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SUMMARY:Gaming at War: Military Aesthetics and Videogame Culture - Dr Nath
 aniel Zetter
DTSTART:20200217T170000Z
DTEND:20200217T183000Z
UID:TALK138364@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Robert Dorschel
DESCRIPTION:Our second session of this term is coming up. Join us for a ta
 lk by Nathaniel Zetter from Queens College\, Cambridge. \n\nWhat's it gonn
 a be about?\nThe videogame industry is (to misquote Friedrich Kittler) an 
 abuse of army equipment. The roots of videogames tangle both technically a
 nd epistemically with Cold War missile systems and military computing. Thi
 s intimacy of games and the military still lurks within many zones of the 
 global entertainment industry that videogames now represent\, including wi
 thin its remarkable innovation of ‘e-sports’—communal\, competitive 
 videogaming. This talk theorises the intersection of the military and gami
 ng while side-stepping the presently ubiquitous notion of an all-encompass
 ing ‘military-entertainment complex’. I examine the ways in which aest
 hetics from weapons technology are embedded in the formal structure of gam
 es. This entrenchment of military vision has formed a particular ‘scopic
  regime’—a distribution of vision and action specific to its coinciden
 ce of technology and culture. I also analyse the structure of some recent 
 e-sports competitions\, claiming that the scopic regime of gaming not only
  articulates their lingering military intimacies\, but in fact makes possi
 ble their competitive form as such.\n\nNathaniel Zetter is a Teaching Asso
 ciate in English at Queens’ College\, Cambridge. He is currently at work
  on his first monograph\, which traces the intersection of war and sport i
 n twentieth-century cultural history.\n\nEverybody is welcome!
LOCATION:17 Mill Lane\, Room E (2nd floor)
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