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.
Mục lục
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
Giới thiệu về tác giả
Graeme Kirkpatrick is senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Manchester.
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