Melanie Swalwell – författare

This anthology addresses videogames long history of fandom, and fans’ important role in game history and preservation. In order to better understand and theorize video games and game playing, it is necessary to study the activities of gamers themselves. Gamers are active creators in generating meaning; they are creators of media texts they share with other fans (mods, walkthroughs, machinima, etc); and they have played a central role in curating and preserving games through activities such as their collective work on: emulation, creating online archives and the forensic archaeology of code. This volume brings together essays that explore game fandom from diverse perspectives that examine the complex processes at work in the phenomenon of game fandom and its practices. Contributors aim to historicize game fandom, recognize fan contributions to game history, and critically assess the role of fans in ensuring that game culture endures through the development of archives.

This collection of essays situates the digital gaming phenomenon alongside broader debates in cultural and media studies. Contributors to this volume maintain that computer games are not simply toys, but rather circulate as commodities, new media technologies, and items of visual culture that are embedded in complex social practices. Apart from placing games within longer arcs of cultural history and broader critical debates, the contributors to this volume all adopt a pedagogical and theoretical approach to studying games and gameplay, drawing on the interdisciplinary resources of the humanities and social sciences, particularly new media studies.In eight essays, the authors develop rich and nuanced understandings of the aesthetic appeals and pleasurable engagements of digital gameplay. Topics include the role of "cheats" and "easter eggs" in influencing cheating as an aesthetic phenomenon of gameplay; the relationship between videogames, gambling, and addiction; players' aesthetic and kinaesthetic interactions with computing technology; and the epistemology and phenomenology of popular strategy-based wargames and their relationship with real-world military applications. Notes and a bibliography accompany each essay, and the work includes several screenshots, images, and photographs.

This anthology addresses videogames long history of fandom, and fans’ important role in game history and preservation. In order to better understand and theorize video games and game playing, it is necessary to study the activities of gamers themselves. Gamers are active creators in generating meaning; they are creators of media texts they share with other fans (mods, walkthroughs, machinima, etc); and they have played a central role in curating and preserving games through activities such as their collective work on: emulation, creating online archives and the forensic archaeology of code. This volume brings together essays that explore game fandom from diverse perspectives that examine the complex processes at work in the phenomenon of game fandom and its practices. Contributors aim to historicize game fandom, recognize fan contributions to game history, and critically assess the role of fans in ensuring that game culture endures through the development of archives.

This book brings together essays on game history and historiography that reflect on the significance of locality. Game history did not unfold uniformly and the particularities of space and place matter, yet most digital game and software histories are silent with respect to geography.