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T. L. Taylor

T. L. Taylor is Associate Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT. She is the author of Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture and Raising the Stakes:E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming (MIT Press).

Titles by This Author

Raising the Stakes

E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming
By T. L. Taylor

Competitive video and computer game play is nothing new: the documentary King of Kong memorably portrays a Donkey Kong player’s attempts to achieve the all-time highest score; the television show Starcade (1982–1984) featured competitions among arcade game players; and first-person shooter games of the 1990s became multiplayer through network play. A new development in the world of digital gaming, however, is the emergence of professional computer game play, complete with star players, team owners, tournaments, sponsorships, and spectators.

Play Between Worlds

Exploring Online Game Culture
By T. L. Taylor

In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps—as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability.