Law, Video Games, Virtual Realities: Playing Law

Author: Dale Mitchell; Ashley Pearson; Timothy D. Peters
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032054988

Published In: January 2025
Format: Paperback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only
Hardback Edition ISBN: 9781032054971

List Price: HKD 545.87

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Description
Contents

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This edited volume explores the intersection between the coded realm of the video game and the equally codified space of law through an insightful collection of critical readings.

Law is the ultimate multiplayer role-playing game. Involving a process of world-creation, law presents and codifies the parameters of licit and permitted behaviour, requiring individuals to engage their roles as a legal subject – the player-avatar of law – in order to be recognised, perform legal actions, activate rights or fulfil legal duties. Although traditional forms of law (copyright, property, privacy, freedom of expression) externally regulate the permissible content, form, dissemination, rights and behaviours of game designers, publishers and players, this collection examines how players simulate, relate and engage with environments and experiences shaped by legality in the realm of video game-space.

Featuring critical readings of video games as a means of understanding law and justice, this book contributes to the developing field of cultural legal studies, but will also be of interest to other legal theorists, socio-legal scholars, and games theorists.

1. Introduction: Playing Law

Dale Mitchell, Ashley Pearson and Timothy D. Peters

Part I: Code as Law, Law as Play

2. Towards a Legal Ludology: Language Games, Playful Magic, and the Game of Law

Dale Mitchell

3. Invisible Walls: Facts and Freedom in Coded Space

James C. Fisher

4. Emergent Governance from Polycentric Order in Virtual Reality Social Spaces

Anne Hobson

5. Emergent Systems: Virtuality, Legality, Formality

Daniel Hourigan

6. Decoding Legal (Un)certainty in Doki Doki Literature Club!