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Game Studies is a rapidly growing area of contemporary scholarship,
yet volumes in the area have tended to focus on more general
issues. With Playing with the Past, game studies is taken to the
next level by offering a specific and detailed analysis of one area
of digital game play -- the representation of history. The
collection focuses on the ways in which gamers engage with, play
with, recreate, subvert, reverse and direct the historical past,
and what effect this has on the ways in which we go about
constructing the present or imagining a future. What can World War
Two strategy games teach us about the reality of this complex and
multifaceted period? Do the possibilities of playing with the past
change the way we understand history? If we embody a colonialist's
perspective to conquer 'primitive' tribes in Colonization, does
this privilege a distinct way of viewing history as benevolent
intervention over imperialist expansion? The fusion of these two
fields allows the editors to pose new questions about the ways in
which gamers interact with their game worlds. Drawing these threads
together, the collection concludes by asking whether digital games
- which represent history or historical change - alter the way we,
today, understand history itself.
Role-playing games seemed to appear of nowhere in the early 1970s
and have been a quiet but steady presence in American culture ever
since. This new look at the hobby searches for the historical
origins of role-playing games deep in the imaginative worlds of
Western culture. It looks at the earliest fantasy stories from the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at the fans--both readers and
writers--who wanted to bring them to life, at the Midwestern
landscape and the middle-class households that were the hobby's
birthplace, and at the struggle to find meaning and identity amidst
cultural conflicts that drove many people into these communities of
play. This book also addresses race, religion, gender, fandom, and
the place these games have within American capitalism. All the
paths of this journey are connected by the very quality that has
made fantasy role-playing so powerful: it binds the limitless
imagination into a "strict" framework of rules. Far from being an
accidental offshoot of marginalized fan communities, role-playing
games' ability to hold contradictions in dynamic, creative tension
made them a necessary and central product of the twentieth century.
A lot of work has been done talking about what masculinity is and
what it does within video games, but less has been given to
considering how and why this happens, and the processes involved.
This book considers the array of daily relationships involved in
producing masculinity and how those actions and relationships
translate to video games. Moreover, it examines the ways the actual
play of the games maps onto the stories to create contradictory
moments that show that, while toxic masculinity certainly exists,
it is far from inevitable. Topics covered include the nature of
masculine apprenticeship and nurturing, labor, fatherhood, the
scapegoating of women, and reckoning with mortality, among many
others.
The 1960s and early 70s saw the evolution of Frontier Myths even as
scholars were renouncing the interpretive value of myths
themselves. Works like Joe Haldeman's The Forever War exemplified
that rejection using his experiences during the Vietnam War to
illustrate the problematic consequences of simple mythic idealism.
Simultaneously, Americans were playing with expanded and revised
versions of familiar Frontier Myths, though in a contemporary
context, through NASA's lunar missions, Star Trek, and Gerard K.
O'Neill's High Frontier. This book examines the reasons behind the
exclusion of Frontier Myths to the periphery of scholarly
discourse, and endeavors to build a new model for understanding
their enduring significance. This model connects NASA's failed
attempts to recycle earlier myths, wholesale, to Star Trek's
revision of those myths and rejection of the idea of a frontier
paradise, to O'Neill's desire to realize such a paradise in Earth's
orbit. This new synthesis defies the negative connotations of
Frontier Myths during the 1960s and 70s and attempts to resuscitate
them for relevance in the modern academic context.
The 1960s and early 70s saw the evolution of Frontier Myths even as
scholars were renouncing the interpretive value of myths
themselves. Works like Joe Haldeman's The Forever War exemplified
that rejection using his experiences during the Vietnam War to
illustrate the problematic consequences of simple mythic idealism.
Simultaneously, Americans were playing with expanded and revised
versions of familiar Frontier Myths, though in a contemporary
context, through NASA's lunar missions, Star Trek, and Gerard K.
O'Neill's High Frontier. This book examines the reasons behind the
exclusion of Frontier Myths to the periphery of scholarly
discourse, and endeavors to build a new model for understanding
their enduring significance. This model connects NASA's failed
attempts to recycle earlier myths, wholesale, to Star Trek's
revision of those myths and rejection of the idea of a frontier
paradise, to O'Neill's desire to realize such a paradise in Earth's
orbit. This new synthesis defies the negative connotations of
Frontier Myths during the 1960s and 70s and attempts to resuscitate
them for relevance in the modern academic context.
