Routledge Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games

Joystick Soldiers is the first anthology to examine the reciprocal relationship between militarism and video games. War has been an integral theme of the games industry since the invention of the first video game, Spacewar! in 1962.While war video games began as entertainment, military organizations soon saw their potential as combat simulation and recruitment tools. A profitable and popular relationship was established between the video game industry and the military, and continues today with video game franchises like America’s Army, which was developed by the U.S.Army as a public relations and recruitment tool. This collection features all new essays that explore how modern warfare has been represented in and influenced by video games. The contributors explore the history and political economy of video games and the "military-entertainment complex;" present textual analyses of military-themed video games such as Metal Gear Solid; and offer reception studies of gamers, fandom, and political activism within online gaming. Review "Joystick Soldiers plunges into the crossfire surrounding the key issues of war and video games to bring the reader thought provoking analyses and arguments about the history of games, the role of the military and government in game development, and contemporary representations of war in popular games such as Call of Duty 4 and America’s Army. Contributors explore how players make sense of war in games, and how the military-entertainment complex is shaping our larger understandings of militarism, war, and what it means to be a citizen today. Along the way, we gain a broader understanding of how both war and games have worked to construct understandings of each other." - Mia Consalvo, author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames "Joystick Soldiers is an extremely valuable collection that offers multiple perspectives--contributors include a military trainer and a retired officer, as well as academics in various disciplines--on the relationship between militarism and video games. The collection as a whole provides the richest and most detailed picture yet of what theorists have called the ‘military-entertainment complex,’ while focusing attention on the specific video games that help to manifest that complex in the culture but also, surprisingly, offer a platform for critique and resistance." - Steven E. Jones, author of The Meaning of Video Games "...theoretically satisfying, the book is approachable as the authors explore a diverse range of topics..." - Context Magazine   About the Author Nina B. Huntemann is Associate Professor of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts. She produced and directed the documentary film Game Over: Gender, Race, and Violence in Video Games, distributed by the Media Education Foundation. Matthew Thomas Payne is a Media Studies doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. He has served as a coordinating editor for FlowTV (www.flowtv.org), a critical forum for television and new media culture, and is a co-editor of the anthology Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence (Routledge, forthcoming).