Reviews
This book could prove useful for those interested in the impact of video games in the contemporary perception of America such as scholars and professionals in the fields of communication, political activism, and other social sciences.
A highly original and insightful work of scholarship. Wills demonstrates how a close textual reading of video games can add to our understanding of American life, both actual and virtual.
In Gamer Nation, John Wills astutely argues that video game players constitute a nation of sorts, united in a common cause: to play. In a field frequently split between studies of what video games can do and what video games can be, Wills highlights the intersection, where new, imaginative realms and the historical, political ones construct and contest the American experience of the past, the present, and the future.
In Gamer Nation, John Wills shows us how America's story has been told through video games, and we rediscover video games as a medium for the expression of American mythology as rich and revealing as any popular art. An essential read for anyone in game studies or American studies.
John Wills's Gamer Nation is an important work at the intersection of American studies and game studies that raises provocative questions about the way video games imagine and influence American notions of nation, history, and identity.
Book Details
Acknowledgments
Introduction. A New Realm of Play
Chapter One. Games and New Frontiers
Chapter Two. Playing Cowboys and Indians in the Digital Wild West
Chapter Three. Cold War Gaming
Chapter Four. 9/11
Acknowledgments
Introduction. A New Realm of Play
Chapter One. Games and New Frontiers
Chapter Two. Playing Cowboys and Indians in the Digital Wild West
Chapter Three. Cold War Gaming
Chapter Four. 9/11 Code
Chapter Five. Fighting the Virtual War on Terror
Chapter Six. Grand Theft Los Angeles
Chapter Seven. Second Life, Second America
Conclusion. Converging Worlds
Notes
References
Index