Full Description
A lot of work has been done talking about what masculinity is and what it does within video games, but less has been given to considering how and why this happens, and the processes involved. This book considers the array of daily relationships involved in producing masculinity and how those actions and relationships translate to video games. Moreover, it examines the ways the actual play of the games maps onto the stories to create contradictory moments that show that, while toxic masculinity certainly exists, it is far from inevitable. Topics covered include the nature of masculine apprenticeship and nurturing, labor, fatherhood, the scapegoating of women, and reckoning with mortality, among many others.
Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Essentially Playing: Considering Gender, Sex and Sexuality in Video Games and Game Scholarship
Chapter 2. Builders of Boys, Makers of Men: Examining the Ludic Processes of the Masculine Apprenticeship
Chapter 3. "Putting some work in": Masculinity, Labor and Hypo-ludicity
Chapter 4. "I am sworn to carry your burdens": Eliminating and Scapegoating Women in Video Games
Chapter 5. "Welcome to the family, son": Maligned and Misunderstood Fathers in "Dadified" Video Games
Chapter 6. "It's the terror of knowing": Resurrection, Melancholia and the Elegiac Game
Afterword
Chapter Notes
References
Index
