Peter McDonald

My work looks at the ways games and play have become inextricable from systems of power, technology, and knowledge production in the 20th and 21st century. I am currently working on a manuscript, tentatively titled The Impossible Reversal and Other Styles of Play, that argues for a broad shift in US culture in the late 1950s and prior to the mass cultural success of video games. I look at toys and board games, televised sports and game shows, therapeutic role-playing techniques and managerial education to trace a new genealogy of play. I am deeply interested in the meaning making processes through which players understand their activity as valuable, theorize its causes, and explain its effects. My first book, Run and Jump: The Meaning of the 2D Platformer, dwells on how abstract and formal design choices within this low-brow genre can communicate in poetic and atmospheric ways.