Description
Book SynopsisVideo gaming: it's a boy's world, right? That's what the industry wants us to think. Why and how we came to comply are what Carly A. Kocurek investigates in this provocative consideration of how an industry's craving for respectability hooked up with cultural narratives about technology, masculinity, and youth at the video arcade.From the dawn of t
Trade Review"Carly A. Kocurek provides a fascinating cultural history of arcade gaming and, in doing so, offers keen insight into our ongoing conversations around gender and gaming. This is a must read for those interested not only in game studies but in the evolution of American boyhood."—T.L. Taylor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"An excellent study of the early history of the video game industry and how it came to define the gamer as male."—Library Journal
"The great contribution of Kocurek’s Coin-Operated Americans is its attempt to historicize a relationship that often appears natural to cultural gatekeepers and other onlookers, not to mention reactionary “gamers” themselves."—Public Books
"This detailed study provides a lucid, compelling narrative that will interest a very diverse audience."—CHOICE
"Coin-Operated Americans is an invaluable contribution for those interested in the intersection among media, technology, and critical questions surrounding children and youth."—Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
"Kocurek invites readers to imagine the sensory environment of the early arcade, its sights and sounds, which serves as a vivid backdrop for the compelling cultural history the book chronicles."—Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
"Productive contributions to studies of masculinity, and to studies of gender and digital play more broadly."—Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality
"Coin-Operated Americans will make an excellent addition to undergraduate courses on gender studies, American culture, and the recent past."—Oral History Review
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Microcosmic Arcade: Playing at the Cultural Vanguard
2. Gaming’s Gold Medalists: Twin Galaxies and the Rush to Competitive Gaming
3. Adapting Violence: Death Race and the History of Gaming Moral Panic
4. Anarchy in the Arcade: Regulating Coin-Op Video Games
5. Play Saves the Day: TRON, WarGames, and the Gamer as Protagonist
6. The Arcade Is Dead, Long Live the Arcade: Nostalgia in an Era of Ubiquitous Computing
7. The Future Is Now: Changes in Gaming Culture
Notes
Bibliography
Index
