From Pong to virtual reality, Understanding Video Games, 4th Edition, takes video game
studies into the next decade of the twenty-first century, highlighting changes in the area …

This book introduces the critical concepts and debates that are shaping the emerging field of
game studies. Exploring games in the context of cultural studies and media studies, it …

Digital games are an intrinsic part of contemporary global flows of cultural goods, services
and images in Western societies. Developed in parts of Asia, the US, Australia and Europe …

This article is about textual analysis, methodology, and representations (of bodies, identities
and social groups) in digital games. The issues under consideration include textual analysis …

Gamers have been troublemakers as long as games have existed. As our popular
understanding of “gamer” shifts beyond its historical construction as a white, straight …

In this paper I will give a phenomenological account of embodied presence through
computer game avatars, based on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's analysis of bodily intentionality …

" Global gaming networks are heterogenous collectives of localized practices, not unified
commercial products. Shifting the analysis of digital games to local specificities that build …

Celebrity culture has a pervasive presence in our everyday lives–perhaps more so than ever
before. It shapes not simply the production and consumption of media content but also the …

Despite how humans and non-human objects relate in very social ways, the relations
between players and their online game avatars are most often examined through …

Johan Huizinga opening this chapter is illustrative; the 'horrifying conclusion'of science
becoming 'merely a game'is quickly dispelled by Huizinga: he points out that scientific work …