ABSTRACT
Video games tend to open with a menu. This is, in essence, an invitation to play. It is from here that the game begins as a player chooses to ‘start’ a new game, ‘load’ a save state, review game ‘controls,’ change their gameplay ‘settings,’ or perhaps ‘connect’ with friends and strangers online. This chapter serves as a primer for the collection of chapters that are to follow. The scholarly field of video games is well beyond the untested, pre-alpha stages of development. An obvious disciplinary starting point for such work is the fields of law and humanities and cultural legal studies, which engage in legal and jurisprudential analyses of everything from literature to art, film to comics. The interactivity of video games and virtual reality unlocks the potential to play with law – an orientation which highlights the culturally constructed nature of law.
