Persistence of Code in Game Engine Culture

Eric Freedman is Professor and Dean of the School of Media Arts at Columbia College Chicago. He is the author of Transient Images: Personal Media in Public Frameworks (2011) and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Creative Media Research and the advisory board of the Communication and Media Studies Research Network.

"Freedman skillfully reveals the importance of game engines for understanding contemporary video games. And then, he goes one step further, and reveals just how important they are for understanding cities, consumerism, and nearly every other aspect of modern life. This is a must read for every student of the media."Eric Gordon, Professor of Civic Design, Emerson College"Eric Freedman has taken a complex and concealed topic – how game engines function to constrain and create possibilities, which helps him consider the impact of code on everyday life – and rendered it visible. Freedman presents a well-written and well-informed critical analysis, using case studies that problematize and facilitate the interrogation of these technologies in their social contexts from multiple angles."Rebecca Ann Lind, Associate Professor of Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago

• 1. Game Engine Culture 2. The Mechanics of Play: Situating Game Development 3. Resident Racist: Embodiment and Game Engine Design 4. New Media Ecosystems: Amazon and the Advancing Game Economy 5. Industries at Play: Materiality, Mixed Reality and Mediated Environments 6. Game Engine Architecture: Visualizing Space and Place 7. The Little Engine That Could: Independent Developers and the Global Games Market 8. Queering the Field: Beyond Binary Engine Choices