Category: games

Another busy week in the Playful Thinking series.

Frank Lantz’ The Beauty of Games is out now.

How games create beauty and meaning, and how we can use them to explore the aesthetics of thought.

“Are games art? This question is a dominant mode of thinking about  games and play in the twenty-first century, but it is fundamentally the wrong question. Instead, Frank Lantz proposes in his provocative new book, The Beauty of Games, that we think about games and how they create meaning through the lens of the aesthetic. We should think of games, he writes, the same way we think of literature, theater, or music—as a form that ranges from deep and profound to easy and disposable, and everything in between. Games are the aesthetic form of interactive systems, a set of possibilities connected by rules of cause and effect.

In this book, Lantz analyzes games from chess to poker to tennis to understand how games create beauty and evoke a deeper meaning. He suggests that we think of games not only as hyper-modern objects but also as forms within the ancient context of artistic production, encompassing all of the nebulous and ephemeral qualities of the aesthetic experience.”

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262048538/the-beauty-of-games/

In the Playful Thinking series we are proud to announce David B. Nieborg and Maxwell Foxman’s new book Mainstreaming and Game Journalism.

“Why games are still niche and not mainstream, and how journalism can help them gain cultural credibility.

Mainstreaming and Game Journalism addresses both the history and current practice of game journalism, along with the roles writers and industry play in conveying that the medium is a “mainstream” form of entertainment. Through interviews with reporters, David B. Nieborg and Maxwell Foxman retrace how the game industry and journalists started a subcultural spiral in the 1980s that continues to this day. Digital play became increasingly exclusionary by appealing to niche audiences, relying on hardcore fans and favoring the male gamer stereotype. At the same time, this culture pushed journalists to the margins, leaving them toiling to find freelance gigs and deeply ambivalent about their profession.

Mainstreaming and Game Journalism also examines the bumpy process of what we think of as “mainstreaming.” The authors argue that it encompasses three overlapping factors. First, for games to become mainstream, they need to become more ubiquitous through broader media coverage. Second, an increase in ludic literacy, or how-to play games, determines whether that greater visibility translates into accessibility. Third, the mainstreaming of games must gain cultural legitimacy. The fact that games are more visible does little if only a few people take them seriously or deem them worthy of attention. Ultimately, Mainstreaming and Game Journalism provocatively questions whether games ever will—or even should—gain widespread cultural acceptance.”

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262375511/mainstreaming-and-game-journalism/ 

Out now in our Playful Thinking series, Pippin Barr’s The Stuff Games Are Made Of.

Book Details

Happy to announce Jaroslav Švelch’s new book in the Playful Thinking series, second book this week!

Player vs. Monster: The Making and Breaking of Video Game Monstrosity

A study of the gruesome game characters we love to beat—and what they tell us about ourselves.

Since the early days of video games, monsters have played pivotal roles as dangers to be avoided, level bosses to be defeated, or targets to be destroyed for extra points. But why is the figure of the monster so important in gaming, and how have video games come to shape our culture’s conceptions of monstrosity? To answer these questions, Player vs. Monster explores the past half-century of monsters in games, from the dragons of early tabletop role-playing games and the pixelated aliens of Space Invaders to the malformed mutants of The Last of Us and the bizarre beasts of Bloodborne, and reveals the common threads among them.

Covering examples from aliens to zombies, Jaroslav Švelch explores the art of monster design and traces its influences from mythology, visual arts, popular culture, and tabletop role-playing games. At the same time, he shows that video games follow the Cold War–era notion of clearly defined, calculable enemies, portraying monsters as figures that are irredeemably evil yet invariably vulnerable to defeat. He explains the appeal of such simplistic video game monsters, but also explores how the medium could evolve to present more nuanced depictions of monstrosity.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047753/player-vs-monster/ 

Happy to announce Aaron Trammell’s new book in the Playful Thinking series I co-edit with Mia Consalvo and Geoffrey Long:

Repairing Play: A Black Phenomenology

A provocative study that reconsiders our notion of play—and how its deceptively wholesome image has harmed and erased people of color.

Contemporary theorists present play as something wholly constructive and positive. But this broken definition is drawn from a White European philosophical tradition that ignores the fact that play can, and often does, hurt. In fact, this narrow understanding of play has been complicit in the systemic erasure of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) from the domain of leisure. In this book, Aaron Trammell proposes a corrective: a radical reconsideration of play that expands its definition to include BIPOC suffering, subjugation, and taboo topics such as torture. As he challenges and decolonizes White European thought, Trammell maps possible ways to reconcile existing theories with the fact that play is often hurtful and toxic.

Trammell upends current notions by exploring play’s function as a tool in the subjugation of BIPOC. As he shows, the phenomenology of play is a power relationship. Even in innocent play, human beings subtly discipline each other to remain within unspoken rules. Going further, Trammell departs from mainstream theory to insist that torture can be play. Approaching it as such reveals play’s role in subjugating people in general and renders visible the long-ignored experiences of BIPOC. Such an inclusive definition of play becomes a form of intellectual reparation, correcting the notion that play must give pleasure while also recasting play in a form that focuses on the deep, painful, and sometimes traumatic depths of living.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545273/repairing-play/

PS. Notice the cover’s great take on Roger Caillois’ Man, Play, and Games.

Join us for the PhD Defense of Milan Jaćević this Friday September 2nd, 2022 at 1 PM Copenhagen Time (UTC+2) in-person or on Zoom.

The dissertation is “A Study in Practice: The structure and functioning of Ludic Habitus in Interactions with Digital Games”.

Using game prototypes and player studies, the dissertation develops “a general framework of digital gaming practice, a theory of digital gaming that explains how humans develop into players over the course of multiple acts of play, and how these prior experiences help to structure their understanding and behavior in subsequent gaming situations.”

The assessment committee consists of Kristine Jørgensen (University of Bergen), Staffan Björk (University of Gothenburg), and chair Alessandro Canossa (Royal Danish Academy).

The thesis can be downloaded here.