The library level: Archives in videogames

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Videogames in the general cultural imagination tend to paint a mural of action-packed adventure and grand escapism. Upcoming games sit comfortably among trailers at the cinema, advertising bold hijinks in warzones, alien biomes, or fantasy realms. However, it is rare for any of these trailers to promise a trip to the library. Nonetheless, in some of the biggest releases of the last twenty years, it's grown ever more common for your virtual voyages to lead you through an archive or two.

It makes sense for libraries to be interested in videogames. As Elkins & Miller write for the Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, "games have an established place in libraries" with "77% of [American] public libraries (as of 2009) supporting games and gaming of some sort in their collections and programs." But why are videogames so intrigued by libraries?

To explore this, we can examine how videogames are seeing these spaces, how they are driving players through them, the activities they present for gameplay, and what it is about that bookish flavour that can have it crop up as easily in superhero horror as fantasy adventure, mythological retelling, or cosy farming simulator.

Shelving codes

In 2006, aristocratic archaeologist Lara Croft leapt into her seventh adventure with 'Tomb Raider: Legend'. Typically, these games include Lara investigating a lost temple for a mythic artefact, being confronted by an evil corporate rival, then shooting her way through henchmen, monsters, and the occasional dinosaur, deciphering puzzles along the way.

Regarding Lara's place among videogame archaeologists, Matthew Winter notes that such characters are often "the gatekeepers of enigmatic wisdom passed down by the ancients." While Lara breaks many precious things accidentally, she does preserve the key relics at her stately home of Croft Manor. It is here that she conducts her research, and suitably, here that we find our first library. Croft Manor is practically an escape room of antique puzzles, and the library is one of the only rooms that demands a second visit.

As a franchise, 'Tomb Raider' is fascinated by the communication of past and present: thwarting dusty traps with modern technology, fighting ancient monsters with shiny new guns. Fittingly, the ornate split-level Victorian library of Croft Manor has been upgraded with high-tech computers (for 2006), showing the shift towards digitisation in archive methods.

Franchise director Noah Hughes has described how "our aim was to create environments that invited curiosity and allowed Lara's intellect to shine," and the level design of Croft Manor's library certainly does so. Most visibly, an array of floating collectible medals encourages you to browse around. One such medal lurks behind a fake bookcase, opened by pressing an old dagger into its display stand. This lovely vignette promises that engaging with the library will bring a reward, while also hinting at the complex puzzle to follow.

Back downstairs, you will spy a damaged wall. Naturally, Lara must blast this to rubble with her pistols. Behind it? A book trolley. Why it was sealed in there, we never learn. However, if the player steers this trolley around the library, they will find it neatly weighs down one of two inset platforms. The second trolley is usefully stashed twelve feet up in the wall, but your grappling hook will wrench down. This thoughtful repurposing of library equipment entertainingly reframes Lara Croft, action hero, into a well-armed librarian, and lets the player use combat skills for cultural research.

The two floor panels open a secret door to a dusty side passage. Here, a riddle on a carved panel leads you on to the pool room, where another riddle sends you right back to the bookshelves. Lara must sharpen her library skills to reshelve a selection of books that have shuffled out of place. In satisfyingly archival fashion, this must be done in proper order. Alas, not the Dewey Decimal system, but according to the riddle's colour clues matching the books' spines: a light vocabulary test of the words cerulean, topaz, viridian, and crimson. At last, an entire wall of the library slides away to reveal a giant sculpted tablet featuring one of the last of Croft Manor's riddles.

This puzzle continues for a few more stages, but the key takeaway is 'Tomb Raider's regard of the library as a site which naturally invites an engaged, interactive curiosity. Fittingly, the acquisition of knowledge only leads to more mystery, but the player is left with a deepened sense of library materials and operations. 'Tomb Raider' has repurposed the equipment, the stock, the shelving, even the flooring, regarding libraries as sites of curiosity rewarded and secrets revealed.

