For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing t only outlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games -- games that challenge the accepted rms embedded within the gaming industry -- and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture. Flanagan provides a lively historical context for critical play through twentieth-century art movements, connecting subversive game design to subversive art: her examples of playing house include Dadaist puppet shows and The Sims. She looks at artists' alternative computer-based games and explores games for change, considering the way activist concerns -- including worldwide poverty and AIDS -- can be incorporated into game design. Arguing that this kind of conscious practice -- which w constitutes the avant-garde of the computer game medium -- can inspire new working methods for designers, Flanagan offers a model for designing that will encourage the subversion of popular gaming tropes through new styles of game making, and proposes a theory of alternate game design that focuses on the reworking of contemporary popular game practices.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
MIT Press, MIT Press Ltd
ISBN-10
0262518651
ISBN-13
9780262518659
eBay Product ID (ePID)
138875509
Product Key Features
Author
Mary Flanagan
Format
Trade Paperback (US), Paperback
Language
English
Subject
Computer Games: Programming
Type
Textbook
Dimensions
Weight
544g
Height
229mm
Width
178mm
Additional Product Features
Place of Publication
Cambridge, Mass.
Spine
19mm
Content Note
116 Figures
Author Biography
Mary Flanagan is Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities, Director of the Tiltfactor game research laboratory, and Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Critical Play: Radical Game Design (MIT Press).