Considers the construction of race, gender, and sexuality in virtual reality.

Collects Deathlok (1991) #1-15, Annual #1.

As if being duped by his evil ex-employers into becoming the cyborg soldier Deathlok isn't enough, now Michael Collins is square in the sights of a mad villain collecting and disassembling cyborgs and androids. Can you guess the secret of Mechadoom? Hopefully Deathlok, with a little help from the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, can! Then, what happens when the man in the body of a killing machine meets the killing machine in the body of a man? Find out when Deathlok and the Punisher team up! And the nightmare is far from over for Collins - when he finds himself in battle with Ghost Rider, it's time to fight hellfire with firepower! COLLECTING: Deathlok (1991) 1-15, Annual 1

Introduction : Games in the age of empire -- Game engine : labor, capital, machine -- Immaterial labor : a workers' history of videogaming -- Cognitive capitalism : electronic arts -- Machinic subjects : the XBOX and its rivals -- Gameplay : virtual/actual -- Banal war : full spectrum warrior -- Biopower play : world of warcraft -- Imperial city : grand theft auto -- New game? -- Games of multitude -- Exodus : the metaverse and the mines.

Database Aesthetics examines the database as cultural and aesthetic form, explaining how artists have participated in network culture by creating data art. The essays in this collection look at how an aesthetic emerges when artists use the vast amounts of available information as their medium. Here, the ways information is ordered and organized become artistic choices, and artists have an essential role in influencing and critiquing the digitization of daily life. Contributors: Sharon Daniel, U of California, Santa Cruz; Steve Deitz, Carleton College; Lynn Hershman Leeson, U of California, Davis; George Legrady, U of California, Santa Barbara; Eduardo Kac, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Norman Klein, California Institute of the Arts; John Klima; Lev Manovich, U of California, San Diego; Robert F. Nideffer, U of California, Irvine; Nancy Paterson, Ontario College of Art and Design; Christiane Paul, School of Visual Arts in New York; Marko Peljhan, U of California, Santa Barbara; Warren Sack, U of California, Santa Cruz; Bill Seaman, Rhode Island School of Design; Grahame Weinbren, School of Visual Arts, New York. Victoria Vesna is a media artist, and professor and chair of the Department of Design and Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Video games have been a central feature of the cultural landscape for over twenty years and now rival older media like movies, television, and music in popularity and cultural influence. Yet there have been relatively few attempts to understand the video game as an independent medium. Most such efforts focus on the earliest generation of text-based adventures (Zork, for example) and have little to say about such visually and conceptually sophisticated games as Final Fantasy X, Shenmue, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, and The Sims, in which players inhabit elaborately detailed worlds and manipulate digital avatars with a vast—and in some cases, almost unlimited—array of actions and choices. In Gaming, Alexander Galloway instead considers the video game as a distinct cultural form that demands a new and unique interpretive framework. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, particularly critical theory and media studies, he analyzes video games as something to be played rather than as texts to be read, and traces in five concise chapters how the “algorithmic culture” created by video games intersects with theories of visuality, realism, allegory, and the avant-garde. If photographs are images and films are moving images, then, Galloway asserts, video games are best defined as actions. Using examples from more than fifty video games, Galloway constructs a classification system of action in video games, incorporating standard elements of gameplay as well as software crashes, network lags, and the use of cheats and game hacks. In subsequent chapters, he explores the overlap between the conventions of film and video games, the political and cultural implications of gaming practices, the visual environment of video games, and the status of games as an emerging cultural form. Together, these essays offer a new conception of gaming and, more broadly, of electronic culture as a whole, one that celebrates and does not lament the qualities of the digital age. Alexander R. Galloway is assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University and author of Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization.