Introduction. On the uses and abuses of games -- Both in and out of the game: reform games and avatar selves -- A fresh and liberal construction: state machines, transformation games, and algorithms of the interior -- The power to promote: configuration culture in the age of Barnum -- Social cues and outside pockets: billiards, Blithedale, and targeted potential -- The net work of not work.
Summary:
Individual, historically located games are as interesting for the particular limits they set as for the specific associative assemblages they enable. This book takes a case-study approach, looking intensively at popular mass-market games of the mid-nineteenth century not to answer what a game is but instead to ask what certain media do and how that doing might offer perspective on the literary questions we have directed at the period.
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