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Articles and information on Anthropology and gaming.

My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft

(Technologies of the Imagination: New Media in Everyday Life) by Bonnie A. Nardi (May 25, 2010)

Description

"In My Life as a Night Elf Priest, Bonnie Nardi, a well-known ethnographer who has published extensively on how theories of what we do intersect with how we adopt and use technology, compiles more than three years of participatory research in Warcraft play and culture in the United States and China into this field study of player behavior and activity. She introduces us to her research strategy and the history, structure, and culture of Warcraft; argues for applying activity theory and theories of aesthetic experience to the study of gaming and play; and educates us on issues of gender, culture, and addiction as part of the play experience. Nardi paints a compelling portrait of what drives online gamers both in this country and in China, where she spent a month studying players in Internet cafes.

Bonnie Nardi has given us a fresh look not only at World of Warcraft but at the field of game studies as a whole. One of the first in-depth studies of a game that has become an icon of digital culture, My Life as a Night Elf Priest will capture the interest of both the gamer and the ethnographer.

Bonnie A. Nardi is an anthropologist by training and a professor in the Department of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focus is the social implications of digital technologies. She is the author of A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing and the coauthor of Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart and Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design".

http://amzn.to/gDDBum

The Game Anthropologist: The World Behind The World Of Warcraft

[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. This week, Michael Walbridge attempts to summarize the world of the World of Warcraft in its entirety.]

"Oh no, not another article about World of Warcraft. Tired of hearing about it." If you've ever thought that, stop reading. You won't find this interesting.

Some of you still are reading, though, and we both know why that is: because the topic is humongous. There is the universe, and there are galaxies, solar systems, and planets. There are development platforms and genres, there is World of Warcraft, and there are individual games and their communities.

World of Warcraft has spawned at least two books of published essays. One of them has an entire chapter on the most mundane of the most mundane--fishing. World of Warcraft spawns entire blogs and sites that are dedicated to the many, many corners of WoW. To the experienced gamer, games have the ability to be an entirely different experience from person to person.

To the beginning gamer who plays WoW as one of his first games, this is understood quickly instead of gradually. This leads to an opportunity for intelligent observation, the scale of which equals insight into an entire country. Take a comment from a non-official WoW forum: "At 70, you can choose from one of three factions: Raider, PVP, and Casual. You then blame the other two factions for 'ruining the game.'"

Only in an MMO that is as large as World of Warcraft is it made clearly apparent that there are all kinds of players (people) and that video games can be a setting for social interaction, larger than life. You can meet another player and that player can feel, unlike the ones you regularly play with, like someone from another country, another world, another clique.

Even the division of the players into over 100 server still leaves your own cities populated with people who make themselves authority figures, public artists, savants, professionals, entrepreneurs, professors, thieves, beggars, preachers, and thugs. All who play it, know it.

Welcome To The Real World....(Of Warcraft)

And that is the curious thing about WoW--it's the game that doesn't feel like a game, and not just because of the grinding factor. It's very easy to forget what you're doing is playing a video game. This is what makes WoW so different in the video game world in every way imaginable, including its business model, finance and profits, aesthetics, sociality, and culture. To some, there are video games and there is World of Warcraft, and that can be either an insult or a compliment.

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/08/column_the_game_anthropologist_world_of_warcraft.php August 23, 2008

The Game Anthropologist: Heroes of Newerth vs. League of Legends

['The Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's GameSetWatch-exclusive column about communities built around gaming. This week is about the rise of the unaptly-named MOBA genre and the intense rivalry between two of its titles in beta, Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends.]

It is not the first time it has happened with a new game and its community, but perhaps it has never been so obvious: the player-base for Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends is clearly composed of transplants, particularly fans of the Warcraft 3 mod, Defense of the Ancients. While both games’ developers have made it no secret that they have strong links to DoTA, the question still remains as to what difference that makes to the actual players.

But first, a review: Defense of the Ancients and the games it has inspired (including this years’ DemiGod) combines RPG battling with an RTS interface in a tower-defense world. Basically, you are playing an RTS where you control only one character that levels up, earns money and purchases consumable and equippable items. Teams consist of five player-controlled heroes on each side, with computer-controlled towers and creeps assisting, usually in controlled paths called “lanes” by players.

