hypothesis, which could be tested in a further research, is that enthusiast books are celebrations of love for fans seeking cultural legitimacy, whereas academic books are attempts to make sense of games as culture and as in culture. I defend that the medium of print is a very valuable means not only to gather critical data on video games culture and the perspectives of fans, but also to transfer ludoliteracy skills to society.