Accursed play: The economic imaginary of early game studies
Accursed play: The economic imaginary of early game studies
Revisiting early critical responses to computer and video games as a cultural form—before the establishment of games studies as an academic field in the early 2000s—reveals a consistent fascination with games as economic phenomena. Not just as a new commercial competitor in the established popular media marketplace but as models of economies in their own right, models that mesh with player’s everyday lives, constraining, facilitating, and forming gameplay. This article will identify and explore some of the most salient themes and phenomena in this early games scholarship and will follow them through subsequent enquiry into games as economies either isomorphic with the systems of consumer capitalism and neoliberalism from which they issue or metamorphic—phantasmagorical or ironic inversions of prevailing social and industrial conditions.
economic simulation, game studies, Georges Bataille, neoliberalism, phantasmagoria, video game industry, video games as economic form
Giddings, Seth
7d18e858-a849-4633-bae2-777a39937a33
Giddings, Seth
7d18e858-a849-4633-bae2-777a39937a33
Abstract
Revisiting early critical responses to computer and video games as a cultural form—before the establishment of games studies as an academic field in the early 2000s—reveals a consistent fascination with games as economic phenomena. Not just as a new commercial competitor in the established popular media marketplace but as models of economies in their own right, models that mesh with player’s everyday lives, constraining, facilitating, and forming gameplay. This article will identify and explore some of the most salient themes and phenomena in this early games scholarship and will follow them through subsequent enquiry into games as economies either isomorphic with the systems of consumer capitalism and neoliberalism from which they issue or metamorphic—phantasmagorical or ironic inversions of prevailing social and industrial conditions.
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Accursed Play_Giddings
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Accepted/In Press date: 12 February 2018
e-pub ahead of print date: 19 February 2018
Keywords:
economic simulation, game studies, Georges Bataille, neoliberalism, phantasmagoria, video game industry, video games as economic form
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 418697
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/418697
ISSN: 1555-4120
PURE UUID: ee463fd9-984e-4049-908e-acba6fff220a
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Date deposited: 19 Mar 2018 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:21
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