Full Description
A SERIOUS EXPLORATION INTO THE CULTURE OF VIDEO GAMES AND THEIR IMPACT ON SOCIETY No longer just for kids and fanatics, video games have been growing in sophistication and popularity with each passing year. In GAMERS, noted writers, artists, scholars, poets and programmers talk about what gaming means to them and discuss the growing impact of video games on fashion, fiction, film, and music. This collection of essays feature a glittering mix of topics from the esoteric to the purely entertaining: gender identity in relation to gaming, video golf as a meditative exercise, Ms. Pacman versus The Sims, the similarities between writing fiction and programming, the confessions of a video poker junkie, and much more in this witty, wide-screen look at how video games are becoming part of the cultural landscape. The writers, poets, programmers, visual artists, cartoonists, game testers and championship gamers who have contributed to this anthology aren't ready to accept the current view that computer games are purely entertainment.Video games have provided each of us with reasons to love them, whether as nostalgic links to childhood, imaginative escapes from the workaday world, competitive challenges to be met and conquered or as vibrant steps toward a promising new art form. From the creation of Spacewar! in 1962 to the console-in-every-household proliferation today, games have provided us with something books, music, the plastic arts and even film have not. We get to act as well as react.
