Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
259
result(s) for
"Video games -- United States -- History"
Sort by:
Racing the Beam
The Atari Video Computer System dominated the home video game market so completely that \"Atari\" became the generic term for a video game console. The Atari VCS was affordable and offered the flexibility of changeable cartridges. Nearly a thousand of these were created, the most significant of which established new techniques, mechanics, and even entire genres. This book offers a detailed and accessible study of this influential video game console from both computational and cultural perspectives. Studies of digital media have rarely investigated platforms--the systems underlying computing. This book (the first in a series of Platform Studies) does so, developing a critical approach that examines the relationship between platforms and creative expression. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the Atari VCS itself and examine in detail six game cartridges: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge, Pitfall!, and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. They describe the technical constraints and affordances of the system and track developments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. Adventure, for example, was the first game to represent a virtual space larger than the screen (anticipating the boundless virtual spaces of such later games as World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto), by allowing the player to walk off one side into another space; and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was an early instance of interaction between media properties and video games. Montfort and Bogost show that the Atari VCS--often considered merely a retro fetish object--is an essential part of the history of video games.
eBook
Coin-Operated Americans
Video gaming: it's a boy's world, right? That's what the industry wants us to think. Why and how we came to comply are what Carly A. Kocurek investigates in this provocative consideration of how an industry's craving for respectability hooked up with cultural narratives about technology, masculinity, and youth at the video arcade.
From the dawn of the golden age of video games with the launch of Atari'sPongin 1972, through the industry-wide crash of 1983, to the recent nostalgia-bathed revival of the arcade,Coin-Operated Americansexplores the development and implications of the \"video gamer\" as a cultural identity. This cultural-historical journey takes us to the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, for a close look at the origins of competitive gaming. It immerses us in video gaming's first moral panic, generated by Exidy'sDeath Race(1976), an unlicensed adaptation of the filmDeath Race 2000. And it ventures into the realm of video game films such asTronandWarGames, in which gamers become brilliant, boyish heroes.
Whether conducting a phenomenological tour of a classic arcade or evaluating attempts, then and now, to regulate or eradicate arcades and coin-op video games, Kocurek does more than document the rise and fall of a now-booming industry. Drawing on newspapers, interviews, oral history, films, and television, she examines the factors and incidents that contributed to the widespread view of video gaming as an enclave for young men and boys.
A case study of this once emergent and now revived medium became the presumed enclave of boys and young men,Coin-Operated Americansis history that holds valuable lessons for contemporary culture as we struggle to address pervasive sexism in the domain of video games-and in the digital working world beyond.
eBook
Coin-operated Americans : rebooting boyhood at the video game arcade
\"Video gaming: it's a boy's world, right? That's what the industry wants us to think. Why and how we came to comply are what Carly A. Kocurek investigates in this provocative consideration of how an industry's craving for respectability hooked up with cultural narratives about technology, masculinity, and youth at the video arcade.From the dawn of the golden age of video games with the launch of Atari's Pong in 1972, through the industry-wide crash of 1983, to the recent nostalgia-bathed revival of the arcade, Coin-Operated Americans explores the development and implications of the \"video gamer\" as a cultural identity. This cultural-historical journey takes us to the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, for a close look at the origins of competitive gaming. It immerses us in video gaming's first moral panic, generated by Exidy's Death Race (1976), an unlicensed adaptation of the film Death Race 2000. And it ventures into the realm of video game films such as Tron and WarGames, in which gamers become brilliant, boyish heroes.Whether conducting a phenomenological tour of a classic arcade or evaluating attempts, then and now, to regulate or eradicate arcades and coin-op video games, Kocurek does more than document the rise and fall of a now-booming industry. Drawing on newspapers, interviews, oral history, films, and television, she examines the factors and incidents that contributed to the widespread view of video gaming as an enclave for young men and boys.A case study of this once emergent and now revived medium became the presumed enclave of boys and young men, Coin-Operated Americans is history that holds valuable lessons for contemporary culture as we struggle to address pervasive sexism in the domain of video games--and in the digital working world beyond. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
War without Bodies
Historically the bodies of civilians are the most damaged by the
increasing mechanization and derealization of warfare, but this is
not reflected in the representation of violence in popular media.
