| Summary: | The digital games industry is bigger than the recorded music industry. Globally it's worth $100bn, and that's excluding console and hardware sales. Unlike many media industries, growth is predicted for the next decade, too. This growth is built on change. It's no longer just about hardware manufacturers and software developers. With the ubiquity of mobile technology, the move to digital software and downloads, and the increased accessibility of development technology to 'indie' producers, the field is expanding and evolving at pace. Who owns the games industries is changing, how games are produced is changing, and how people use and participate with games is changing. At the same time, we've seen a ludic or 'playful' turn in social science and the humanities, and games and 'gameification' are increasingly central. This is being reflected in course content. Game studies as a standalone subject is becoming more established, and digital games and gaming culture play an increasingly prominent part in courses exploring digital media, digital culture, digital society, and the creative and cultural industries. The wealth of practice based courses in areas like game design (id est where the jobs are) also increasingly engage with the social, cultural and economic. This proposal is for a book that covers the full scope of contemporary game studies. Industries, consumption and practice. Who makes games, who makes money out of them, who plays them, and what are we playing. It's the balanced mix of political economy and cultural studies we've seen work well with the likes of Dave Hesmondhalgh's 'The Cultural Industries', and which other recent projects have taken on too (Anamik Saha's 'Race, Culture and the Media', and Larissa Hjorth's second edition of 'Understanding Social Media' to name a couple). The scope is suitably broad. From the history of the games industry and the development of gaming and game studies, to explorations of contemporary themes such as labour practices, the effect of infrastructure and broadband coverage, the role of platforms, user generated production, livestreaming, mobile gaming, and VR. There's real range here, which as the reviews indicate, lecturers desperately need.
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