Shakespeare, the video game

A third of the world’s population plays video games, and the gaming industry is now three times larger than the film and music industries combined. Still, gaming remains marginalised within many areas of academic research, including the study and performance of Shakespeare.

This research project, led by Dr Erin Sullivan, explores the power of video games to shape twenty-first-century understandings of what it means to read, perform, and understand a Shakespearean text. It developed out of the AHRC-funded network, Remixing the Classics (2022-23). This brought together academics, artists, and teachers to debate what new digital technologies might bring – artistically, pedagogically, and politically – to the re-telling of old stories.

The first phase of ‘Shakespeare, the Video Game’ included:

• analyses of live performances of Shakespeare within video gaming worlds
• a published conversation among leading researchers on the value of gaming to the understanding of classic drama
• the creation of a database of video games inspired by classical texts, including Shakespeare.

The project’s second phase, which occurred over summer 2025, involved a team of student researchers playing Shakespeare-inspired video games and keeping a log of their findings. It was funded by the University of Birmingham’s Collaborative Research Internships, the Sir Barry Jackson Fund, and UoB’s BRIDGE Seed Fund with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The researchers played a wide range of games and analysed their use of Shakespeare’s language, characters, and themes. At the end of their assistantships, they presented their work to secondary school teachers, who discussed how these games could be used in the classroom.

The third phase of the project, developed in collaboration with Dr Sarah Olive at Aston University, builds on this discussion by examining how video games might be used to engage students more deeply in the study of Shakespeare. According to the British Council, more than 50 percent of the world’s school children study Shakespeare, and in England his plays have been a required part of the National Curriculum since its introduction in 1989. At the same time, the study of English at A-level has dropped significantly in recent years. Could the incorporation of different kinds of ‘texts’, including video games, engage students who might otherwise think that the discipline isn’t for them? And can these works involve audiences in more inclusive and diverse ways, representing voices and identities that have sometimes been excluded in the study and performance of Shakespeare?

‘Shakespeare, The Video Game’ is exploring these concerns, as well as the creative possibilities that video games as a form open up for the experience, enjoyment, and understanding of Shakespeare’s writing in the 21st century.