In War Without Bodies , author Martin Danahay argues that
the media in the United States in particular constructs a \"war
without bodies\" in which neither the corpses of soldiers or
civilians are shown. War Without Bodies traces the
intertwining of new communications technologies and war from the
Crimean War, when Roger Fenton took the first photographs of the
British army and William Howard Russell used the telegraph to
transmit his dispatches, to the first of three \"video wars\" in the
Gulf region in 1990-91, within the context of a war culture that
made the costs of organized violence acceptable to a wider public.
New modes of communication have paradoxically not made more war
\"real\" but made it more ubiquitous and at the same time
unremarkable as bodies are erased from coverage. Media such as
photography and instantaneous video initially seemed to promise
more realism but were assimilated into existing conventions that
implicitly justified war. These new representations of war were
framed in a way that erased the human cost of violence and replaced
it with images that defused opposition to warfare. Analyzing
poetry, photographs, video and video games the book illustrates the
ways in which war was framed in these different historical
contexts. It examines the cultural assumptions that influenced the
reception of images of war and discusses how death and damage to
bodies was made acceptable to the public. War Without
Bodies aims to heighten awareness of how acceptance of war is
coded into texts and how active resistance to such hidden messages
can help prevent future unnecessary wars.
eBook
The guy who invented home video games : Ralph Baer and his awesome invention
\"Read about Ralph Baer and find out how he invented the first video games\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
The Netflix Effect
Netflix is the definitive media company of the 21st century. It was among the first to parlay new Internet technologies into a successful business model, and in the process it changed how consumers access film and television. It is now one of the leading providers of digitally delivered media content and is continually expanding access across a host of platforms and mobile devices. Despite its transformative role, however, Netflix has drawn very little critical attention—far less than competitors such as YouTube, Apple, Amazon, Comcast, and HBO. This collection addresses this gap, as the essays are designed to critically explore the breadth and diversity of Netflix’s effect from a variety of different scholarly perspectives, a necessary approach considering the hybrid nature of Netflix; its inextricable links to new models of media production and distribution, to new modes of viewer engagement and consumer behavior, its relationship to existing media conglomerates and consumer electronics, to its capabilities as a web-based service provider and data network, and to its reliance on a broader technological infrastructure. Marking the first scholarly work to address its significance, The Netflix Effect provides a critical framework for understanding the company’s specific strategies as well as its broader social, economic, and cultural impact.
eBook
Jerry changed the game! : how engineer Jerry Lawson revolutionized video games forever
\"This engaging picture book biography explores how Jerry Lawson, a Black engineer, revolutionized the video game industry. Before Xbox and Playstation and Nintendo Switch, there was a tinkerer named Jerry Lawson. As a boy, Jerry loved playing with springs, sprockets, and gadgety things. When he grew up, Jerry became an engineer-a professional tinkerer! In the 1970s, Jerry decided to tinker with video games. Back then, if players wanted a new video game, they had to buy an entire new console. This made gaming very expensive. Jerry was determined to fix this problem. He hit some roadblocks along the way and had to repeat a level or two, but it was never GAME OVER for Jerry. After working hard to find a solution, he finally LEVELED UP and built a brand new kind of video game console-one that allowed players to switch out video game cartridges! He also founded Video Soft, Inc., the first African American owned video game company in the country. Jerry's tinkering and inventions changed the video gaming world forever. Today, gamers have access to hundreds of video games at the push of a button, all thanks to him. GAME ON!\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
America's Digital Army
America's Digital Armyis an ethnographic study of the link between interactive entertainment and military power, drawing on Robertson Allen's fieldwork observing video game developers, military strategists, U.S. Army marketing agencies, and an array of defense contracting companies that worked to produce the official U.S. Army video game,America's Army. Allen uncovers the methods by which gaming technologies such asAmerica's Army,with military funding and themes, engage in a militarization of American society that constructs everyone, even nonplayers of games, as virtual soldiers available for deployment.America's Digital Armyexamines the army's desire for \"talented\" soldiers capable of high-tech work; beliefs about America's enemies as reflected in the game's virtual combatants; tensions over best practices in military recruiting; and the sometimes overlapping cultures of gamers, game developers, and soldiers.Allen reveals how binary categorizations such as soldier versus civilian, war versus game, work versus play, and virtual versus real become blurred-if not broken down entirely-through games and interactive media that reflect the U.S. military's ludic imagination of future wars, enemies, and soldiers.
eBook