“Through a sophisticated reading of contemporary experiments with game design, Sonia Fizek challenges notions of interactivity, agency, and control. It is a fundamental contribution which poses the key questions for the future of game studies.”
Paolo Ruffino, Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom; author of Future Gaming and editor of Independent Videogames
“Through the concept of 'distance,' Sonia Fizek short-circuits binary tendencies of play theory. Weaving media theory through walking sims, ambience, artworks, and spectatorship, Fizek gives us crucial new tools for thinking about play and media together.”
Darshana Jayemanne, Lecturer in Games and Arts, Abertay University; author of Performativity in Art, Literature and Videogames
“Smart, lucid, and at times ludic, this book opens up important new ground in showing how we are played by the games we play, and how the aesthetics of video games are always more than human.”
Susanna Paasonen, Professor of Media Studies, University of Turku; author of Dependent, Distracted, Bored
“Fizek has put together an intriguing exploration of playing at a distance.”
H-Net Book Reviews
“Playing at a Distance is an essential read for media and cultural studies scholars interested in video game agency, involvement, and posthumanism in play, as well as students who are just starting to investigate the history of game studies and what makes video games different from other media.”
Journal of Literature, Culture, and Literary Translation
“Playing at a Distance... provides an excellent materialist foundation on which an overtly political game studies can easily be built. If you want to stop asking What is a game? and begin to explore a different question—How does this game operate on me?—this is the book for you.”
Journal of Cinema and Media Studies
“Playing at Distance: Borderlands of Video Game Aesthetic is a ground-breaking work that redefines our understanding of digital play.”
Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts
“In her concentrated and extremely detailed work Fizek provides a reconceptualization of what it means to play video games by paying attention to distance as a mode of encounter with, and aesthetic experience of video games.”