The caped curator

While 'Tomb Raider: Legend' limited its violence to objects in your way, Rocksteady's 'Batman: Arkham Asylum' stages the library as a battleground. A groundbreaking release in 2009, 'Arkham Asylum' brought the Dark Knight his darkest videogame adventure yet: a horror-themed action-adventure gilded with ghoulish mysteries and carnivalesque villains.

Upon escorting the Joker to the secure psychiatric prison of Arkham Asylum, Batman finds himself caught in a trap. The Joker has paid off staff to help the criminals overrun the prison, the island locks down, and Batman must do a lifetime's crimefighting again in one night. However, a doctor in the Joker's employ reneges and hides her research somewhere in the degrading gothic Arkham Mansion. So, Batman goes to the library...

'Arkham Asylum' splits its gameplay between free-flowing bombastic combat and gadget-driven detective work. The library itself is a round tower of walkwayed bookshelves and study spaces, ransacked by criminals and strewn with loose books and folders. In the vein of 'Tomb Raider', you can find collectible trophies hidden in air vents by the puzzle-obsessed Riddler, along with a human skull. So far, the library is a space of research and secrecy shadowed by lethal danger, but as you enter, circumstances escalate further.

Beneath the ornate circular glass floor, the criminals are holding a group of police officers and doctors hostage. This chamber is filling with poison gas, and there's a bomb (it's gift wrapped). Handily, the library is lit by a vast, precarious chandelier. After thumping the henchmen senseless, Batman must grapple up to the top of the tower and hurl a Batarang through the chandelier's cable, dropping it through the library to obliterate the glass floor and dilute the gas. When he goes to defuse the bomb, Batman finds out it's just a boxing glove on a spring: it's all been a morbid joke.

Here, the library is a luxury space fallen into disuse, repurposed for villainy and insensible violence, its knowledge and architecture weaponised. Art Director David Hego has said how he intended to "add a layer of history to each location," and in the dark humour of this restaging, we can see that the game sees this library as being originally a space of beauty, education, safety, and reason, and with a certain violent curation, Batman restores such order and sense to the space. However, one detail does question the library's sunny history: why was that skull in the air vents quite so thick with cobwebs?

Academic tensions

The 'Assassin's Creed' franchise of historical adventure games tells the tale of secret societies at war across time. Freedom-loving Assassins and authoritarian Templars bicker for control of the world against a backdrop of vibrant period settings. You can sail with Blackbeard, conspire with George Washington, and fistfight the Pope for magic artefacts. Suffice to say, the franchise only flirts with historical accuracy.

2023 saw the release of 'Assassin's Creed: Mirage', an adventure through 9th century Iraq. This game recreated the Bayt al-Hikmah, also known as the Grand Library of Baghdad or the House of Wisdom. An impressive feat, as it was destroyed in 1258 by the Mongol siege of the city. Historians contend whether it was more of a private archive, a public gathering space, or a place of education, so 'Mirage' hedges its bets.

Your armed assassin, Basim, can jog merrily around the grounds among congregating scholars and citizens, but visiting the books is dangerous business. Any guards spotting you will gleefully put their swords to use. On the surface, this library is strict but not inaccessible, and we can roughly approximate it to a secure national archive. Unfortunately, when you encounter the House of Wisdom in the main storyline, its true nature grows more sinister.

In searching for and finding a missing scholar, you learn that he was lured by a magical artefact promising to open 'the doors of perception'. A pillar of smoke draws you back once again to the library: a pyre of books is being burned by a mysterious group. A few more twists and turns lead you to the Scriptorium, where another scholar is being forced to study madness-inducing texts for... the head of the library.

He reveals a grand, arcane machine in the dungeons of the House of Wisdom. The book-burning was staged so he could steal texts from the archives, and with them this machine should allow him access to otherworldly knowledge. In a cinematic moment beyond your player's control, your assassin decides that the pursuit of knowledge isn't a good enough excuse, and dispatches the learned fellow.

