The Counterfeit Coin argues that games and related entertainment media have become almost inseparable from fantasy. In turn, these media are making fantasy itself visible in new ways. Though apparently asocial and egocentric—an internal mental image expressing the fulfillment of some wish—fantasy has become a key term in social contestations of the emerging medium. At issue is whose fantasies are catered to, who feels powerful and gets their way, and who is left out. This book seeks to undo the monolith of commercial gaming by locating multiplicity and difference within fantasy itself. It introduces and tracks three broad fantasy traditions that dynamically connect apparently distinct strata of a game (story and play), that join games to other media, and that encircle players in pleasurable loops as they follow these connections.
Author(s): Christopher Goetz
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 216
City: New Brunswick
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Introduction: Feeling Powerful and Getting Your Way
1. The Fantasy of Bodily Transcendence
2. The Fantasy of Bodily Transcendence in Narrative Media
3. The Tether Fantasy
4. The Fantasy of Accretions
Conclusion: Surface Narratives and the Contrivance of Fantasy
Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the Author
