On Video Games
eBook - PDF

On Video Games

The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space

  1. 336 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

On Video Games

The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space

About this book

Today over half of all American households own a dedicated game console and gaming industry profits trump those of the film industry worldwide. In this book, Soraya Murray moves past the technical discussions of games and offers a fresh and incisive look at their cultural dimensions. She critically explores blockbusters likeThe Last of Us, Metal Gear Solid, Spec Ops: The Line, Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed to show how they are deeply entangled with American ideological positions and contemporary political, cultural and economic conflicts.As quintessential forms of visual material in the twenty-first century, mainstream games both mirror and spur larger societal fears, hopes and dreams, and even address complex struggles for recognition. This book examines both their elaborately constructed characters and densely layered worlds, whose social and environmental landscapes reflect ideas about gender, race, globalisation and urban life. In this emerging field of study, Murray provides novel theoretical approaches to discussing games and playable media as culture.
Demonstrating that games are at the frontline of power relations, she reimagines how we see them - and more importantly how we understand them.

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Yes, you can access On Video Games by Soraya Murray in PDF and/or ePUB format. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
I.B. Tauris
Year
2017
Print ISBN
9781350217706
eBook ISBN
9781786732507
Edition
1
47
47
1
Poetics 
of 
Form 
and 
Politics 
of 
Identity; 
Or, 
Games 
as 
Cultural 
Palimpsests
A 
mess 
is 
not 
a 
pile, 
which 
is 
neatly 
organized 
even 
if 
situated 
in 
an 
inconvenient 
place 
underfoot. 
A mess 
is 
not 
an 
elegant 
thing 
of 
a 
higher 
order. 
It 
is 
not 
an 
intellectual 
project 
to 
be 
evaluated 
and 
risk-managed 
by 
waistcoat-clad 
underwriters. 
A mess 
is 
a 
strew 
of 
inconvenient 
and 
sometimes 
repellent 
things. 
It 
is 
less 
an 
imbroglio 
of 
the 
sort 
one 
finds 
in 
a 
painting 
of 
Pollock 
or 
Picasso, 
and 
more 
the 
mess 
one 
finds 
in 
a 
sculpture 
of 
Kienholz. 
A mess 
is 
an 
accident. 
A mess 
is 
a 
thing 
that 
you 
find 
where 
you 
don’t 
want 
it. 
A mess 
is 
the 
cascade 
of 
broken 
glass 
on 
the 
floor 
when 
you 
miss 
the 
alarm 
clock 
and 
catch 
the 
water 
glass. 
A mess 
is 
the 
heap 
of 
hot, 
unseen 
dog 
shit 
on 
the 
stoop, 
and 
then 
on 
the 
stoop 
and 
the 
bootsole. 
A mess 
is 
inelegant, 
a 
clut-
ter, 
a 
shamble, 
a 
terror. 
We 
recoil 
at 
it, 
yet 
there 
it 
is, 
and 
we 
must 
deal 
with it.
Videogames 
are 
a 
mess. 
A mess 
we 
don’t 
need 
to 
keep 
trying 
to 
clean 
up, 
if 
it 
were 
even 
possible 
to 
do so.
1
Ian 
Bogost, 
‘Video 
Games 
are 
a 
Mess’

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Author bio
  3. Endorsement
  4. Title page
  5. Copyright information
  6. Table of contents
  7. Illustrations
  8. Acknowledgements
  9. Introduction: Is the ‘Culture’ in Game Culture the ‘Culture’ of Cultural Studies?
  10. 1 Poetics of Form and Politics of Identity; Or, Games as Cultural Palimpsests
  11. 2 Aesthetics of Ambivalence and Whiteness in Crisis
  12. 3 The Landscapes of Games as Ideology
  13. 4 The World is a Ghetto: Imaging the Global Metropolis in Playable Representation
  14. Bibliography
  15. Index