Enacting Platforms

An analysis of the game engine Unreal through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, as well as a critique of the platform studies framework itself.In this first scholarly book on the Unreal game engine, James Malazita explores one of the major contemporary game development plat...

Descripció completa

Guardat en:
Dades bibliogràfiques
Autor principal: Malazita, James
Format: Online
Idioma:anglès
Publicat: The MIT Press 2024
Matèries:
Accés en línia:ONIX_20241025_9780262379076_145
Etiquetes: Afegir etiqueta
Sense etiquetes, Sigues el primer a etiquetar aquest registre!
_version_ 1869522263519264768
author Malazita, James
author_browse Malazita, James
author_facet Malazita, James
author_sort Malazita, James
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description An analysis of the game engine Unreal through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, as well as a critique of the platform studies framework itself.In this first scholarly book on the Unreal game engine, James Malazita explores one of the major contemporary game development platforms through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, revealing how Unreal produces, and is produced by, broader intersections of power. Enacting Platforms takes a novel critical platform studies approach, raising deeper questions: what are the material and cultural limits of platforms themselves? What is the relationship between the analyst and the platform of study, and how does that relationship in part determine what “counts” as the platform itself? Malazita also offers a forward-looking critique of the platform studies framework itself.The Unreal platform serves as a kind of technical and political archive of the games industry, highlighting how the techniques and concerns of games have shifted and accreted over the past 30 years. Today, Unreal is also used in contexts far beyond games, including in public communication, biomedical research, civil engineering, and military simulation and training. The author's depth of technical analysis, combined with new archival findings, contributes to discussions of topics rarely covered in games studies (such as the politics of graphical rendering algorithms), as well as new readings of previously “closed” case studies (such as the engine's entanglement with the US military and American masculinity in America's Army). Culture, Malazita writes, is not “built into” software but emerges through human practices with code.
format Online
id doab-20.500.12854ir-146767
institution Directory of Open Access Books
language eng
publishDate 2024
publishDateRange 2024
publishDateSort 2024
publisher The MIT Press
publisherStr The MIT Press
record_format ojs
spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1467672024-10-25T13:20:17Z Enacting Platforms Malazita, James Unreal Engine Games Studies STS Gender Race Platform Studies Graphics Agency Military Game Technologies thema EDItEUR::U Computing and Information Technology::UD Digital Lifestyle and online world: consumer and user guides::UDX Computer games / online games: strategy guides thema EDItEUR::U Computing and Information Technology::UM Computer programming / software engineering::UMK Games development and programming::UMKL Level design: games programming thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBG Popular beliefs and controversial knowledge An analysis of the game engine Unreal through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, as well as a critique of the platform studies framework itself.In this first scholarly book on the Unreal game engine, James Malazita explores one of the major contemporary game development platforms through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, revealing how Unreal produces, and is produced by, broader intersections of power. Enacting Platforms takes a novel critical platform studies approach, raising deeper questions: what are the material and cultural limits of platforms themselves? What is the relationship between the analyst and the platform of study, and how does that relationship in part determine what “counts” as the platform itself? Malazita also offers a forward-looking critique of the platform studies framework itself.The Unreal platform serves as a kind of technical and political archive of the games industry, highlighting how the techniques and concerns of games have shifted and accreted over the past 30 years. Today, Unreal is also used in contexts far beyond games, including in public communication, biomedical research, civil engineering, and military simulation and training. The author's depth of technical analysis, combined with new archival findings, contributes to discussions of topics rarely covered in games studies (such as the politics of graphical rendering algorithms), as well as new readings of previously “closed” case studies (such as the engine's entanglement with the US military and American masculinity in America's Army). Culture, Malazita writes, is not “built into” software but emerges through human practices with code. 2024-10-25T13:20:15Z 2024-10-25T13:20:15Z 2024 book ONIX_20241025_9780262379076_145 9780262379076 9780262548243 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/146767 eng Platform Studies image/jpeg n/a https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14978.001.0001 The MIT Press The MIT Press 10.7551/mitpress/14978.001.0001 10.7551/mitpress/14978.001.0001 ae0cf962-f685-4933-93d1-916defa5123d 9780262379076 9780262548243 The MIT Press 244 Cambridge open access
spellingShingle Unreal Engine
Games Studies
STS
Gender
Race
Platform Studies
Graphics
Agency
Military
Game Technologies
thema EDItEUR::U Computing and Information Technology::UD Digital Lifestyle and online world: consumer and user guides::UDX Computer games / online games: strategy guides
thema EDItEUR::U Computing and Information Technology::UM Computer programming / software engineering::UMK Games development and programming::UMKL Level design: games programming
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBG Popular beliefs and controversial knowledge
Malazita, James
Enacting Platforms
title Enacting Platforms
title_full Enacting Platforms
title_fullStr Enacting Platforms
title_full_unstemmed Enacting Platforms
title_short Enacting Platforms
title_sort enacting platforms
topic Unreal Engine
Games Studies
STS
Gender
Race
Platform Studies
Graphics
Agency
Military
Game Technologies
thema EDItEUR::U Computing and Information Technology::UD Digital Lifestyle and online world: consumer and user guides::UDX Computer games / online games: strategy guides
thema EDItEUR::U Computing and Information Technology::UM Computer programming / software engineering::UMK Games development and programming::UMKL Level design: games programming
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBG Popular beliefs and controversial knowledge
topic_facet Unreal Engine
Games Studies
STS
Gender
Race
Platform Studies
Graphics
Agency
Military
Game Technologies
thema EDItEUR::U Computing and Information Technology::UD Digital Lifestyle and online world: consumer and user guides::UDX Computer games / online games: strategy guides
thema EDItEUR::U Computing and Information Technology::UM Computer programming / software engineering::UMK Games development and programming::UMKL Level design: games programming
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBG Popular beliefs and controversial knowledge
url ONIX_20241025_9780262379076_145
work_keys_str_mv AT malazitajames enactingplatforms