本书是一次游戏学的历险，第一次用全新、全面的方法对游戏进行了彻底解剖。是一部直面游戏本身，用游戏学方法来研究“游戏的本性”及其核心结构的着作。 本书分为两大部分。第一部分针对游戏、电子游戏、艺术中的游戏等实际案例与问题，从人类原典型的三大游戏原典出发，对游戏的基本结构、游戏的逻辑、游戏的语法、游戏的媒介及其对玩家的影响进行了深入分析，并将这些问题联系到更大的人文社会学科进行了具体研究。 第二部分则对玩与游戏、玩家与自由，与游戏中的人所面临的理论问题、哲学问题进行了彻底地分析，并对长期以来艺术行业、游戏行业中出现的各种概念混乱与问题进行了剖析与澄清。 本书试图建立一套完整的游戏学方法论。通过游戏学的方法，游戏将可以提升到艺术层面进行研究，艺术则可以化约为游戏而得到阐释。以此，最终通过对游戏本性的研究，我们将面对人类最根本的创造力问题。

Over a mere three decades, the video game has become the entertainment medium of choice for millions of people, who now spend more time in the interactive virtual world of games than they do in watching movies or even television. The release of new games or game-playing equipment, such as the PlayStation 2, generates great excitement and even buying frenzies. Yet, until now, this giant on the popular culture landscape has received little in-depth study or analysis. In this book, Mark J. P. Wolf and four other scholars conduct the first thorough investigation of the video game as an artistic medium. The book begins with an attempt to define what is meant by the term ""video game"" and the variety of modes of production within the medium. It moves on to a brief history of the video game, then applies the tools of film studies to look at the medium in terms of the formal aspects of space, time, narrative, and genre. The book also considers the video game as a cultural entity, object of museum curation, and repository of psychological archetypes. It closes with a list of video game research resources for further study.