Here we see the library at its most secure, private, and lethal. It's a site of high conspiracy, elite gatekeeping, imprisonment, and supernatural secrets, where knowledge corrupts to a murderous extent. So, is the public understanding of library security quite so severe? Or else, without the underlying tensions of secrecy, security, and exclusivity cranked up to extremes, maybe the library loses its intrigue? How might it factor into a plotline entirely of your own making?

Literary ambitions

We're shifting out of linear, start-to-finish games here to regard the role-playing game 'The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim'. This 2011 adventure sees you create your own character from a range of magical races, then gallivant among werewolves, giants, elves, and vampires, questing for kings and duelling dragons. But the driving appeal is that, frankly, you don't have to. Skyrim's lead designer Bruce Nesmith emphasises that "we let it be [a] player-driven experience" where your path is entirely your own.

Within this mountainous, Nordic world, our library is at the mages' school: the College of Winterhold's stony old Arcaneum. A revered resource for all the magical knowledge you could wish for, the Arcaneum holds all the texts you need to study up on the lore of the land, and just as easily learn how to heal your allies as hurl lightning at your enemies.

You can make your way to the library almost immediately and are barred from access only by a scholarly elf demanding a demonstration of your magic. This is to ensure that only the eligible learners can seek further education. You can try to lie your way in, but unless you've mastered your 'Persuasion' skill, you're not getting through. Cast a little spell though, and you don't even need a library card to come and go at your leisure. Within the College, the Arcaneum is a circular chamber of locked shelves packed with rare books, and casual piles of the cheap ones. Inside is a welcoming, homely scene: fireside seating, comfortable chairs, and even a wine selection.

Writing for 'Play the Past', Dr. Alvina Lai notes how "the Arcanaeum serves the community by supporting the College" alike to "the function of real-world academic libraries today". This highlights the reproduction within the game world not only of the form and operation of the library itself, but of its wider social and scholastic effects. Here, at the horseshoe-shaped desk presiding over the library, you can chat with gravel-toned orc Urag gro-Shub, a stern enthusiast of his library who will inform you of rules at play and opportunities at hand.

Unfortunately, Urag will inform you of a series of books stolen by previous students. He will pay you for their return and buy any rare books you collect along the way. He'll even give you a better price if you ascend to the rank of Arch Mage, rewarding the player's dedication to the college and the library. These books aren't ornamental, either: your player can read every word inside, from single riddles to short plays to multi-chapter histories of the world and its people.

In 2018, the research team of Engerman, MacAllan, and Carr-Chellman surveyed boys' reactions to literary puzzles in gaming to explore how "an embodied activity of play" can lead to "an elevated level of motivation [and] enthusiasm for reading". In the case of Skyrim, they noted how one such boy "'was excited in his recount of reading large text passages within [Skyrim]" to solve problems, even though "this is not a common activity that would normally excite [him]."' Clearly, the Arcaneum's effect extends through the screen: even in virtual libraries, the promotion of literacy achieves a tangible player benefit.

The Arcaneum thus shows the library as a place of narrative choice: you can study, help it, work for it, steal from it, and see real reward or punishment for your decisions. The only compulsory interaction with the library is at the climax of the main quest, wherein Urag will give you books to lead you closer to an Elder Scroll of your own. It helps you to go back in time and fight a dragon, but the importance here is that the library provides a level of active opportunity and employment that few other games have attempted, rewarding an engaged and interested player with game-changing storylines.

These games so far have covered much of the practical utility of libraries, but seem to include the spaces only at a significant creative distance from our day-to-day reality. Is there room within such a bombastic industry for the modest community library?

Communal learning

'Stardew Valley' is a cosy, pixel-art life simulator by the one-man developer CuriousApe. An instant indie darling from its release in 2016, 'Stardew Valley' centres on moving to a rural town, farming, mining, befriending the locals, thwarting an evil supermarket, and fishing. Along your many adventures in the bucolic farms, tropical deserts, or dingy mines, you will gradually collect artefacts worthy of preservation: fossils, relics, and most importantly, books!

