Introduction: Infrastructure Studies

Chapter 1 discusses the emergence of infrastructure as a topic of scholarly interest across a wide variety of fields, tracing it to several causes, including interest in climate change and the anthropocene, which requires a global perspective on actions and their consequences, decoupling the traditional link between infrastructure and national identity. In addition, the rise of non-governmental, global computing platforms has drawn new attention to the variety of infrastructural systems in our lives—not just highway system, but the fiber optic cables beneath our streets and the protocols that allow computers to talk to each other. This chapter also discusses what infrastructure means in a narrative and literary context, in particular how it will manifest itself in stories. The chapter concludes by talking about the video-game-specific infrastructures of game development, audiences, and marketing.