Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction. Metagaming: Videogames and the Practice of Play
1. About, Within, Around, Without: A Survey of Six Metagames
Metagame 2: Triforce
2. Stretched Skulls: Anamorphic Games and the Memento Mortem Mortis
Metagame 3: Memento Mortem Mortis
3. Blind Spots: The Phantom Pain, The Helen Keller Simulator, and Blindrunning
Metagame 4: It Is Pitch Black
4. Hundred Thousand Billion Fingers: A Serial History of Super Mario Bros.
Metagame 5: 99 Exercises in Style
5. The Turn of the Tide: E-Sports, Moneyball, and the Undercurrency in Dota 2
Metagame 6: Tide Hunter
6. Breaking the Metagame: Feminist Spoilsports and Magic Circle Jerks
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Gameography
Index

About the Author

Stephanie Boluk is assistant professor in the English department and Cinema and Digital Media Program at University of California, Davis.

Patrick LeMieux is an artist, game designer, and assistant professor in the Cinema and Digital Media Program at University of California, Davis.

Reviews

"Digital media scholars Stephanie Boluk and Patrick Lemieux ask what do games do? They rediscover meaning for the term metagame."—Rhizomes"Interesting analysis of specific examples of the ways in which play has evolved under different circumstances."—CHOICE connect"Boluk and LeMieux shine a hundred spotlights on play’s diversity in, on, around, between, through, and without video games. Their wildly eclectic book careens from competitive e-sports and video game spectatorship to hacking, modding, speedrunning, experimenting, and critiquing video games—all valid ways of engaging with the medium that tend to fall outside analyses which see these activities as merely the metagame."—Critical Inquiry