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This paper aims to identify the relationship between video games and neoliberal values. To fulfil this aim, it analyzes the covers of the 20 top-selling video games in the US each year from 2010 2 to 2014 (a total of 80 different games). Video game covers are a type of paratext, i.e., texts that accompany another text to promote it and to guide its reading. Thus, video game covers choose and highlight some of the games' features over others, and by doing that they construct a discourse. In this article, it is argued that regardless of genre, the covers analyzed convey and promote neoliberal values, such as freedom and choice, entrepreneurship, consumption and accumulation of goods, customization, novelty, individualism and meritocracy. This promotion of neoliberal values is combined with an appeal to the concerns of 'risk society'. Thus, the covers of the top-selling video games play on fears linked to the new context created by the economic crisis while at the same time legitimizing the neoliberal ideal of the 'enterprising self' as a model for dealing with it.

RESUMEN: A causa del rol central de los medios de comunicación en la configuración de la esfera pública contemporánea, las estrategias de comunicación de las instituciones políticas tienden a adaptarse a la lógica mediática. Se detecta un acercamiento progresivo de la comunicación política hacia el entretenimiento y el ejemplo más significativo de esta tendencia es la celebrificación de los políticos, es decir, el uso de elementos de la cultura de la fama para construir la imagen pública de los candidatos. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo desarrollar teóricamente qué significa celebrificar a los candidatos. A partir de las principales aportaciones de los celebrity studies y el marketing político se han identificado tres variables que permiten reconocer y entender la celebrificación. Posteriormente estos tres rasgos se usan para analizar la construcción de la imagen de los candidatos en las Elecciones al Parlamento de Cataluña de 2012.PALABRAS CLAVE: Comunicación política; personalización; mediatización; celebrity studies; politainment.ABSTRACT: The centrality of the media in the contemporary public sphere has led political institutions to adapt their communication strategies to its logic. Politics and entertainment are increasingly converging and one of the most significant examples of this trend is the tendency to turn politicians into celebrities, i.e. using elements of celebrity culture to build candidates' public image. This article aims to develop theoretically what celebrification of a candidate means. Drawing upon the main contributions of celebrity studies and political marketing, we identify three fundamental aspects that become useful to recognise and understand celebrification. Additionally, these three elements are applied to analyse the construction of the candidates' image in the 2012 Catalan Parliamentary Elections.

The emergence of new media, devices, narratives and practices has compelled media literacy scholars and professionals to review their theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches. Based on a new conception – ‘transmedia literacy’ – that moves from traditional media literacy to informal learning and participatory cultures practices, the research program behind the present article tries to understand how new generations are doing things with media outside schools and how they learnt to do the things they do. The article begins by describing the transformations of media literacy in recent years as a consequence of the mutations of the media ecology and, in that context, proposes a methodological approachfor analysing the acquisition of transmedia skills in informal learning environments by teens. The article describes, analyses and evaluates the development and initial implementation of this methodology working with teenagers in a high-school in NAME CITY. It ends with a Research Kit that includes surveys, creative workshops, interactive interviews and media diaries with teens between 12-18 years old. The article also describes the evolution of this methodological approach from its original formulation to the evaluation of the model after it was tested, and reflects on the possibilities of developing specific research devices to be applied in transnational research.

An ideological analysis of video games should include both the narrative and ludic dimensions, since there can be frictions between these two dimensions and they can even contradict one another. This article’s main aim is to analyze BioShock Infinite, an illustrative case study of these conflicts. On the one hand, it is a video game that portrays a dystopian narrative, aligning itself with this genre’s critical progressive tradition; on the other hand, its gameplay has an accentuated neoliberal bent. The analysis of BioShock Infinite also helps us to critically discuss certain trends in game design in contemporary mainstream video games that connect with and reinforce neoliberal values.