Join us Friday, January 31, as *ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories *hosts scholar Rachel Plotnick for her talk "Powering Performance: Energy Drinks and the Optimized Gamer." The event will be at 2PM ET on the *ROMchip *Twitch channel, https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal. Get tickets HERE <https://buytickets.at/romchipajournalofgamehistories/1484662> and sign up for our newsletter <https://romchip.us13.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=27c1594af9abf2dc80455091b&id=caaf5790a7> to never miss an update. **Tickets serve as calendar reminders for the event; they are not required to attend. Head to https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal to join the talk on Jan 31** *About the Talk* Energy drinks like *G Fuel*, *Gamer Supps*, *Amp Game Fuel*, and *Nerd Focus* promise to optimize the gamer’s body through performance-enhancement and longer-lasting play. Public health experts have long warned against these beverages’ negative health effects, but these drinks can also teach us a great deal about consumption – not just of gaming *content* but also how media stamina and endurance intersect with bathroom breaks, nourishment, tiredness, and attention. Taking an historical approach to energy drinks and the gaming culture that surrounds them, Plotnick's talk considers how long-held ideas about caffeination, hydration, sport, and fatigue – from studies of pilots to athletes drinking Gatorade – inform the present moment. As energy drinks offer a solution to burning out or tuning out, they medicalize media use to produce the ideal gamer and the never-ending game. *About the Speaker*Rachel Plotnick is an associate professor of cinema and media studies in The Media School at Indiana University Bloomington. She studies human-technology relationships and interfaces in everyday life (both historically and in the present), from pushing buttons and scrolling through touchscreens to the media hygiene provoked by sweating in VR, cleaning vinyl records, or dropping your phone in the toilet. Her first book, *Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing*, is published by The MIT Press (2018), with a second book, *License to Spill: Where Dry Devices Meet Liquid Lives*, forthcoming in April 2025 (The MIT Press). Her research has been featured by *NPR*, the *Wall Street Journal*, the *BBC*, *IEEE Spectrum*, and others. *Upcoming Events* February 7 @ 2PM: Jesper Juul presents on his latest book, *Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer *[TIX HERE <https://www.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehistories/1498794> ] February 14 @ 2PM: Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman discuss their co-authored book, *Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie *[TIX HERE <https://www.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehistories/1498801> ] February 22 @ 11AM-11PM ET: ROMchip Twitch Fundraiser Stream, ft Phil Salvador, merritt k, qdot, Paolo Pedercini, tinahacks, Jason Scott and more! Come through for 12 hours of games, prizes, and historical hijinks. Learn more HERE <https://donate.romchip.org/>. *About ROMchip**ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories <https://www.romchip.org/>* is a free, online scholarly journal for game history. *ROMchip *develops, edits, and publishes ad-free, open access game history research for a range of audiences. It supports any discipline of work enlivening the history of games in local and global contexts, and embraces diversity in how game history is studied, documented, collected, preserved, and practiced. *ROM**c**hip* is a donation-based organization fiscally sponsored by The Hack Foundation <https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/> (d.b.a. Hack Club), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN: 81-2908499). -- Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/> Associate Professor | MCC <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ NYU <http://www.nyu.edu/> | they/them Managing Editor | ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories <https://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal> | Join our Newsletter <http://eepurl.com/crCul1> -Need to make an appt? Click, don't email: https://calendar.app.google/V9ZuMRWEKnnUBdQ56 -Probably typed by voice recognition, so please cherish typos