Drawing across Games Studies, Childhood Studies, and Children’s Literature Studies, this book redirects critical conversations away from questions of whether videogames are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for child-players and towards questions of how videogames produce childhood as a set of social roles and rules in contemporary Western contexts.

Chapter 1: Dreaming the Myth Onwards.- Chapter 2: A Survey of Child-Characters in Contemporary Videogames.- Chapter 3: The Child as a Social Construct.- Chapter 4: Child Killers and Killer Children.- Chapter 5: Child Heroes.- Chapter 6: Plushies, Dollies, and Action Figurines.- Chapter 7: The Kid in the Fridge.

The Child in Videogames is remarkable. Its ground-breaking approach to scholarship on videogames and, more broadly, textual representations of children stands to transform how both are studied. Its brilliant analysis of the childly and childness across videogames designed for both younger and mature players will shape thinking—both academic and industry, I believe—for years to come.  --Professor Gretchen Papazian, Central Michigan University, USA Drawing across Games Studies, Childhood Studies, and Children’s Literature Studies, this book redirects critical conversations away from questions of whether videogames are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for child-players and towards questions of how videogames produce childhood as a set of social roles and rules in contemporary Western contexts. It does so by cataloguing and critiquing representations of childhood across a corpus of over 500 contemporary videogames. While child-players are frequently the topic of academic debate – particularly within the fields of psychology, behavioural science, and education research - child-characters in videogames are all but invisible. This book's aim is to make these child-characters not only visible, but legible, and to demonstrate that coded kids in virtual worlds can shed light on how and why the boundaries between adults and children are shifting. Dr. Emma Reay is a Senior Lecturer in Emerging Media at the University of Southampton. 

"The Child in Videogames is remarkable. Its ground-breaking approach to scholarship on videogames and, more broadly, textual representations of children stands to transform how both are studied. Its brilliant analysis of the childly and childness across videogames designed for both younger and mature players will shape thinking—both academic and industry, I believe—for years to come." (--Professor Gretchen Papazian, Central Michigan University, USA)“Reay has effortlessly pulled together a large-scale survey, sophisticated textual analyses, and novel auto-ethnographic approaches to both expose and address a critical blind spot of both game studies and children’s literature studies. Equal parts insightful, provocative, and humorous, The Child in Videogames is a masterclass of how to conduct interdisciplinary work, and a true intervention in debates around games and representation. This is a book that will be of great value to anyone interested in taking the critical and cultural implications of videogames seriously.” (--Dr. Brendan Keogh, Queensland University)“Reay's definitive and delightful book bursts with creative approaches for understanding and reframing classic concepts ingame studies—agency, morality, heroism, nostalgia—by focusing on the way videogames construct "the child." Through heranalysis of hundreds of games, she identifies 7 archetypical tropes, which the subsequent chapters illuminate with widerangingreference to relevant interdisciplinary theory. A brilliant and thought-provoking book.” (--Dr. Melissa Kagen, WorcestorPolytechnic Institute)

Builds a bridge between Games Studies and Children’s Literature Studies Catalogues and critiques child characters in contemporary videogames Demonstrates that videogames are key arenas in which definitions of childhood are being created & contested