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Gamer Theory
by
Ever get the feeling that life's a game with changing rules and no clear sides, one you are compelled to play yet cannot win? Welcome to gamespace. Gamespace is where and how we live today. It is everywhere and nowhere; the main chance, the best shot, the big leagues, the only game in town. In a world thus configured, McKenzie Wark contends, digital computer games are the
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Hardcover, 240 pages
Published
April 1st 2007
by Harvard University Press
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For the love of God, people! Don't we academics get enough scorn heaped on us as it is???
Its really not fair: if you work in a nice, traditional academic discipline, producing post-imperialist readings of Moby Dick, people in the general populace mock you for indulging in empty ivory-tower navel gazing, but at least they generally leave you alone to tweed-it-up in peace.
Move over to cultural studies, or visual rhetoric, or media theory and you get to hang out at the cool kids table at interdisci ...more
Its really not fair: if you work in a nice, traditional academic discipline, producing post-imperialist readings of Moby Dick, people in the general populace mock you for indulging in empty ivory-tower navel gazing, but at least they generally leave you alone to tweed-it-up in peace.
Move over to cultural studies, or visual rhetoric, or media theory and you get to hang out at the cool kids table at interdisci ...more
Who is this book written for? Game Designers? I don't know many designers who could dig through and decipher prose like this:
"When the topographic develops one dimension of telegraphy--its flow of information across space--the topological develops the other--its intricate coding and addressing. Where the topographic is an analog flow, the topological is the digital divide. It is a line of another type. It is a line that, for a brief, burning moment, reignited the dreams of a topos."
Got that? Yea ...more
"When the topographic develops one dimension of telegraphy--its flow of information across space--the topological develops the other--its intricate coding and addressing. Where the topographic is an analog flow, the topological is the digital divide. It is a line of another type. It is a line that, for a brief, burning moment, reignited the dreams of a topos."
Got that? Yea ...more
Feb 08, 2010
Sarah W
added it
I'm trying to put away my judgmental pants while reading this, but it's difficult.
I had to skim parts of this book, but it got me thinking about various things. It's interesting to see how a book initially presented online translates to paper publishing. ...more
I had to skim parts of this book, but it got me thinking about various things. It's interesting to see how a book initially presented online translates to paper publishing. ...more
I understand the origins of this work being not really in a book format, and there are some very interesting ideas scattered throughout the whole thing, but in the end it just stays an at points random-ish collection of notes (with a whiff of pretense here and there) rather than a cohesive statement on Gamespace as a principle of analog reality.
Very disappointing - posturing, pretentious, muddled and juvenile. This author is trying way too hard to sound cool; he comes off more like a parody of Wired magazine cross-bred with a bad imitation of Hunter Thompson. This is one of those books that leads me to mourn the money I spent to buy it and the time I wasted reading it, and to make a note of the author's name so I never buy anything else of his.
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Mckenzie Wark has written a number of strong books, this foray leads us into the world and culture of gaming, something that for Wark becomes more than simply a discussion of how video games work in our culture, but more how our culture has become like a game. Wark's arguments are clear and convincing, if bleak at times. However, Wark refuses pessimism and instead attempts to forge what is also the book's title 'gamer theory' - a theory that will throw a wrench in contemporary culture.
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I've posted a general response to certain facets of Gamer Theory here: http://www.tropopausing.com/blog/2014....
A very provocative text. I enjoyed the pastiche quality of preponderant quotations and thought it suited the content well. ...more
A very provocative text. I enjoyed the pastiche quality of preponderant quotations and thought it suited the content well. ...more
The book that obliterates most of game studies history of inconsequential arguments while simultaneously implicating military entertainment complex so intricately with games painting a solid argument with his playful writing style.
dense but interesting
If you're a games geek and interested in philosophy then this is your book!
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Here is a link to my review from the Brooklyn Rail, June 2007 issue:
[http://brooklynrail.org/2007/6/books/...] ...more
[http://brooklynrail.org/2007/6/books/...] ...more
Just re-read. Wark is a genius. A touch of humor and, for me, the defining book of our digital era.
ugghh too pithy.
this book needs a constant update. A good book nevertheless.
This text is fascinating, but so dense in terms of theory. I'll definitely have to reread this.
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