Playing American

Videogames have always depicted representations of American culture, but how exactly they feed back into this culture is less obvious. Advocating an action-based understanding of both videogames and culture, this book delineates how aspects of American culture are reproduced transnationally through popular open-world videogames. Playing American proposes an analytic focus on open-world videogames' "ambient operations" and traces practices of "playing American" through the stages of videogame development, gameplay, and reception. Three case studies - concentrating on the Grand Theft Auto, Watch Dogs, and Red Dead Redemption franchises, respectively - highlight different figurations of "playing American." Thematic foci range from public discourses on systemic racism and neoliberal capitalism to the justification of real-world surveillance practices and to the reconfiguration of the Western in the digital age. Playing American provides those interested in either videogames or American culture with a fresh angle and new concepts regarding its subject matters. It demonstrates that videogames are agents of cultural reproduction that do distinct cultural work for American culture in the twenty-first century.

Sören Schoppmeier, independent scholar, Berlin, Germany.