Technologies Between Games and Culture

Abstract

This article introduces and situates the ensuing collection of four essays on the theme of games and technology. It argues the need for videogame studies to develop a more rigorous and focused perspective on the theorization of technology as it relates to research into games and culture. The ``and'' in games and culture cannot begin to be understood comprehensively without a thinking of the profound reliance of both terms on technology. Players and their cultural and collective involvements should be taken not as stable categories of research and development but as processes of becoming intertwined with lineages of technological development and disjunction which are the condition of these processes. Video games are not the least component and proponent of these technological lineages today. The essays collected in this section of the journal issue are described and characterized as offering such a focus on ludic technicity through their diverse but intersecting considerations of game hardware, software, game play, and other practices appropriating game technologies.

Quantified Play: Self-Tracking in Videogames

“…Writing a decade ago in this journal, Crogan and Kennedy (2009) suggest game scholars take seriously the technologies “between” games and culture. In doing this, they enjoin scholars to address the various experiential changes emerging from the evolution of games as contemporary technics.…”

“…As Consalvo illustrates in her work, the technologies between and beyond videogames themselves significantly shape how we negotiate, understand, and value videogames and the practice of play. Extending and updating this perspective, I argue that quantified play and self-tracking are a rich and contemporary site for thinking about how assemblages of bodies and videogame technologies orient human experience and activity-a point that scholars like Crogan and Kennedy (2009), writing in this journal, draw attention to in interrogating the technologies 'between' games and culture.…”

“…Locating videogames as part of a broader cultural history, Crogan (2016) writes that 19th-century war gaming—and games such as Kriegspiel —works as numerically and mathematically determined forms of play (from dice throws to the formulas that determine the movement of pieces across the game’s board; see Crogan, 2016, p. 666). In terms of videogames, code is a crucial (at least partially) numerical dimension of play.…”

Empathy at play: Embodying posthuman subjectivities in gaming

“…Drawing on the cyborg, research has also shown interconnections between real life and game life (e.g. Taylor, 2006) and technology and culture (Crogan and Kennedy, 2009). Research has paid attention to how gaming allows a heightened experience of the cyborg body, through for example rumble packs and gameplay visuals (e.g.…”

Socialisation et communication dans les jeux vidéo

“…La pratique d'un monde ludique en ligne n'induit cependant pas seulement pour les joueurs une socialisation à un monde de représentations et de signiications, à des modes d'interaction et de coopération culturellement spéciiques. Notre approche s'inscrit, sur le thème proposé de la socialisation, dans la ligne des travaux récents qui appellent à explorer la richesse de la prise en compte simultanée des dimensions sociales, culturelles et techniques du jeu (Crogan et Kennedy, 2008). T. L. Taylor nous appelle dans ce sens à considérer les jeux comme des ensembles complexes et non déterminés de relations entre humains et non humains, empruntant pour l'analyse la notion d'assemblage à l'approche sociotechnique développée par Bruno Latour (1992).…”