Close Reading a Close Reading

Revisiting Mystery House in Mechanisms

Abstract

Mystery Houseis a game that was released in 1980 for the Apple II computer. It was the first text adventure game known to be illustrated and was the game design debut of celebrated game designer Roberta Williams. The landmark 2008 book Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imaginationperformed a close reading of a Mystery Housefloppy disk, and in this paper I turn a critical eye to this previous work. My close reading of Mystery House’s earlier close reading reveals a number of problems, which I use as a vehicle to highlight a notable and important technical gap in game studies scholarship, and argue for an inclusive approach to advancing the field.