War Games

The impressive range of perspectives in this collection bring new insight and nuance to the expanding field of war and games. * Debra Ramsay, Lecturer in Film, University of Exeter, UK * Beginning with the predominant tension, and indeed contradiction, between war and games, Hammond and Poetszch have put together a remarkable collection of essays which at turns surprises, challenges and even provokes the reader into engaging with a core theme running through historical and military themed video games. Namely, how can games (a theoretically ludic and playful medium) deal with war (a vicious and destructive phenomenon which is anything but playful)? The answers to this core question vary from one contributor to another. Some offer approaches from the perspectives of historical enquiry and critical theory. Others are involved in questions of player identification, empathy and collective or public memory. Still others use reception methods like participant observation and empirical fieldwork to understand what players take away from this fundamentally interactive medium of games. What all of the responses in this carefully and cleverly edited collection do offer, however, is a sustained and thoughtful meditation on the centrality of conflict to ludology, ludology to conflict, and the effects of wargaming on players, games, society and the industry. An excellent compendium for an era dominated by war and mediated simulacra of warfare, War Games has brought together some of the cutting-edge scholars working in the emerging discipline of historical gaming to produce a meaningful and important discussion of how war and games are critically and culturally enmeshed in twenty-first-century society. * Dr. Andrew B.R. Elliott, Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Lincoln, UK *