Playing Dystopia : Nightmarish Worlds in Video Games and the Player's Aesthetic Response / Gerald Farca

• VerfasserIn: Farca, Gerald
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Bild und Bit. Studien zur digitalen Medienkultur
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (435 pages).

Video games permeate our everyday existence. They immerse players in fascinating gameworlds and exciting experiences, often inviting them in various ways to reflect on the enacted events. Gerald Farca explores the genre of dystopian video games and the player's aesthetic response to their nightmarish gameworlds. Players, he argues, will gradually come to see similarities between the virtual dystopia and their own ›offline‹ environment, thus learning to stay wary of social and political developments. In his analysis, Farca draws from a variety of research fields, such as literary theory and game studies, combining them into a coherent theory of aesthetic response to dystopian games.

»Farca ist ein Grundlagenwerk des Computerspiel(en)s gelungen, das Strukturen des Spiels mit den Aktivitäten der Spieler verbindet.« Lothar Mikos, tv diskurs, 1 (2020) Besprochen in: gmk-Newsletter, 9 (2019)

Table of Contents

Frontmatter 1 Contents 5 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 11 Preface to Part I 35 1. Utopia and the Dream of a Better World 37 2. Dystopia: Nightmarish Worlds as Distorted Anxiety Dreams 65 3. Warning, Effectiveness, and Targets of the Video Game Dystopia 113 Preface to Part II 155 4. Towards the Implied Player 159 5. Estrangement Through World and Agency 251 Preface to Part III 323 6. Night-Time Dreams and Wish-Fulfilment: The Struggle for Utopia in BIOSHOCK INFINITE 325 7. THE LAST OF US and the Journey to Nature 373 8. Horizons and the Video Game Dystopia 403 List of Abbreviations 409 Glossary 411 Ludography 415 Bibliography 417