Games Cultures Computer Games as New Media

This book offers both an overview of the critical concepts and critical debates that are shaping the emerging field of Game Studies and an analysis of computer games as the most popular contemporary form of new media production and consumption. Games are explored for the general reader wishing to understand them in the context of cultural and media studies and are used as a critical site for the examination of the impact of new media on established frameworks and concepts within cultural and media studies. In particular, the book:Argues for the centrality of play in redefining reading, consuming and creating cultureOffers detailed research into the political economy of games that generates a model of new media production Argues that games circulate within and remediate dominant technicities in emergent techno culture Offers valuable insight into the modes of intervention into game production and consumption as a model for understanding and contesting dominant ideas around the putative `opennessĹź of new media Examines the dynamics of power in relation to both the production and consumption of computer games.