Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

Literary gaming is a fascinating universe where literature and games, both traditional and digital, combine to create a new way of experiencing reading not only as a form of an almost obligatory skill and craft, but also as a unique form of art. Furthermore, this intersection is of growing scholarly interest, as the use of games in literary studies can be beneficial in ways yet to be explored. 

Within this framework, this paper discusses how designing and playing a literary game in a specific academic environment, such as the "LiteRArt" club of the Department of Audio & Visual Arts (Ionian University), can change our long-standing perception of the role that art and reading clubs play in enhancing our understanding of not only literary works, but all forms of art. 

In particular, the paper presents the example of the literary game "Kafka's Labyrinth", created specifically for the needs of the "Kafka Year 2024". It is conceived as an analogue, hand-held, portable literary card game, consisting for the time being of forty (40) cards, with the future aim of creating its digital version next year. The paper explores the above question through the case of the literary game based on the corpus of works by Franz Kafka.

Through this literary game we aim to explore how we engage with literature not only as members of the club but also as members (students) of an academic community, how we develop an interest in and love of reading serious literature in a literature-based gamified metaverse, how we develop mental connections with all works of art through reading, how we rediscover so-called serious literary works by 'gaming' our reading practices and routines, how we enhance our reading skills and consequently our reading experience by creating and designing an interactive environment, that of 'literary gaming'. The paper highlights the evolving relationship between gaming and literature, together with the evolving role of arts and reading clubs operating in academia.

Data will be collected through in-depth interviews with 16 respondents in order to explore the multifaceted nature of literary gaming. The research participants are students from Ionian University who are interviewed about their understanding of the questions posed and their thoughts on the influence of gaming in reading literature. The research team analyses the data using thematic analysis, which involves transcribing, coding and interpreting the collected data. The findings aim to show that literary games can motivate players to read more or to seek greater interaction with literary works in their lives. It will also show that imagination and curiosity are two innate human qualities that can be maintained and developed through such informal educational environments.