Game love : essays on play and affection

What does love have to do with games? As games have developed in complexity, they have increasingly started to include narratives that seek to engage with love in a variety of ways. Whilst media attention often seems to focus on more violent emotions and behavior in games, love has always been a central part of the gaming experience. We love to play games, we have titles that we experience love towards, and sometimes we love too much, or love terrible games for their mistakes. Love in games therefore, is rather like love in life - it can be complicated, unexpected and difficult but also fun, enlightening and powerful. The authors of this collection aim for the first time to unpack the meaning and role of love in games by examining some of these aspects. Love is hard to reproduce in games, and we trace a number of ways - from coding to cosplay, in which love can be expressed in, for and around games. Investigating how games can start to think about love in exciting, in-depth ways is also key to understanding the growing importance of games and gamers as important cultural markers, since it points to gaming as growing in maturity in its attempt to address such a varied subject.