Games and Culture current issue

The Short and Happy Life of Interdisciplinarity in Game Studies

Malaby, T. M., Burke, T. — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:06:33 PDT

The rise of virtual worlds and their demonstrated potential to generate new economies, forms of belonging, and learning—all within spaces that are deeply game-like—makes new demands of our thinking about games and society. A number of scholars have recently begun to forge an approach distinct from past efforts, shifting their attention toward broader, contextual understandings of games, communities, and play. Seeking to treat such spaces neither as wholly determined by outside factors nor as utterly sui generis, they aim to account for the contingent and emergent relationship that these spaces have with other domains of human experience.

The Assemblage of Play

Taylor, T.L. — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:06:33 PDT

This article explores the notion of assemblage for computer game studies. Drawing on this framework, the author proposes a multifaceted methodological approach to the study of games and the play experience. Drawing on user-created mods (modifications) in the game World of Warcraft and an analysis of a raid encounter there, a discussion is undertaken about the relationship between technological artifacts, game experience, and sociality. Primary to the consideration is an argument for the centralizing the interrelation of a variety of actors and nodes when analyzing lived play in computer games.

Virtual Worlds and Their Discontents: Precarious Sovereignty, Governmentality, and the Ideology of Play

Kucklich, J. R. — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:06:33 PDT

In the following article, author argues that virtual worlds are characterized by a particular mode of governmentality. Rather than seeing virtual worlds as analogous to societies in the real world, he suggests regarding them as ‘‘social factories’’ in which the social fabric is inextricably shot through with economic production. While the governmentalization of the global economy and the concomitant economization of governments are processes that originate in the real world, they also result in a ‘‘naturalization’’ of virtual worlds, a tendency which also becomes obvious in the way virtual worlds are discussed in terms of ‘‘population’’ and ‘‘territory.’’ In virtual worlds, the suffusion of governance with economic production thus leads to the formation of precarious forms of governmentality, which are veiled by a pertinent ideology of play.

Discipline and Dragon Kill Points in the Online Power Game

Silverman, M., Simon, B. — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:06:33 PDT

This article discusses the origins and development of the player-innovated dragon kill point (DKP) system as an example for thinking about Foucauldian conceptions of disciplinary power and the production of gamer subjectivity in the contexts of massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) power gaming. The argument considers the generalized hyperrationalism of DKP-based gaming as both an ideal digital form of panoptic control as well as a kind of ironic form of play with the limits of the possibility of control within digital culture.

Rules of Play

Lastowka, G. — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:06:33 PDT

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) constitute social jurisdictions governed by rules of play. When we consider the work of Johan Huizinga and subsequent theorists of human play activities, we find that ludic rules differ from legal rules in important ways. The goals of play also differ from the goals of law. In applying law to MMORPGs and other virtual worlds, it is important to recognize that jurisdictions of play are structured in ways that are fundamentally different from the ways traditional legal rules are structured.

Virtual Worlds: Petri Dishes, Rat Mazes, and Supercolliders

Castronova, E., Falk, M. — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:06:33 PDT

This article argues for using virtual worlds as experimental environments for social science questions at the macro level. The authors can foresee two major objections to this approach and will address them as to show why they do not prove to be significant. The first being that virtual worlds are not like the real world; therefore, one cannot generalize from events within them. The second of these foreseeable objections states that human society is too complex to be controlled in the way that controlled experimentation requires. Humans discover things by building environments suited for exploring the questions the authors have a rat maze is a very abstract environment, yet it is useful for exploring very general questions of mammalian cognition. The authors conclude that virtual worlds are no less valuable, on net, than other established experimental tools. The next stage in toolmaking, after Petri dishes, rat mazes, and supercolliders, should be virtual worlds.

There is No Magic Circle

Consalvo, M. — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:06:33 PDT

Games are created through the act of gameplay, which is contingent on player acts. However, to understand gameplay, we must also investigate contexts, justifications, and limitations. Cheating can be an excellent path into studying the gameplay situation, because it lays bare player’s frustrations and limitations. It points to ludic hopes and activities, and it causes us to question our values, our ethics. In comparison, the concept of the magic circle seems static and overly formalist. Structures may be necessary to begin gameplay, but we cannot stop at structures as a way of understanding the gameplay experience. Because of that, we cannot say that games are magic circles, where the ordinary rules of life do not apply. Of course they apply, but in addition to, in competition with, other rules and in relation to multiple contexts, across varying cultures, and into different groups, legal situations, and homes.

Erratum

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:06:33 PDT

The name of the author of ‘‘Game Time Modeling and Analyzing Time in Multiplayer and Massively Multiplayer Games’’, (original DOI 10.1177/ 1555412008325479, published in Games and Culture, Volume 4 Issue 2, April 2009), is Anders Drachen who was formerly Anders Tychsen. The article carried the author information incorrectly as Anders Tychsen.