. This essay interrogates how the novel tackles cultural perceptions of ASD and how Sam’s representation interlinks with the novel’s representation of neoliberalism. It will primarily argue that Stuart’s depiction of Alex and Sam’s performances as avatars both critiques and simultaneously subscribes to aspects of post-millennial neoliberalist society, engaging specifically with dispossession, self-help culture, career-centricity, and the focus on “family” (Stephen Crossley, 2016).
View More Affect, Minecraft and Neoliberal Techno-Utopianism in Keith Stuart’s “A Boy Made of Blocks”Tag: videogames
Procedural Futurism in Climate Change Videogames
Videogames enjoy a privileged relationship with futurity. No other media formats ‘have the same kind of relationship [with] pure, speculative desire that games do’ writes Cameron Kunzelman in Vice. Their affinity with science fiction technologies. Other arguments about the relationship between futurity and videogames argue that something more fundamental is at play, owing specifically to the kind of reversible, branching temporality engendered in videogames. I call this temporality procedural futurism, using a term modelled after Ian Bogost’s notion of procedural rhetoric, to highlight a kind of if/then thinking that is at work in videogames. For Bogost, the constraints and pathways of videogame procedures contain arguments about how the world is, or should, work.
View More Procedural Futurism in Climate Change VideogamesDynamic Storytelling in Episodic Videogames
Rebekah Cunningham provides an account of aspects of reciprocity, dynamism, and seriality in episodic videogames.
View More Dynamic Storytelling in Episodic VideogamesContemporary Storytelling & Seriality: Extended CfP.
We invite proposals for our December special issue: Contemporary Storytelling and Seriality: Production, Consumption, Reception. The deadline for abstracts is now extended to 23 October and…
View More Contemporary Storytelling & Seriality: Extended CfP.Are Video Game Narratives Postmodern?
An editorial in the twentieth anniversary issue of the journal Postmodern Culture in 2010 added another voice to mark the gradual retreat of the postmodern…
View More Are Video Game Narratives Postmodern?