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Computer Games and the Social Imaginary

ISBN: 978-0-745-64110-2

September 2013

Polity

248 pages

Description

In this compelling book, Graeme Kirkpatrick argues that computer games have fundamentally altered the relation of self and society in the digital age.

Tracing the origins of gaming to the revival of play in the 1960s counter culture, Computer Games and the Social Imaginary describes how the energies of that movement transformed computer technology from something ugly and machine-like into a world of colour and ‘fun’. In the process, play with computers became computer gaming – a new cultural practice with its own values.

From the late 1980s gaming became a resource for people to draw upon as they faced the challenges of life in a new, globalizing digital economy. Gamer identity furnishes a revivified capitalism with compliant and ‘streamlined’ workers, but at times gaming culture also challenges the corporations that control game production.

Analysing topics such as the links between technology and power, the formation of gaming culture and the subjective impact of play with computer games, this insightful text will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media, games studies and the information society.

About the Author
Graeme Kirkpatrick is senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Manchester.
Features
  • An accessibly written text that sets games studies within the context of broader work on digital media more generally
  • A coherent, well-argued and well-structured book in which each chapters incorporates the dynamic history of the changing form of the game into its organisation and content
  • The book’s historical approach constitutes a distinctive intervention in computer game studies
  • Examines key topics such as the formation of gamer identity; the links between technology and power; and the subjective impact of play with computer games