Vision

Edited by Matteo Bittanti, videoludica. game culture is a series of books about critically acclaimed and much-loved videogames of the past 40 years. By turns passionate, creative, and always informed, the thought-provoking books in this series demonstrate many different styles of writing about videogames. What binds this series together, and what brings it to life, is that all of the authors – academics, scholars, critics, gamers, and writers – are the cultures that these games spawned after their releases. Each meditation revels in the distinct nature of the chosen game – or game series, or even game genre – providing insightful commentary to an overlooked practice. Available in three formats (Monographs, Readers, and Illustrated), these volumes discuss video games from a broad academic and critical perspective, setting characteristics, themes and techniques in context and exploring the game’s significance.

Currently available in Italian only, videoludica. game culture brings together the most interesting writing about videogames, treating its subjects with the kind of intelligence and carefully considered respect they deserve. Being the natural evolution of Ludologica. Videogames d’Autore, videoludica. game culture preserves the original idiosyncrasy of the original, with a new, provocative, at times even obsessive, format. These books will appeal to everyone from hard core gamers to hard core academics.

‘Reading texts is a complex business; and the complexity of popular texts lies as much in their uses as in their internal structures. The densely woven texture of relationships upon which meaning depends is social rather than textual and is constructed not by the author in the text, but by the reader; it occurs at the moment of reading when the social relationships of the reader meet the discursive structure of the text.” (John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture, 1989: 122)