Video Games and Spatiality in American Studies

Description

While video games have blossomed into the foremost expression of contemporary popular culture over the past decades, their critical study occupies a fringe position in American Studies. In its engagement with video games, this book contributes to their study but with a thematic focus on a particularly important subject matter in American Studies: spatiality. The volume explores the production, representation, and experience of places in video games from the perspective of American Studies. Contributions critically interrogate the use of spatial myths ('wilderness,' 'frontier,' or 'city upon a hill'), explore games as digital borderlands and contact zones, and offer novel approaches to geographical literacy. Eventually, Playing the Field II brings the rich theoretical repertoire of the study of space in American Studies into conversation with questions about the production, representation, and experience of space in video games. Dietmar Meinel, University of Duisburg-Essen. Acknowledgements Table of Contents Video Games and Spatiality in American Studies: An Introduction Part I Notes on the State of Montana: The U.S. American Spatial Imagination and the Retrotopia of Far Cry 5 Ethical Boredom in the Wilderness: Treating Red Dead Redemption 2 as an Ambience Action Game On Postapocalyptic Frontiers in Horizon Zero Dawn Owning Global Spaces and the Frontier in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End From Male to Colonial Gaze: The Intersection of Patriarchy and Colonial Discourse in the Rebooted Tomb Raider Video Game Series The Inevitable Fate of the “Dragonborn:” Selling Player Agency in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Part II Filling Out the Map: The Anxiety of Situatedness and the Topological Poesis of Cartographic Maps in Video Games Detroit: Become Human ‒ Orientational Mapping in the City and (Hi)Story ‘Playing for Space:’ Negotiating and Narrativizing Space in One Hour One Life There is no Place like Gone Home: Exploring Gothic Settings in Video Games Exploring the Digital Land of the Dead: Hybrid Pan-Latinidad in Grim Fandango Part III Breaking Worlds Three Ways Surviving the City: Zombies, Run! and the Horrors of Urban Exercise “#Gameüse:” Planting the Digital Garden Performative Playground: Narrative Spaces in Theater Games Museum Space Invaders: Video Gaming at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Coda: Disoriented in the Field of Play Contributors Index