This book argues that videogames address contemporary, middle-class anxieties about poverty in the United States. The early chapters consider gaming as a modern form of slumming and explore the ways in which titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and World of Warcraft thematize poverty. The argument turns to the field of literary studies to identify analytical frameworks for addressing and understanding these themes. Throughout, the book considers how the academic area of inquiry known as game studies has developed over time, and makes use of such scholarship to present, frame, and value its major claims and findings. In its conclusion, the book models how poverty themes might be identified and associated for the purpose of gaining greater insights into how games can shape, and also be shaped by, the player's economic expectations.

Adam Crowley is Professor of English and Director of Composition at Husson University, USA. He is author of The Wealth of Virtual Nations: Videogame Currencies (2017).

Chapter 1: Introduction

Game Studies and Poverty

Poverty in Woke Game Studies Discourse

Virtual Poverty and Congruence

Authoritative Dispatches from the Field

The Player's Act of Play: Slumming as Transmedia Context

The Intersection of Player and Played: Slumming in Skyrim

The Intersection of Player and Played: Thematizing Poverty

Chapter 2: Relative Poverty and Slumming Simulations

Behavior Scripts and Ethical Imperatives

Specifying Poverty for Analysis: Relative Poverty

Contextualizing World of Warcraft's Poverty Theme

The Player's Acts of Play: Relative Poverty and Reordered Experience

World of Warcraft Poverty Thematics

Beyond the Slums: The Player's Act of Play as Context for Poverty Thematics

Chapter 3: Player Identity and the Conditions of Play

Playing at Poor

The Impoverished at Play: Assessing the Technomasculine

Representing Impoverished Communities in Videogames

Chapter 4: The Player and Game Studies' Rhetoric of Inclusion

The Player's Acts of Play: Identity in Gaming Cultures

Contexts for Play: Identity and Poverty

A Struggle for Terminology: First Person Scholar and "Middle State" Publications

A Struggle for Recognition: Not Your Mama's Gamer Transition from Blog to Journal

Chapter 5: Human Subjects and Digital Poverty

Game Studies: The Player and Played

Game Studies: Addressing the Proper Subject - Opportunities for Growth

Game Studies' Post-Modern Economics: The Avant-Pop Rides Again

Game Studies' Post-Modern Economics: From Avant-Pop to Social Realism

Chapter 6: Conclusion

Literary Contexts for Digital Slumming

Literary Studies: Game Studies' Coalmine Canary

Gentility and the intersection of Game Studies and Literary Studies

A Point of Departure for Literary Considerations of The Player's Act of Play: "Lore"

Assessing Lore's Significance to Relative Poverty