Gameplay Mode

War, Simulation, and Technoculture

Bibliographic Data

ID19976872
AuthorsPatrick Crogan (corresponding author)
Year2011
Pages222
Publication date2011-12-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueGameplay mode (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Minnesota Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5749/minnesota/9780816653348.001.0001
OpenAlexW4250060766
Open LibraryOL25328890M
ISBN9780816653348
LanguageEN
Citations received32

From flight simulators and first-person shooters to MMPOG and innovative strategy games like 2008’s Spore, computer games owe their development to computer simulation and imaging produced by and for the military during the Cold War. To understand their place in contemporary culture, this book argues, we must first understand the military logics that created and continue to inform them. The book situates computer games and gaming within the contemporary technocultural moment, connecting them to developments in the conceptualization of pure war since the Second World War and the evolution of simulation as both a technological achievement and a sociopolitical tool. The text begins by locating the origins of computer games in the development of cybernetic weapons systems in the 1940s, the U.S. Air Force’s attempt to use computer simulation to protect the country against nuclear attack, and the U.S. military’s development of the SIMNET simulated battlefield network in the late 1980s. It then examines specific game modes and genres in detail, from the creation of virtual space in fight simulation games and the co-option of narrative forms in gameplay to the continuities between online gaming sociality and real-world communities and the potential of experimental or artgame projects like September 12th: A Toy World and Painstation, to critique conventional computer games

Adversary · Art · Computer game · Computer security · Conceptualization · Game mechanics · Human–computer interaction · Mode (computer interface) · Multimedia · Narrative · Sociality · Sociology · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Engineering · Computer flight games · Computer games · Computer war games · Games · Jeux de guerre sur ordinateur · Jeux de pilotage d'avions sur ordinateur · Jeux vidéo · Popular Culture · Social aspects · Social Science · Video & Electronic · Video games