"The Republic of Games examines the fate of the models of print culture in an age of digitization. Drawing on methods from social-text analysis, platform studies, and game studies, the book examines the digital practice of imbricating game mechanics into other kinds of activities and the effects that these mechanics have had on specific textual communities. It shows that embedding game structures into the operations of digital platforms--even when doing so begins with the addition of a few small mechanics--has large cumulative effects on textual ecosystems. The book also intervenes in discussions of voluntary labor online. In the decades since Richard Barbrook first gave a name to "hi-tech gift culture," media scholars have often appealed to the gift as a framework for understanding free exchange online. The Republic of Games shows that some of the most popular online platforms for the free production of texts utilize game mechanics, which, in combination with higher-order systems of play that users build atop these platforms, can have powerful effects on amateur literary production online. The chapters follow a general thematic progression: the first two chapters examine creators of digital platforms, who are in a privileged position to register changes in the material conditions of textuality online. The third chapter examines amateur writing communities, who build higher-order systems from the mechanics they're given.

The final chapter focuses on scholars, who must reconcile their efforts to gain critical distance from the new system with their own structural subordination within it."--.