Overseen not by a grumpy orc but the purple-hatted Gunther, the Stardew Valley library collects and curates these found objects. You can arrange them on their tables, browse their descriptions, read small excerpts for tips on gameplay, and occasionally see other townsfolk enjoying your curios.

At certain milestones, the library will reward your generosity with a unique trinket or item in return. Maybe in the real world you'd expect a degree of tax relief, but here you will work your way up from a bag of cauliflower seeds to a landscape painting, a giant bear statue, a rusty key to a locked sewer (better than it sounds), and ultimately an edible 'stardrop' to increase your energy levels for good. Help others, and you help yourself! Everyone's a winner, if not an altruist.

The main section is devoted to the traditional functions of the library, and features desks, chairs, shelves of books, reading lamps, hardwood floors and carpets. At certain times of the week, you may find villagers tutoring one another or quietly reading to themselves. This is a site of learning, of donation, and of organisation.

You can check the titles of books on the shelves and read a few for handy tips and tricks. However, if you find a Skill Book like 'The Art o' Crabbing' or 'Horse: The Book' and use the same button usually reserved for eating, you may gain an increased skill or new talent. Quite the reader's digest.

The library here in 'Stardew Valley' has therefore broken free of any real interest in combat. There are no puzzles nor punishments, and all you can do is help out and browse. We've found the closest site in atmosphere to your own local library then, but have we really pinned down what the library means to the player? For that, we have a final example: what does a library do for a game without a library?

Spread the word

Here we break from our usual template. There is no functioning library to be found in any of the five cozy-chaotic life-about-town games that make up the 'Animal Crossing' series. But when you make games full of anthropomorphic animals living together (gossiping, designing clothes, gathering fish and fossils for the museum, or bartering mortgage debt with a raccoon), players tend to itch for that one missing ingredient.

'Animal Crossing: New Horizons' was released at the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, affording many a calm escape from global crisis. It allows players to landscape their own island, decide the placement of buildings, visit each other's homes, and buy furniture and accessories to decorate as you like. The island has all the usual institutions for daily life: a bank, a tailor, a general store, a seafaring fox selling black-market artwork, a museum, and a council hall. But no brick-and-mortar library. So, why are we here?

You can craft a purely decorative object named 'tiny library' which resembles the birdbox format of a free street library. If placed outside, villagers might wander over to it and pretend to interact, but they are actually pulling out a book from their pocket. While the game can't accommodate a gameplay function for a library, it has gone out of its way to cater to the aesthetic appeal.

That said, the developers of 'Animal Crossing' have affirmed that the "main concept throughout development" was "people communicating with one another." So to really see the scope of what a library represents to this game, we must hear what they're saying. Across the internet, wherever fans of 'Animal Crossing' congregate, you'll find so many posts of them sharing their impromptu 'libraries' that many will apologise for joining the pile. Other fans even create YouTube tutorials showing how to design your own.

As Nicole Lamerichs writes, focusing on fan communities sharing eco-friendly design lifestyles in the game: "the creative use of items leads to beautiful islands, which may inspire players that visit them to enact change in their own communities". In this manner of thinking, the act of creating and sharing these ornamental libraries demonstrates not just a consensus that a library should feature in any idyllic neighbourhood, but an encouragement to build more just to spread the ideals which they represent.

Game Over?

From this small selection of virtual libraries alone, we can see an enduring allure of the quiet and organised archive to the medium of videogames. There's a persistent draw to let a person engage with such a place in a story they would never expect libraries to feature in. Whether for the chance to act out the work of pottering about the shelves, puzzle through cryptic codes and shelving patterns, build up a career in book preservation, or even aggressively enforce the expected stability and calm of a reading room.

The institutional balance of interactivity, education, and versatility of form all enable the concept to slot neatly into any genre missing that scholarly flavour. Evidently, no matter if your game is shooting for blockbuster heights of adventure or spa-like depths of relaxation, there's always time to fit in a trip to the library.