Since the emergence of digital game studies, a number of debates
have engaged scholars. The debate between ludic (play) and
narrative (story) paradigms remains the one that famously ""never
happened."" This collection of new essays critically frames that
debate and urges game scholars to consider it central to the field.
The contributors examine various digital games, assessing the
applicability of play versus narrative approaches or considering
the failure of each. The essays consider the broader history of
game studies, while applying notions of play and story to recent
games in an attempt to foster serious debate and analysis.
In an era of reboots, restarts and retreads, J.J. Abrams' Star Trek
trilogy-featuring new, prequel adventures of Kirk, Spock and the
rest of the original series characters, aboard the USS Kelvin-has
brought the franchise to a new generation and perfected a process
increasingly central to entertainment media: reinvigorating the
beloved classic. Offering the first in-depth analysis of the new
trilogy and the vision of the next generation of Star Trek
filmmakers, this collection of new essays explores issues of
gender, race, politics, economics, technology and morality-always
key themes of the franchise-in the 21st century context of "The
Kelvin Timeline."
In 1977 a single film called Star Wars exploded on the
consciousness of the world. Since then the franchise, created by
George Lucas, has become a global entertainment corporation. The
merchandise of the original trilogy was largely confined to toys
and games, but those games have since become computerized, the toys
more sophisticated, and Star Wars has moved into the multi-media
environment of the twenty-first century in ways unimaginable in the
long-ago world of 1977. Computer games and web sites, novels,
animated television shows, as well as a new trilogy of films, have
all placed Star Wars at the center of world popular culture.
Finding the Force of the Star Wars Franchise brings together
contributors who critically analyze the Star Wars universe from
many perspectives. Topics include war, foreign policy, gender
roles, spirituality and religion, toy play and adult collecting,
creative fandom, race, special effects, and mythology.
What is a video game? What makes a video game "good"? If a game is
supposed to be fun, can it be fun without a good story? If another
is supposed to be an accurate simulation, does it still need to be
entertaining? With the ever-expanding explosion of new video games
and new developments in the gaming world, questions about video
game criticism are becoming more complex. The differing definitions
that players and critics use to decide what a game is and what
makes a game successful, often lead to different ideas of how games
succeed or fail. This collection of essays puts on display the
variety and ambiguity of video games. Each essay is a work of game
criticism that takes a different approach to defining the game and
analyzing it. Through analysis and critical methods, these essays
discuss whether a game is defined by its rules, its narrative, its
technology, or by the activity of playing it, and the tensions
between these definitions. With essays on Overwatch, Dark Souls 3,
Far Cry 4, Farmville and more, this collection attempts to show the
complex changes, challenges and advances to game criticism in the
era of video games.
Video games are a complex, compelling medium in which established
art forms intersect with technology to create an interactive text.
Visual arts, architectural design, music, narrative and rules of
play all find a place within, and are constrained by, computer
systems whose purpose is to create an immersive player experience.
In the relatively short life of video game studies, many authors
have approached the question of how games function, some focusing
on technical aspects of game design, others on rules of play.
Taking a holistic view, this study explores how ludology,
narratology, visual rhetoric, musical theory and player psychology
work (or don't work) together to create a cohesive experience and
to provide a unified framework for understanding video games.
In the vein of their cult-classic dark fantasy titles Demon's Souls
(2009) and the Dark Souls franchise (2011, 2014, 2016), game
developers FromSoftware released the bleak Gothic horror Bloodborne
in 2015. Players are cast in the role of hunters in a hostile land,
probing the shadowy city of Yharnam in search of "paleblood." The
game achieved iconic status as both a horror and an action title
for its rich lore and for the continuity of story elements through
all aspects of game design. This first full-length study examines
Bloodborne's themes of dangerous knowledge and fatal pride and its
aesthetics in the context other works on game studies, horror and
the Gothic. The book's three parts focus on lore and narrative, the
game's nightmarish world, and its mechanics.
The world of video games has long revolved around a subset of its
player base-straight, white males aged 18-25. Highly gendered
marketing in the late 1990s and early 2000s widened the gap between
this perceived base and the actual diverse group who buy video
games. Despite reports from the Entertainment Software Association
that nearly half of gamers identify as female, many developers
continue to produce content reflecting this imaginary audience.
