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The Business and Culture of Digital Games
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The Business and Culture of Digital Games
Gamework and Gameplay

  • Aphra Kerr - National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland


March 2006 | 192 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
This book explores the lifecycle of digital games. Drawing upon a broad range of media studies perspectives with aspects of sociology, social theory and economics, Aphra Kerr explores this all-pervasive, but under-theorised, aspect of our media environment.

Written as an introductory text for media and game students this book aims present an overview of industry and scholary work on who makes games, where they get made, what kind of media and cultural form they are and who plays them and where.

The Business and Culture of Digital Games looks at:

- games as a new media form;

- the design, development and marketing of games;

- the use of games in public and private spaces.

Combining a theoretical and empirical analysis of the production, content and consumption of computer games, this book will be of interest to many students of media, culture and communication.

 
Introduction
 
Digital Games as Text
 
Digital Games as Cultural Industry
 
Global Networks and Cultures of Production
 
Digital Game Players, Game Pleasures and Play Contexts
 
Non-Entertainment Uses of Digital Games
 
Conclusion

"Fusing digital technologies and cultural creativity, exploiting global networks of production and distribution with little regulation and embodying the liberal ideas of individual choice and agency, digital games seem to epitomize global post-industrial neo-liberal cultural products. Kerr finds reality a bit more complex. For all their globality, she says digital games must still attend to local cultural practices, tastes, and social structures if they are to succeed across the major markets. She set out to establish just how global and new digital games are, and to assess the findings in terms of previous media and social theories."

Reference & Research Book News

"I was intrigued by the behind-the-scenes information, as the book is riddled with interesting facts only those in the digital game industry know. Kerr offers a large amount of information . . . this is a timely book that contributes much to the understanding of video games and the culture associated with them."

Eric K. Cooper
Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books

For instructors

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