Book Launch: The State of Play

“A groundbreaking anthology that all video game players should read and ponder.”—Library Journal, starred review

The State of Play raises the conversation about video game culture with a critical look at its origins, memes, influences, and biases. Like all creative media, games represent a reflection of the sex, race, violence, faith and class politics of a society, and we need a serious assessment of its content and creators. The State of Play: Creators and Critics on Video Game Culture, edited by bestselling Swedish tech writers Linus Larsson and Daniel Goldberg, is that book.

The sixteen contributors to this collection include important voices in gaming politics. They are a burgeoning subculture of video game creators, media critics, and Internet celebrities, who create outside the corporate gamer culture. Tackling big subjects such as depression, racism, and misogyny, among others, these essays represent a range of voices that have been historically left out of gaming culture. Handpicked by editors Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson, authors of the bestselling Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus “Notch” Persson and the Game that Changed Everything, the book includes merritt kopas on ‘Video Games and Sexuality,” Cara Ellison and Brendan Keogh on “The Joy of Video Violence,” Anna Anthropy on “Love, Twine, and the End of the World,” Evan Narcisse on “The Parameters of Afro,” Anita Sarkeesian and Katherine Cross on online harassment of women, and much more.