Many female gamers are in turn modifying games to appeal to players
like themselves. "Modders" alter the appearance of characters,
rewrite scenes and epilogues, enhance or add love scenes and create
fairy tale happy endings. This collection of new essays examines
the phenomenon of women and modding, focusing on such titles as
Skyrim, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and The Sims. Topics include the
relationship between modders and developers, the history of
modding, and the relationship between modding and disability, race,
sexuality and gender identity.
Over the years, board games have evolved to include relatable
characters, vivid settings and compelling, intricate plotlines. In
turn, players have become more emotionally involved-taking on, in
essence, the role of coauthors in an interactive narrative. Through
the lens of game studies and narratology-traditional storytelling
concepts applied to the gaming world-this book explores the synergy
of board games, designers and players in story-oriented designs.
The author provides development guidance for game designers and
recommends games to explore for hobby players.
The Matrix films, along with the video games, anime and toys
inspired by them, are rich with philosophical, religious and social
references that cry out for interpretation. Here these ideas are
examined in the context of the history of thought and cinema. The
variety of applications in this study is remarkable, engaging
thinkers ranging from conservative Christians to postmodernist
critics. Feminist issues meet cyberpunk, cosmological perspectives
meet mythological and literary analysis. Violence in society,
American values, politics, heroic models - all are called into
question as several esteemed scholars decode the entire world of
the Matrix franchise.
Few media franchises can match The Matrix for enthusiasm of
reception and subsequent proliferation. Who in 1999 could have
imagined that the momentum of a single film would sustain two more
major theatrical releases in a single year, a collection of nine
anime cartoons, a best-selling computer game, and more websites
than can be counted? Jacking In To The Matrix Trilogy will be the
first academic study to take an in-depth look at all of these
products, a coherent overview of the franchise as a whole. The
Matrix films are rich with mythological and religious references,
as well as drawing upon futuristic fiction. Such richness demands a
variety of decoding interpreting skills, and the array of talent in
this volume will lay bare many of the strand that have given the
Matrix creations such a sense of magic. The book gathers original
articles that comment on the cultural and religious implications of
The Matrix trilogy, its place within the cyberworlds of
contemporary literature and philosophy, and its portrayal of gender
and race. The volume also makes conjectures about the ethical and
social consequences of taking either the red of the blue pill.
Jacking In To The Matrix Trilogy wil
In 1977 a single film called Star Wars exploded on the
consciousness of the world. Since then the franchise, created by
George Lucas, has become a global entertainment corporation. The
merchandise of the original trilogy was largely confined to toys
and games, but those games have since become computerized, the toys
more sophisticated, and Star Wars has moved into the multi-media
environment of the twenty-first century in ways unimaginable in the
long-ago world of 1977. Computer games and web sites, novels,
animated television shows, as well as a new trilogy of films, have
all placed Star Wars at the center of world popular culture.
Finding the Force of the Star Wars Franchise brings together
contributors who critically analyze the Star Wars universe from
many perspectives. Topics include war, foreign policy, gender
roles, spirituality and religion, toy play and adult collecting,
creative fandom, race, special effects, and mythology.
Game Studies is a rapidly growing area of contemporary scholarship,
yet volumes in the area have tended to focus on more general
issues. With Playing with the Past, game studies is taken to the
next level by offering a specific and detailed analysis of one area
of digital game play -- the representation of history. The
collection focuses on the ways in which gamers engage with, play
with, recreate, subvert, reverse and direct the historical past,
and what effect this has on the ways in which we go about
constructing the present or imagining a future. What can World War
Two strategy games teach us about the reality of this complex and
multifaceted period? Do the possibilities of playing with the past
change the way we understand history? If we embody a colonialist's
perspective to conquer 'primitive' tribes in Colonization, does
this privilege a distinct way of viewing history as benevolent
intervention over imperialist expansion? The fusion of these two
fields allows the editors to pose new questions about the ways in
which gamers interact with their game worlds. Drawing these threads
together, the collection concludes by asking whether digital games
- which represent history or historical change - alter the way we,
today, understand history itself.
Among the most expensive--and most profitable--films of all time,
the works of James Cameron have had a profound effect upon popular
culture and the technology of moviemaking. Yet the very blockbuster
nature of his films means that the political commentary, cultural
discourse and rich symbolism within the works are often overlooked.
From The Terminator to Avatar, the director has evinced a
persistence of themes, concerns and visions that capture the
contemporary zeitgeist. This collection of essays on James
Cameron's films, written by a diverse group of scholars from a wide
range of disciplines, provides a comprehensive exploration of the
work and legacy of one of America's foremost filmmakers.
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