The 21st Century in 100 Games is an interactive public history of the contemporary world. It creates a ludological retelling of the 21st century through 100 games that were announced, launched, and played from the turn of the century. The book analyzes them and then uses the games as a means of entry to examine both key events in the 21st century and the evolution of the gaming industry. Adopting a tri-pronged perspective — the reviewer, the academic, and an industry observer — it studies games as ludo-narratological artefacts and resituates games in a societal context by examining how they affect and are engaged with by players, reviewers, the gaming community, and the larger gaming industry.
This book will be a must read for readers interested in video games, new media, digital culture (s), culture studies, and history.
Foreword by Usha Raman. Introduction. 1. Attempting a Ludological History: How Do We Remember Games? 2. Towards a Public History: Capturing Experiences and Shared Memories 3. Dedicated for Gaming: Transformation for Play 4. When the Magic Fades: The Search for Redemption 5. New Ways of Monetization: The Service Turn in Games 6. Games as Transmedia: Aggregation and Activation 7. New Heights and Challenges: Video Games in a Pandemic. Conclusion: 21st Century: A Lookback. Annexure.
Biography
Aditya Deshbandhu is a Lecturer of Communications, Digital Media Sociology at the University of Exeter, UK. A researcher of video game studies, new media, and the digital divide, he examines how people engage with digital artefacts and seeks to understand how these interactions shape everyday lives. As someone who actively examines digital acts of leisure, his research in the last decade has examined social media and streaming platforms alongside video games and digital cultures. He is also the author of Gaming Culture(s) in India: Digital Play in Everyday Life and also serves as an editor for this book series.
