Gaming Culture(s) in India Digital Play in Everyday Life

This volume critically analyzes the multiple lives of the "gamer" in India. It explores the "everyday" of the gaming life from the player?s perspective, not just to understand how the games are consumed but also to analyze how the gamer influences the products? many (virtual) lives.

Using an intensive ethnographic approach and in-depth interviews, this volume

• situates the practice of gaming under a broader umbrella of digital leisure activities and foregrounds the proliferation of gaming as a new media form and cultural artifact;
• critically questions the term gamer and the many debates surrounding the gamer tag to expand on how the gaming identity is constructed and expressed;
• details participants? gaming habits, practices and contexts from a cultural perspective and analyzes the participants? responses to emerging industry trends, reflections on playing practices and their relationships to friends, communities and networks in gaming spaces; and
• examines the offline and online spaces of gaming as sites of contestation between developers of games and the players.

A holistic study covering one of the largest video game bases in the world, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, media and communication studies and science and technology studies, as well as be of great appeal to the general reader.

Introduction: Ludic Beginnings: Gaming Journeys and Experiences 1. Fun, Magic and Play: Theories of Gaming 2. Building Tools to Map the Ludic Everyday 3. Player Perspectives: Gamers & Gamerworthiness 4. Charting the Indian Gamescape: Redrawing Lines of Access 5. Gaming as a Site of Contestation 6. Friends, Communities and Networks: Gaming is Social Conclusion

Aditya Deshbandhu teaches in the Communications Area, Indian Institute of Management Indore, India. He has a doctoral degree in communication from the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad, India. His research interests include new media studies, digital cultures and the emerging field of video game studies.