Game work : language, power, and computer game culture / Ken S. McAllister.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Studying the computer game complex -- Computer games as a mass culture -- Computer games as mass media -- Computer games as psychophysiological force -- Computer games as economic force -- Computer games as instructional force -- So, why study computer games? -- 2. A grammar of gamework -- Rhetoric and dialectic -- Propositions of the gamework -- The problematic of play -- The grammar of gameworks: analyzing the computer game complex -- 3. Capturing imaginations: rhetoric in the art of computer game development -- Rhetorical functions revisited -- Rhetoric in the discourse of game developers -- Working through the grammar of gameworks: agents, influences, manifestations, and transformative locales -- 4. Making meanings out of contradictions: the work of computer game reviewing -- Computer game reviewing online -- Computer game reviewing in print -- Playing up influence to influence play -- Reviewing the meanings of the computer game complex -- 5. The economies of black & white -- Defining economies -- The "purchase" of natural resources -- The "purchase" of spiritual resources -- The "purchase" of temporal resources -- The work of black & white -- Transformative locales: economic force as game work.

"Ken McAllister notes in his introduction to Game Work that, even though computer games are essentially entertainment, they are in fact important mediating agents for the broad exercise of socio-political power." "In considering how the languages, images, gestures, and sounds of video games influence those who build, market, and play them, McAllister highlights the ways in which ideology is coded into games. Computer games, he argues, have transformative effects on the consciousness of players, like poetry, fiction, journalism, and film, but the implications of these transformations are not always clear. Games can work to maintain the status quo or celebrate liberation of tolerate exploitation, and they can conjure feelings of hope or despair, assent or dissent, clarity or confusion."--Jacket.

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