Promotional Information

Video games are a defining part of mass visual culture.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Is the ‘Culture’ in Game Culture the ‘Culture’ of Cultural Studies? 1 Video Games and the Matter of Culture 2 Games in the Academy 7 Which Games? 14 On the Importance of Cultural Studies for Game Studies 17 Cultural Studies Meets Game Studies 22 Form and/as Identity Politics in Games 27 Being Critical 30 GamerGate, Games Criticism and Gender Problems 35 Looking Ahead 42 1 Poetics of Form and Politics of Identity; Or, Games as Cultural Palimpsests 47 Introduction 48 A Digital Politics of Identity 55 Th e Poetics of Form in Liberation 61 Aveline as Queered, Creole, Intersectional 68 Playability and Phantasms 76 ‘History is Our Playground’ 81 Conclusion: Embracing the Mess 86 2 Aesthetics of Ambivalence and Whiteness in Crisis 89 Introduction 89 Cultural Context: Whiteness in Crisis, Racial Violence and Games 96 Th e Last of Us 99 Critical Whiteness Studies and Whiteness After 9/11 104vi The Last of Us and Imperiled Whiteness 109 Spec Ops: Th e Line and the White Hero Interrupted 121 Tomb Raider , Whiteness and the Female Heroine in Peril 131 Conclusion: A Trauma Narrative of Whiteness 137 3 The Landscapes of Games as Ideology 141 Introduction 141 Metal Gear Solid V: Th e Phantom Pain 146 Game Spaces and World- Building: Formalism 152 Studying Game Space in a Cultural Context 160 Th eorizing Game Space as Ideological Landscape 167 Th ere is No Such Place: Afghanistan in Th e Phantom Pain 176 Conclusion: A Particular View of a Particular World 180 4 The World is a Ghetto: Imaging the Global Metropolis in Playable Representation 183 Introduction: Speculative Futures, Genre and the Global Metropolis 183 Max Payne 3 : Noir Figure, Exotic Ground 188 Remember Me and Urban Amnesia 197 Play in the Fourth World City 203 Bullet Time, Memory Remixing and Harvey’s Space- Time Compression 212 Two Playable Cities: Th e Favela and the Cyberpunk Metropolis 216 Conclusion: Playing Possible Futures 225

About the Author

Soraya Murray is an Associate Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), USA, where she is also affiliated with the Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program, and the Art + Design: Games + Playable Media Program. She is an interdisciplinary scholar of visual culture, with a particular interest in cultural studies, contemporary art, film and video games. Murray holds a PhD in the History of Art and Visual Studies from Cornell University.

Reviews

If one wants to understand (and teach) American culture today, video games are one essential site to look to, and Murray’s book tells us why and how.
*Amerikastudien*

An exciting intervention … providing a refreshing articulation of the links between games and visual and cultural studies and the significance of these approaches for the field … Highly teachable and through its discussion of methodology and evocative game analysis, it provides an important introduction to those who have yet to integrate games into their media studies.
*Feminist Media Studies*