Theory book on games: Gamer Theory

A book that treats video games as an art form worth studying is not a completely new idea but they are still relatively few and far between. Cultural magazine Brooklyn Rail features an article this month reviewing one such book, Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark.

Gamer Theory takes a philosophical approach to the art of games, describing how they have shaped the way we look at the world as well as what games themselves say about the world. According to Wark, “The computer games that the gamer finds there are the ruins not of a lost past but of an impossible future.” The first few pages compare gaming to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

Brooklyn Rail describes Gamer Theory as,

“…a primer for gamers, teaching them how to think critically about this gamespace we live in. In a new digital era, in which we contend, not as citizens of one nation against another, or one belief system against another, but as gamers against other gamers, Wark believes the new “historical persona” of the gamer is best equipped to navigate the world by becoming not just a gamer, but a theorist.”

Gamer Theory was originally designed as a project for “Institute for the Future of the Book,” full of reader comments on his in-progress work. Gamer Theory is available in book form from the Harvard University Press, but you can also read the in-progress online version, GAM3R 7H30RY.

Read [The Brooklyn Rail] Also Read [GAM3R 7H30RY] Product Page [Harvard University Press]