At the beginning of the game, the creeps and towers are much more powerful than the heroes, but by the end it is the heroes that will make the difference for victory, ending the game by destroying the main building in their opponents’ base. The term Multiplayer Online Battle Arena has been coined for the genre, but isn’t widely used (yet), perhaps partially because it doesn’t recognize any of the genres it came out of and partially because it doesn’t sound cool enough to most gamers (really).

Heroes of Newerth more strictly follows the conventions and strategy of the old DoTA, whereas League of Legends is different enough to consider it an attempt to progress MOBAs, making it much more friendly to newcomers while at the same time expanding the possibilities, giving even more complexity and depth to strategy-making than DoTA ever did.

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/10/the_game_anthropologist_hon_vs_lol.php#more October 21, 2009

The Game Anthropologist Michael Walbridge's column about communities built around gaming.

Game Studies A Ludicrous Discipline?

Ethnography and Game Studies Tom Boellstorff University of California, Irvine

Games and Culture Volume 1 Number 1 January 2006 29-35 © 2006 Sage Publications 10.1177/1555412005281620 http://games.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

Abstract

The information age has, under our noses, become the gaming age. It appears likely that gaming and its associated notion of play may become a master metaphor for a range of human social relations, with the potential for new freedoms and new creativity as well as new oppressions and inequality. Although no methodological or theoretical approach can represent a cure-all for any discipline, in this article the author discusses how anthro- pological approaches can contribute significantly to a game studies nimble enough to respond to the unanticipated, conjunctural, and above all rapidly changing cyberworlds through which everyone in some way is now in the process of redefining the human project.

http://www.anthro.uci.edu/faculty_bios/boellstorff/Boellstorff-Games.pdf

Doubly Real: Game Studies and Literary Anthropology; or, Why We Play Games

Philipp Schweighauser - Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture. 2009; 3 (2), p. 115-132 http:/www.eludamos.org

Introduction

Game studies today abounds in strategies of distinction that usually take two different but related forms.[1] We could label the first of these 'formalist' because it emphasizes the distinctive formal characteristics of games in general and video games in particular. One example of that first kind of strategy of distinction would be Alexander R. Galloway's (2006, p. 2) assertion that

Video games are actions. Consider the formal differences between video games and other media: indeed, one takes a photograph, one acts in a film. But these actions transpire before or during the fabrication of the work, a work that ultimately assumes the form of a physical object (print). With video games, the work itself is material action. One plays a game. And the software runs. The operator and the machine play the video game together, step by step, move by move.

We could label the second strategy of distinction 'disciplinary' because it strives to defend the still emergent discipline of game studies from colonization by more established disciplines, in particular sociology, film studies, and literary studies. In his editorial for the first issue of Game Studies, Espen J. Aarseth (2001, par. 8) combines this second strategy of distinction with the first: "Games are not a kind of cinema, or literature, but colonising attempts from both these fields have already happened, and no doubt will happen again. And again, until computer game studies emerges as a clearly self-sustained academic field."

http://journals.sfu.ca/eludamos/index.php/eludamos/article/viewarticle/63/121

Earning the title of Gamer

by Diana on October 21, 2010

"Do you play Farmville or any of the other what seem like thousands of passive games on Facebook? Do you enjoy it? Get something out of it? If so, you probably don’t want to read any further. Head back to your Facebook page and continue to spew your digital litter all over the place and I’ll continue to toss your pixels wasted on your mind numbing updates into the digital recycle bin".

"Does anyone else feel like the concept of gaming (for the record I don’t necessarily agree with calling these passive apps games), has been dumbed down? What ever happened to the days of gaming wizards, hackers fighting hackers, hacking war games, pissing off that hacker girl you like by beating her at her favorite game, or being picked to do real battle for your leet arcade skills?"

Earning the title of Gamer by Diana on October 21, 2010

The power of play in the School of Archaeology & Anthropology

"From humble origins as mere advertising tools, the use of educational games continues to expand, finding new ways to illustrate and convey the processes behind a range of complex social and environmental issues. Organizations such as the World Bank, which has recently teamed with Games for Change to increase the impact of its development programs, and the Nobel Prize, which has developed interactive web-delivered educational games to convey the work of the Nobel Laureates; all are discovering the “power of play” - the realization that games can teach in ways that are memorable, interactive, and fun."

