1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910800030903321

Autore

Farca Gerald

Titolo

Playing Dystopia : Nightmarish Worlds in Video Games and the Player's Aesthetic Response / Gerald Farca

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Bielefeld, : transcript Verlag, 2018

ISBN

3-8394-4597-3

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (435 pages)

Collana

Bild und Bit. Studien zur digitalen Medienkultur ; 8

Disciplina

822

Soggetti

Video Games; Utopia; Dystopia; Science Fiction; Culture; Phenomenology; Media; Computer Games; Media Aesthetics; Digital Media; Sociology of Technology; Media Studies

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter    1  Contents    5  Acknowledgments    9  Introduction    11  Preface to Part I    35  1. Utopia and the Dream of a Better World    37  2. Dystopia: Nightmarish Worlds as Distorted Anxiety Dreams    65  3. Warning, Effectiveness, and Targets of the Video Game Dystopia    113  Preface to Part II    155  4. Towards the Implied Player    159  5. Estrangement Through World and Agency    251  Preface to Part III    323  6. Night-Time Dreams and Wish-Fulfilment: The Struggle for Utopia in BIOSHOCK INFINITE    325  7. THE LAST OF US and the Journey to Nature    373  8. Horizons and the Video Game Dystopia    403  List of Abbreviations    409  Glossary    411  Ludography    415  Bibliography    417

Sommario/riassunto

Video games permeate our everyday existence. They immerse players in fascinating gameworlds and exciting experiences, often inviting them in various ways to reflect on the enacted events.  Gerald Farca explores the genre of dystopian video games and the player's aesthetic response to their nightmarish gameworlds. Players, he argues, will gradually come to see similarities between the virtual dystopia and their own ›offline‹ environment, thus learning to stay wary of social and political developments.  In his analysis, Farca draws from a variety of research fields, such as literary theory and game studies, combining them into a coherent theory of aesthetic response to dystopian games.

»Farca ist ein Grundlagenwerk des Computerspiel(en)s gelungen, das



Strukturen des Spiels mit den Aktivitäten der Spieler verbindet.«  Lothar Mikos, tv diskurs, 1 (2020)    Besprochen in:  gmk-Newsletter, 9 (2019)