Graeme Kirkpatrick

Computer Games and the Social Imaginary (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

In this compelling book, Graeme Kirkpatrick argues that computer games have fundamentally altered the relation of self and society in the digital age. Tracing the origins of gaming to the revival of play in the 1960s counter culture, Computer Games and the Social Imaginary describes how the energies of that movement transformed computer technology from something ugly and machine-like into a world of colour and 'fun'. In the process, play with computers became computer gaming - a new cultural practice with its own values. From the late 1980s gaming became a resource for people to draw upon as they faced the challenges of life in a new, globalizing digital economy. Gamer identity furnishes a revivified capitalism with compliant and 'streamlined' workers, but at times gaming culture also challenges the corporations that control game production. Analysing topics such as the links between technology and power, the formation of gaming culture and the subjective impact of play with computer games, this insightful text will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media, games studies and the information society.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
• Seitenzahl: 248
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Oktober 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780745671901
• Artikelnr.: 39949784

Autorenporträt

Graeme Kirkpatrick is senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Manchester.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter one: Computer games in
social theory 1. Gaming and the social imaginary 2. The gamer as a
'streamlined self' 3. Social theory and critique Chapter two: Lineages of
the computer game 1. The revival of play 2. Technology and the dialectic of
invention 3. Artistic critique and the transformation of computing Chapter
three: The formation of gaming culture 1. From games as technology to the
discovery of 'gameplay' 2. The 'authentic' gamer 3. Gaming's constitutive
ambivalence Chapter four: Technology and power 1. Organising an industry 2.
Globalisation and cultures of production 3. Technology, power and
resistance Chapter five: The phenakisticon 1. MMPGs in
recognition-theoretic perspective 2. The limitations of engineered
sociability 3. Gamification and the diminution of gameplay Chapter six:
Aesthetics and politics 1. The aesthetic dimension 2. Art, play and
critique 3. Critical gaming? Notes References Index