This book argues that videogames address contemporary, middle-class anxieties about poverty in the United States. The early chapters consider gaming as a modern form of slumming and explore the ways in which titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and World of Warcraft thematize poverty. The argument turns to the field of literary studies to identify analytical frameworks for addressing and understanding these themes. Throughout, the book considers how the academic area of inquiry known as game studies has developed over time, and makes use of such scholarship to present, frame, and value its major claims and findings. In its conclusion, the book models how poverty themes might be identified and associated for the purpose of gaining greater insights into how games can shape, and also be shaped by, the player’s economic expectations.

This book argues that videogames address contemporary, middle-class anxieties about poverty in the United States. The early chapters consider gaming as a modern form of slumming and explore the ways in which titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and World of Warcraft thematize poverty. The argument turns to the field of literary studies to identify analytical frameworks for addressing and understanding these themes. Throughout, the book considers how the academic area of inquiry known as game studies has developed over time, and makes use of such scholarship to present, frame, and value its major claims and findings. In its conclusion, the book models how poverty themes might be identified and associated for the purpose of gaining greater insights into how games can shape, and also be shaped by, the player's economic expectations. Adam Crowley is Professor of English and Director of Composition at Husson University, USA. He is author of The Wealth of Virtual Nations: Videogame Currencies (2017). .

This edited collection investigates topics related to environmental humanities through their inclusion, exploration, or critique in contemporary video games. It focuses on how video games are a site for creating and interacting within environments, with analysis that showcases how environments are shaped within video games as well as serve as a reflection of our real world. This crossroad between the virtual and the real allows us to consider the ways in which the concepts, theories, and issues facing our real-world environment can be understood and studied through video games, particularly via the power of interactive play to teach. This book looks into how video games might empower their players to make real-world change through their immersive environments. Finally, the volume offers a consideration of ecological crises through an exploration of post-apocalyptic narratives in a wide variety of video games. This close textual analysis of video game narratives and play structures allows insight into how and why such stories were crafted and explores the various intersections between these fictional play environments and the conditions of our real world.

This collection intends to fill a long overdue research gap on the praxeological aspects of the relationships between disabilities, accessibility, and digital gaming. It will focus on the question of how Game Studies can profit from a Disability Studies perspective of en-/disabling gaming and issues of disability, (in)accessibility and ableism, and vice versa. Instead of departing from the medical model of disability that informs a wide range of publications on “disabled” gaming and that preconceives users as either “able-bodied,” “normal” or as “disabled,” “deficit,” or “unable to play,” our central premise is that dis/ability is not an essential characteristic of the playing subject. We rather intend to analyze the complex infrastructures of playing, i.e., the complex interplay of heterogeneous human and non-human actors, that are en- or disabling.

Slum tourism is a controversial pastime on the rise globally. This volume provides a collection of studies that shed light on the phenomenon from historical, geographical, sociological, political and anthropological perspectives. Based on unique and in depth research from across the globe, the collection forms an indispensable resource for Scholars and Students of tourism and the geographies of inequality. Connecting slum tourism to debates over the ethics and aesthetics of travel, volunteering, second homes and cross border mobilities, the case studies provide ample ground for an understanding of slum tourism as transversal terrain in which the questions of global equity came to the fore. This book was published as a special issue of Tourism Geographies.

What is a videogame? What makes a videogame "good"? If a game is supposed to be fun, can it be fun without a good story? If another is supposed to be an accurate simulation, does it still need to be entertaining? With the ever-expanding explosion of new videogames and new developments in the gaming world, questions about videogame criticism are becoming more complex. The differing definitions that players and critics use to decide what a game is and what makes a game successful, often lead to different ideas of how games succeed or fail. This collection of new essays puts on display the variety and ambiguity of videogames. Each essay is a work of game criticism that takes a different approach to defining the game and analyzing it. Through analysis and critical methods, these essays discuss whether a game is defined by its rules, its narrative, its technology, or by the activity of playing it, and the tensions between these definitions. With essays on Overwatch, Dark Souls 3, Far Cry 4, Farmville and more, this collection attempts to show the complex changes, challenges and advances to game criticism in the era of videogames.

Interrogating Popular Culture: Key Questions offers an accessible introduction to the study of popular culture, both historical and contemporary. Beginning from the assumption that cultural systems are dynamic, contradictory, and hard to pin down, Stacy Takacs explores the field through a survey of important questions, addressing: Definitions: What is popular culture? How has it developed over time? What functions does it serve? Method: What is a proper object of study? How should we analyze and interpret popular texts and practices? Influence: How does popular culture relate to social power and control? Identity and disposition: How do we relate to popular culture? How does it move and connect us? Environment: How does popular culture shape the ways we think, feel and act in the world? Illustrated with a wide variety of case studies, covering everything from medieval spectacle to reality TV, sports fandom and Youtube, Interrogating Popular Culture gives students a theoretically rich analytical toolkit for understanding the complex relationship between popular culture, identity and society.