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9780773525917

Digital Play

by ; ;
  • ISBN13:

    9780773525917

  • ISBN10:

    0773525912

  • Format: Paperback
  • Copyright: 2003-06-01
  • Publisher: McGill Queens Univ

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Summary

Digital Playoffers a uniquely critical analysis of interactive media. Inspired by the work of Raymond Williams, the book traces the development of video gaming from its humble origins in hacker circles to its current status as a $20 billion global cultural industry. Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig de Peuter systematically debunk cyber-guru optimism about globally networked digital communications by analysing the management practices of the corporations that designed and marketed video games to youthful audiences. They reveal that the ascent of this new communications industry has been anything but smooth and inevitable. From Atari to Microsoft, Space Invaders to The Sims, the authors uncover the successive crises that forced game makers, faced with constant instabilities in the global entertainment sector, to become increasingly innovative. In a marketplace that demands perpetual upgrades, the survival of interactive play ultimately depends on the adroit management of negotiations between game producers and youthful consumers of this new medium. The authors suggest a model of expansion that encompasses technological innovation, game design, and marketing practices. Their case study of video gaming exposes fundamental tensions between the opposing forces of continuity and change in the information economy: between the play culture of gaming and the spectator culture of television, the dynamism of interactive media and the increasingly homogeneous mass-mediated cultural marketplace, and emerging flexible post-Fordist management strategies and the surviving techniques of mass-mediated marketing.Digital Playsuggests a future not of democratizing wired capitalism but instead of continuing tensions between "access to" and "enclosure in" technological innovation, between inertia and diversity in popular culture markets, and between commodification and free play in the cultural industries.

Author Biography

Stephen Kline is professor and director of Media Analysis Laboratory, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University Nick Dyer-Witheford is associate professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario Greig De Peuter is a PhD candidate, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University

Table of Contents

Illustrations
vii
Acknowledgments ix
Paradox Lost: Faith and Possibility in the ``Information Age''
3(24)
PART ONE THEORETICAL TRAJECTORIES
27(52)
Media Analysis in the High-Intensity Marketplace: The Three Circuits of Interactivity
30(30)
An Ideal Commodity? The Interactive Game in Post-Fordist/Postmodern/Promotional Capitalism
60(19)
PART TWO HISTORIES: THE MAKING OF A NEW MEDIUM
79(114)
Origins of an Industry: Cold Warriors, Hackers, and Suits, 1960--1984
84(25)
Electronic Frontiers: Branding the ``Nintendo Generation,'' 1985--1990
109(19)
Mortal Kombats: Console Wars and Computer Revolutions, 1990--1995
128(23)
Age of Empires: Sony and Microsoft, 1995--2001
151(18)
The New Cyber-City: The Interactive Game Industry in the New Millennium
169(24)
PART THREE CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
193(101)
Workers and Warez: Labour and Piracy in the Global Game Market
197(21)
Pocket Monsters: Marketing in the Perpetual Upgrade Marketplace
218(28)
Designing Militarized Masculinity: Violence, Gender, and the Bias of Game Experience
246(23)
Sim Capital
269(25)
Coda Paradox Regained 294(5)
Notes 299(32)
Bibliography 331(26)
Index 357

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

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