Virtual ascendance : video games and the remaking of reality / Devin C. Griffiths.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Down the rabbit hole -- From the coin-op to the console: how did we get here? -- Let the games begin: competitive video gaming and the birth of the cyberathlete -- Alphabet soup: MMOs, MUDs, and RPGs, D & D in the twenty-first century -- No console required: casual games (or, gaming for the rest of us) -- Dressed for the symphony: video games take center stage -- From the flat screen to the big screen: video games invade Hollywood -- Virtual life -- And we are merely players: video games and society -- Games for health -- War games: combat evolved -- It's William Gibson's world, we're just living in it.

"From school lunchrooms to the White House press room, video games are an integral part of our popular culture, and the industry behind them touches all aspects of our lives, gamer and non-gamer alike. Business and entertainment, health and medicine, politics and war, social interaction and education, all fall under its influence. This book tells the story of a formerly fringe enterprise that, when few were paying attention, exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry affecting the very way we live. The author paints a thorough and vivid picture of the video game industry, illuminating the various, and often bizarre, ways it is changing how we work, play and live. He brings readers along on his own journey of discovery, from the back room of a small Irish pub where members of the second-largest industry enclave meet each month, to a university clinic where the Wii is being used to treat Parkinson's sufferers, and everywhere in between. The book is more than just a story about video games, though. It is the story of an awakening, of a realization that a childhood pastime has exploded into a thriving enterprise, one rooted in entertainment but whose tendrils reach into virtually all aspects of life and society."--Publisher information.