Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games

ISBN-13: 9780415996594 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 312 str.

Nina B. Huntemann;Matthew Thomas Payne

Opis

Joystick Soldiers is the first anthology to examine the reciprocal relationship between militarism and video games. War has been an integral theme of the games industry since the invention of the first video game, Spacewar! While war video games began as entertainment, military organizations soon saw their potential as combat simulation and recruitment tools. A profitable and popular relationship was established between the video game industry and the military, and continues today with the top-selling video game franchises America’s Army, which was developed by the U.S. Army as a recruitment tool, and SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals, created in collaboration with the Naval Special Warfare Command.

This collection features all new essays that explore how modern warfare has been represented in and influenced by video games. The contributors explore the history and political economy of the "Military-Entertainment Complex;" present textual analyses of military-themed video games such as Splinter Cell, Call of Duty, and Halo; and offer reception studies of gamers, fandom, and political activism within online gaming.

This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between war and media, and it sheds surprising light on the connections between virtual battlefields and the international conflicts unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

Spis treści

Foreword Ian Bogost  Introduction Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne  Section 1: Historicizing the Joystick Soldier  1. Living Room Wars: Remediation, Boardgames, and the Early History of Video Wargaming Sebastian Deterding  2. Target Acquired: America’s Army and the Video Games Industry Randy Nichols  3. Training Recruits and Conditioning Youth: The Soft Power of Military Games David B. Nieborg  Interview with James F. Dunnigan edited by Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne  Section 2: Representing War  4. Behind the Barrel: Reading the Video Game Gun Scott A. Lukas  5. War Games as a New Frontier: Securing American Empire in Virtual Space C. Richard King and David. J. Leonard  6. Future Combat, Combating Futures: Temporalities of War Video Games and the Performance of Proleptic Histories Josh Smicker  Interview with Rachel Hardwick edited by Matthew Thomas Payne  Section 3: Producing Pedagogical War  7. Mobilizing Affect: The Politics of Performative Realism in Military New Media Dan Leopard  8. A Battle in Every Classroom: Gaming in the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College Jeffrey Leser and James Sterrett  9. A Battle for Hearts and Minds: The Design Politics of ELECT BiLat Elizabeth Losh  Interview with Colonel Casey Wardynski edited by Nina B. Huntemann  Section 4: Playing War  10. “No Better Way to ‘Experience’ World War II”: Authenticity and Ideology in the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor Player Communities Joel Penney  11. “F*ck You, Noob Tube!”: Learning the Art of Ludic LAN War Mathew Thomas Payne  12. Playing with Fear: Catharsis and Resistance in Military-Themed Video Games Nina B. Huntemann  Section 5: Resisting War  13. Playing Against the Grain: Machinima and Military Gaming Irene Chien  14. “Turn the game console off right now!”: War, Subjectivity, and Control in Metal Gear Solid 2, Tanner Higgin  15. Dead-in-Iraq: The Spatial Politics of Digital Game Art Activism and the In-Game Protest Dean Chan.  Gameography.  List of Contributors.  Index

O autorze

Nina B. Huntemann is Associate Professor of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts. She produced and directed the documentary film Game Over: Gender, Race, and Violence in Video Games, distributed by the Media Education Foundation.

Matthew Thomas Payne is a Media Studies doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. He has served as a coordinating editor for FlowTV (www.flowtv.org), a critical forum for television and new media culture, and is a co-editor of the anthology Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence (Routledge, forthcoming).