Overview

How do we make space for video games in the places where we live, work, and play—and who is allowed to feel welcome there? Despite attempts to expand games beyond their conventional audience of young men, the physical contexts of gameplay and production remain off-limits and unsafe for so many. The Grounds of Gaming explores the physical places where games are played and how they contribute to the persistence of gaming's problematic politics. Drawing on fieldwork in an array of sites, author Nicholas Taylor explores the real-world settings where games are played, watched, discussed and designed. Sometimes these places are sticky, dark, and stinky; other times they are pristine and well appointed. Situating its chapters in such scenes as domestic gaming setups, campus computer labs, LAN parties, esports arenas, and convention centers, Taylor maps the infrastructural connections between games, place, masculinity, and whiteness. By inviting us to reconsider gaming's cultural politics from the ground up, The Grounds of Gaming offers new theoretical insights and practical resources regarding how to make game cultures and industries more inclusive.

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9780253071224

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Reviews

"""The Grounds of Gaming is a brilliantly inventive dive into how our social and technical infrastructures help us to understand the masculinities of the men who inhabit them. This is the rare book that dissects masculinity with a firm understanding of systemic oppression, while also approaching the topic with introspection, humility, humor, and compassion. Field defining. A must read!""—Aaron Trammell, author of The Privilege of Play ""Nicholas Taylor's The Grounds of Gaming offers an unusually riveting account of how white masculinity gathers its power in the mundane architectures of everyday game play. In doing so, Taylor sets a new scene for feminist refusal by way of a feminist infrastructural strategy for both gaming and the study of games. Taylor has also provided a stunning example of an ethnography of space that will prove useful beyond media studies and game studies.""—Sarah Sharma, author of In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics"

Author Information

Nicholas Taylor is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. He is editor with Gerald Voorhees of Masculinities in Play and editor with Chris Ingraham of LEGOfied: Building Blocks as Media.

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