Computer Game Worlds

"Pias's path-breaking book shows how computer games have neither been a deliberate invention nor a welcome innovation in the realm of our pastime. As the result of a complex web of conditions out of our control and agency, they came into our lives--and continue playing with us."--Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University "A far-reaching and consistent historiography and epistemology of computer games."--Friedrich Kittler "A brilliant, wide-ranging, and provocative analysis of the centrality of game worlds to modern computing: from Taylorism to the analytic challenges posed by the Vietnam War, from serial storytelling to Pong. Finally--an English translation of the works of one of the most important German media theorists. This book is sure to change new media theory in the English-speaking world, as it has in Germany."--Wendy Chun, Brown University