The PlayStation Dreamworld (eBook)

Alfie Bown is Assistant Professor of Literature at Hang Seng Management College, Hong Kong.

* Contents

* Acknowledgements

* Note on the Games

* Tutorial: The Pokémon Generation

* Level 1.

* From Farming Simulation to Dystopic Wasteland: Gaming and Capitalism

* Work and Play - Cultures of Distraction - Pastoral Dystopia, Apocalyptic Utopia - No Alternative

* Level 2.

* Dreamwork: Cyborgs on the Analyst's Couch

* Japanese Dreams, American Texts - The Dreamworld - Repetitions and the Dromena - Immersion and Westworld

* Level 3.

* Retro Gaming: The Politics of Former and Future Pleasures

* 90s Rational Gaming - Virtual/Reality - Subject, Object, Enjoyment - Jouissance in the Arcades

* Bonus Features: How to be a Subversive Gamer

* Game Index

* Endnotes

"The universe of video games and the action they involve us in render perfectly the illusions and antagonisms of our ideological predicament - the popularity of post-apocalyptic games tells it all. But perhaps even more important is the type of subjectivity a gamer has to adopt when immersed into a game: a mixture of extreme engagement and loss of reality, a universe of immortality where actions are indefinitely repeatable. So it is not that we can understand the impact of these games only through the analysis of our social reality - it's also the other way round: to understand how our societies work you have to know video games And Alfie Bown does this at such a high level that he produces an instant classic, a book that everyone who seeks to find a way in our confused social life will have to read. The Playstation Dreamworld is unputdownable, once you start reading it you will get addicted to it... as in a good video game!"
Slavoj ?i?ek

"If you ever asked yourself what Freud and Lacan would think if they had a chance to play video games, Alfie Bown gives you the answer. As a passionate gamer and a playful philosopher, he succeeds in showing not only why video-games matter but why they might carry subversive potential. This exciting psychoanalysis of video games shows why Pokémon GO and other games were only the beginning of a brave new world."
Srecko Horvat

From mobile phones to consoles to tablet, we are now a generation of gamers. This book dissects the structure of our relationships to all forms of technological entertainment at a time when digital enjoyment has become ubiquitous.
Alfie Bown is Assistant Professor of Literature at HSMC, Hong Kong and co-editor of the Hong Kong Review of Books.

"A significant contribution to the debate around virtual reality"
TLS