Archive for April 2017

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[ecrea] Metagaming - Stephanie Boluk & Patrick LeMieux, Queer Game Studies - Bonnie Ruberg & Adrienne Shaw

Tue Apr 25 21:59:51 GMT 2017



*Metagaming***

*Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames***

/Stephanie Boluk & Patrick LeMieux///

The greatest trick the videogame industry ever pulled was convincing the world that videogames were games rather than a medium for making metagames. Elegantly defined as “games about games,” metagames implicate a diverse range of practices that stray outside the boundaries and bend the rules: from technical glitches and forbidden strategies to Renaissance painting, algorithmic trading, professional sports, and the War on Terror. In /Metagaming/, Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux demonstrate how games always extend beyond the screen, and how modders, mappers, streamers, spectators, analysts, and artists are changing the way we play.

/Metagaming/uncovers these alternative histories of play by exploring the strange experiences and unexpected effects that emerge in, on, around, and through videogames. Players puzzle through the problems of perspectival rendering in /Portal/, perform clandestine acts of electronic espionage in /EVE Online/, compete and commentate in Korean /StarCraft/, and speedrun /The Legend of Zelda /in record times (with or without the use of vision). Companies like Valve attempt to capture the metagame through international e-sports and online marketplaces while the corporate history of /Super Mario Bros./ is undermined by the endless levels of Infinite Mario, the frustrating pranks of /Asshole Mario/, and even /Super Mario Clouds/, a ROM hack exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

One of the only books to include original software alongside each chapter, Metagaming transforms videogames from packaged products into instruments, equipment, tools, and toys for intervening in the sensory and political economies of everyday life. And although videogames conflate the creativity, criticality, and craft of play with the act of consumption, we don’t simply play videogames—we make metagames.

*Stephanie Boluk*is assistant professor in the English department and Cinema and Digital Media Program at University of California, Davis.

*Patrick LeMieux*is an artist, game designer, and assistant professor in the Cinema and Digital Media Program at University of California, Davis.

University of Minnesota Press | Electronic Mediations | March 2017| 400pp | 77 b&w illus. | 9780816687169 | PB | £25.99*

20% discount with this code: CSL17GAME**

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/queer-game-studies

**

*Queer Game Studies***

/Edited by Bonnie Ruberg & Adrienne Shaw///

Video games have developed into a rich, growing field at many top universities, but they have rarely been considered from a queer perspective. Immersion in new worlds, video games seem to offer the perfect opportunity to explore the alterity that queer culture longs for, but often sexism and discrimination in gamer culture steal the spotlight. /Queer Game Studies/ provides a welcome corrective, revealing the capacious albeit underappreciated communities that are making, playing, and studying queer games.

These in-depth, diverse, and accessible essays use queerness to challenge the ideas that have dominated gaming discussions. Demonstrating the centrality of LGBTQ issues to the gamer world, they establish an alternative lens for examining this increasingly important culture. /Queer Game Studies /covers important subjects such as the representation of queer bodies, the casual misogyny prevalent in video games, the need for greater diversity in gamer culture, and reading popular games like /Bayonetta/, /Mass Effect/, and /Metal Gear/ Solid from a queer perspective.

Perfect for both everyday readers and instructors looking to add diversity to their courses, /Queer Game Studies/ is the ideal introduction to the vast and vibrant realm of queer gaming.

Contributors: Leigh Alexander; Gregory L. Bagnall, U of Rhode Island; Hanna Brady; Mattie Brice; Derek Burrill, U of California, Riverside; Edmond Y. Chang, U of Oregon; Naomi M. Clark; Katherine Cross, CUNY; Kim d’Amazing, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology; Aubrey Gabel, U of California, Berkeley; Christopher Goetz, U of Iowa; Jack Halberstam, U of Southern California; Todd Harper, U of Baltimore; Larissa Hjorth, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology; Chelsea Howe; Jesper Juul, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts; merritt kopas; Colleen Macklin, Parsons School of Design; Amanda Phillips, Georgetown U; Gabriela T. Richard, Pennsylvania State U; Toni Rocca; Sarah Schoemann, Georgia Institute of Technology; Kathryn Bond Stockton, U of Utah; Zoya Street, U of Lancaster; Peter Wonica; Robert Yang, Parsons School of Design; Jordan Youngblood, Eastern Connecticut State U.

*Bonnie Ruberg*is Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Interactive Media and Games division at the University of Southern California and assistant professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. The lead organizer of the Queerness and Games conference, she has written for /The Village Voice/, /The Economist/, and /Wired/.

*Adrienne Shaw*is assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production at Temple University and a Media and Communications PhD program faculty member. She is author of /Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture/ (Minnesota, 2014).

University of Minnesota Press | March 2017| 336pp | 11 b&w illus. | 9781517900373 | PB | £22.99*

20% discount with this code: CSL17GAME**

*Price subject to change.

  **Offer excludes the USA, South America and Australia.
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