The 21st Century in 100 Games Aditya Deshbandhu (University of Exeter, UK) 9781032070797

The 21st Century in 100 Games is an interactive public history of the contemporary world. It creates a ludological retelling of the 21st century through 100 games that were announced, launched and played from the turn of the century. The book analyses them and then uses the games as a means of entry to examine both key events in the 21st century and the evolution of the gaming industry. Adopting a tri-pronged perspective - the reviewer, the academic and an industry observer - it studies games as ludo-narratological artifacts and resituates games in a societal context by examining how they affect and are engaged with by players, reviewers, the gaming community, and the larger gaming industry.

This book will be a must read for readers interested in video games, new media, digital culture (s), culture studies, and history.

Aditya Deshbandhu is a lecturer of Communications, Digital Media Sociology at the University of Exeter, UK. A researcher of video game studies, new media, and the digital divide, he examines how people engage with digital artefacts and seeks to understand how these interactions shape everyday lives. As someone who actively examines digital acts of leisure, his research in the last decade has examined social media and streaming platforms alongside video games and digital cultures. He is also the author of Gaming Culture(s) in India: Digital Play in Everyday Life and also serves as an editor for this book series.