Description
Book SynopsisWhat is video game culture and video games as culture? Culture at Play avoids easy answers and deceitful single definitions. Instead, the collected essays included here navigate the messy and exciting waters of video games, of culture, and of the meeting of video games and culture, and do so from four perspectives: Players: Types and Identities; The Human/The Machine: Agents, Ethics, and Affect; Compassion, Recognition, and the Interpersonal; and Learning through Play. As a form of play, video games can greatly affect our lives. As digital objects, they participate in our digital lives. As both, they have a noticeable impact on our relationships with others, with society, and with ourselves, and this is the scope of this book.
Table of Contents Notes on Contributors 0 Video Games, Culture, and Everything: An Introduction Victor Navarro-Remesal Players: Types and Identities 1 Is Your Masculinity Threatened? Then You’re Not Man Enough to Play: Robot Unicorn Attack 2 and Beyond the Gender Challenge Peter Feer and Robin Skinner 2 We Are Smash Bros: Understanding Player Types and Ideals Through Worldwide Game Design Bradley McAvoy-James and Bobbie Fletcher 3 Empowering Avatars: The Impact of In-Game Presence on Everyday Functioning Marta Tymińska 4 Without so Much as a Word: Non-Verbal Performances of Masculine Identity in Adolescent Call of Duty Players Gareth Healey The Human/The Machine: Agents, Ethics, and Affect 5 Agents in Space and Time: Fundamentals of Interactive Narrative Systems Lindsey Joyce 6 Killswitch Engage: Ethics in Game Design Armin Lippitz 7 Pushing the Lever: Rule-Consequentialism and Utilitarianism in Life is Strange Patrick Goritschnig 8 Light My (Camp-)Fire: Affect and Incitement in Firewatch René Reinhold Schallegger Compassion, Recognition, and the Interpersonal 9 Representing Interpersonal Relationships in Videogame Terms Sarah Faber 10 Press X to recognize the Other’s Suffering: Compassion and Recognition in Games Victor Navarro-Remesal and Ignacio Bergillos Learning through Play 11 Toward Engaging Educational Digital Games Stephen Mallory 12 Serious Topics and Fun Games: ‘Hidden in the Zoo’ Niklas Torstensson and Tarja Susi 13 ‘You Can Deny Seriousness, but You Can’t Deny Play’: Emergent Resistance to Purposive Games Luca Morini Index
