Grounds of Gaming

Nicholas Taylor is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. He is editor with Gerald Voorhees of Masculinities in Play and editor with Chris Ingraham of LEGOfied: Building Blocks as Media.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Men, Place, and Games1. Frames: Extractive Logics in Play2. Circles: It All Starts at Home3. Grids: LAN Parties and the Infrastructural Grounds of Gaming4. Platforms: Making Space for Collegiate Esports5. Pockets: Practicing Safe Storage at Games Industry ConventionsConclusion: Boundaries, (Re)taking the FieldBibliographyIndex

"The Grounds of Gaming is a brilliantly inventive dive into how our social and technical infrastructures help us to understand the masculinities of the men who inhabit them. This is the rare book that dissects masculinity with a firm understanding of systemic oppression, while also approaching the topic with introspection, humility, humor, and compassion. Field defining. A must read!"—Aaron Trammell, author of The Privilege of Play"Nicholas Taylor's The Grounds of Gaming offers an unusually riveting account of how white masculinity gathers its power in the mundane architectures of everyday game play. In doing so, Taylor sets a new scene for feminist refusal by way of a feminist infrastructural strategy for both gaming and the study of games. Taylor has also provided a stunning example of an ethnography of space that will prove useful beyond media studies and game studies."—Sarah Sharma, author of In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics