Even though book reading season might be over for many of us, Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games seems essential reading for those scholars interested in war & games. As blogged below, the book is available at Amazon or at the publisher’s homepage. For Dutch/Europeans, Bookdepository.co.uk, as always, has the best deal, 21.50 euro for the paperback (free shipping), I have good experiences with them.

There’s more official info at the publisher’s webpage. I contributed the third chapter. The table of contents is after the break.

Table of Contents

Foreword, Ian Bogost

Introduction, Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne

Section I: Historicizing the Joystick Soldier
1. Living Room Wars: Remediation, Boardgames, and the Early History of Video Wargaming, Sebastian Deterding
2. Target Acquired: America’s Army and the Video Games Industry, Randy Nichols
3. Training Recruits and Conditioning Youth: The Soft Power of Military Games, David B. Nieborg
Interview with James F. Dunnigan edited by Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne

Section II: Representing War
4. Behind the Barrel: Reading the Video Game Gun, Scott A. Lukas
5. War Games as a New Frontier: Securing American Empire in Virtual Space, C. Richard King and David. J. Leonard
6. Future Combat, Combating Futures: Temporalities of War Video Games and the Performance of Proleptic Histories, Josh Smicker
Interview with Rachel Hardwick edited by Matthew Thomas Payne

Section III: Producing Pedagogical War
7. Mobilizing Affect: The Politics of Performative Realism in Military New Media , Dan Leopard
8. A Battle in Every Classroom: Gaming in the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College, Jeffrey Leser and James Sterrett
9. A Battle for Hearts and Minds: The Design Politics of ELECT BiLat, Elizabeth Losh
Interview with Colonel Casey Wardynski edited by Nina B. Huntemann

Section IV: Playing War
10. “No Better Way to ‘Experience’ World War II”: Authenticity and Ideology in the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor Player Communities, Joel Penney
11. “F*ck You, Noob Tube!”: Learning the Art of Ludic LAN War, Mathew Thomas Payne
12. Playing with Fear: Catharsis and Resistance in Military-Themed Video Games, Nina B. Huntemann

Section V: Resisting War
13. Playing Against the Grain: Machinima and Military Gaming, Irene Chien
14. “Turn the game console off right now!”: War, Subjectivity, and Control in Metal Gear Solid 2, Tanner Higgin
15. Dead-in-Iraq: The Spatial Politics of Digital Game Art Activism and the In-Game Protest, Dean Chan