LEADER 04301nam 2200469 450 001 9910760290403321 005 20231204220348.0 010 $a9783031423710$b(electronic bk.) 010 $z9783031423703 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC30789692 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL30789692 035 $a(EXLCZ)9928517196400041 100 $a20231103h20242024 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn#|||||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 14$aThe Child in Videogames $eFrom the Meek, to the Mighty, to the Monstrous /$fEmma Reay 205 $aFirst edition. 210 1$aCham, Switzerland :$cSpringer Nature Switzerland AG,$d[2024] 210 4$d©2024 215 $a1 online resource (229 pages) $cillustrations 311 08$aPrint version: Reay, Emma The Child in Videogames Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, c2023 9783031423703 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $aIntro -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Figures -- 1 Dreaming the Myth Onwards -- A Seat at the Kid's Table -- Childish Violence and Violent Children -- Adult Joy -- Destabilising Age-Based Identities -- Chapter Overview -- References -- 2 A Survey of Child-Characters in Contemporary Videogames -- The Invisible Child -- The Invincible Child -- Playable Child-Characters -- Central, Supporting, Background -- Age, Race, Gender -- Supporting Child NPCs -- Death -- Child-Antagonists -- A Shared Shorthand -- Approaches to Generating Taxonomies of Child-Characters -- Laying Bare the Faults -- Critical Ekphrasis -- References -- 3 The Child as a Social Construct -- Coded Kids -- Boy or Blob? -- History of the Child -- Who Thinks Beating a Child is Entertainment? -- Misogyny and Infantilisation -- References -- 4 Child-Killers and Killer-Children -- Agency and Eeriness -- Little Monsters -- Authority and Autonomy -- The Waif as an Indecipherable Cipher -- Who Won? -- Stereotyping as Conditioning -- References -- 5 Child Heroes -- An Unheroic Medium? -- The Spaces Between Oppositions -- It's Dangerous to Go Alone -- The Child Hero -- An Inventory System Theory of Fiction -- Symbiotes and Parasites -- References -- 6 Plushies, Dollies, and Action Figurines -- Cuddly Code -- The Cute Aggression Response -- Playgrounds of Cruelty -- Sensory Nostalgia as an Unscratchable Itch -- Spectral Nostalgia -- Intergenerational Bridges -- A Distant Someplace Else -- Childhood as a Magic Circle of Play -- References -- 7 The Kid in the Fridge -- The Sacrificial Child -- Types of Child Death -- Affection, Anxiety, and Agency -- Violent Retribution and the Hardness of Masculinity -- Lights, Child Death, Action -- Damn You, Ubisoft -- The Case of Kassandra -- References -- 8 Conclusion -- References -- Index. 330 $aDrawing across Games Studies, Childhood Studies, and Children's Literature Studies, this book redirects critical conversations away from questions of whether videogames are ?good'or ?bad'for child-players and towards questions of how videogames produce childhood as a set of social roles and rules in contemporary Western contexts. It does so by cataloguing and critiquing representations of childhood across a corpus of over 500 contemporary videogames. While child-players are frequently the topic of academic debate ? particularly within the fields of psychology, behavioural science, and education research - child-characters in videogames are all but invisible. This book's aim is to make these child-characters not only visible, but legible, and to demonstrate that coded kids in virtual worlds can shed light on how and why the boundaries between adults and children are shifting. 517 3 $aFrom the Meek, to the Mighty, to the Monstrous 606 $aVideo games$xLiterary themes, motives 606 $aChildren in mass media 606 $aVideo games and children 615 0$aVideo games$xLiterary themes, motives. 615 0$aChildren in mass media. 615 0$aVideo games and children. 676 $a794.8 700 $aReay$b Emma$01437542 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 912 $a9910760290403321 996 $aThe Child in Videogames$93598236 997 $aUNINA