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

*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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