Patrick Crogan is concerned with the future. First and foremost, he is concerned with how the future is created, and more importantly, he is concerned about the myriad ways that high tech society has developed to control the future. Gameplay Mode is a tracing of the genealogy of computer games to their roots in the post-WWII Cold War technologies that deployed simulation as a way of understanding the possible conflicts of the future. Additionally, Crogan argues that this isn’t merely a history, but a present as well; simulation technology in video games informs ways of making war just as war continues to inform the construction of video games (I think about the Black Ops 2 advertising campaign).

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