"Now an ANU teaching and learning initiative joins the trend. Students enrolled in BIAN2130, Ancient Medicine, took on the challenge of designing, building and testing an educational board game on the theme of History and Archaeology of Medicine. Working in small groups, these apprentice games developers fitted an extraordinary amount of work into a semester, achieving results on par with what professional teams with established budgets for research and development would accomplish on a similar schedule."

The power of play in the School of Archaeology & Anthropology

Approaching game-studies: Towards a reflexive methodology of games as situated cultures

by Sybille Lammes Situated Play. 3rd International Conference of DIGRA, Tokyo, Japan, p.25-30 (2007)

Publication Type: Conference Paper

Authors: Lammes, Sybille

Keywords: games as culture, methodology, player/researcher, reflectivity, situatedness

Abstract

This paper will address why and how a reflexive and situated methodology could be employed to study cultural functions of play. Starting from the supposition that playing is pivotal to all game-research, I will follow Aarseth's claim that any (cultural) approach of games asks for an inclusion of the position of the player/researcher in its methodology. Being particularly interested in games as a cultural practice, I will add to his claim that for such kind of research a methodology is needed that enables us to see games as culture. My hypotheses will be that reflexivity and situatedness lie at the heart of any approach that wants to include both issues. I will show that reflexivity and situatedness may be needed as complementary tools to come to a cultural study of games that takes Aarseth's call for reflectivity serious.

I will claim that the researcher needs the combined tools of reflexivity and situatedness because both situatedness (intertwining agent and environment) and reflexivity (distance/proximity) take into account the involvement of the researcher/player with its material and view this as a cultural praxis. Situatedness allows for game-research that shows the physical locality of playing whilst still relating play to a more global or national context. Reflexivity permits us to show how the researcher is culturally and locally involved in her quasi-object of study through play.

http://digiplay.info/node/2960

Fun is Srs Bsns (Serious Business)- Working at Play in World of Warcraft

WiredAnthropology.com

"WiredAnthropology.com is the personal website of Erica M Ruyle - geek researcher and researcher of geek. If you are interested in video game and popular culture research, related theories and general video game knowledge you've come to the right website" http://www.wiredanthropology.com/Home_Page.php

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City

I will make a simple argument. It is the combination of creative anthropology, sophisticated game design and game play, and the right brain hooks that makes video games like Grand Theft Auto work so well. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City - Posted by dlende on April 29, 2008 Nueroanthropology - for a greater understanding of the encultured brain and body...

Call for Papers: American Anthropological Association: Beyond the Online: Critical Collaborations and Dialogues among Anthropological Approaches to Video Games

March 23, 2008

• • Update - my bad - the date has already passed - I saw the 1 April and thought that was it- just chalk this up to adding to the general awareness.... :-)

• • I think that if you have been using 'anthropology' or 'ethnography' to describe what you are doing in researching game-based learning, then this has your name all over it.

Call for Papers American Anthropological Association annual meetings San Francisco, Nov. 19-23, 2008

Panel Title Beyond the Online: Critical Collaborations and Dialogues among Anthropological Approaches to Video Games

As video games are increasingly becoming a venue through which interactive entertainment and education occurs, a variety of academics have begun turning a critical eye towards this medium. These investigations have contributed much to our understanding of the cultural specificities and the incorporation of the media into everyday practices by its users, especially in the area of online video gaming in virtual worlds. While anthropology and allied disciplines have shown significant interest in examining the ways in which cultures and subjectivities become articulated through virtual worlds and internet-based video game media, there are many more possible arenas of investigation.

This panel seeks to explore some of these possibilities that emerge when the scope of an anthropology of video games broadens to encompass 1) the inclusion of other disciplinary approaches to video games, such as cultural studies, media studies, education, and history; 2) collaborations with, and investigations of, the global video game industry—its publishers and developers, localizers and middlemen, marketers and modders; and 3) engagements with video game users who often appropriate the media in unanticipated and emergent ways. In doing so, we seek to query the utility of disciplinary boundaries in relation to the study of video games—What does anthropology have to contribute to the study of video games? What can other disciplines teach us? In addition, we seek to explore what forms of useful collaborations with industry experts and users could possibly emerge when the anthropology of video games is expanded to encompass a global industry.

Call for Papers: American Anthropological Association: Beyond the Online: Critical Collaborations and Dialogues among Anthropological Approaches to Video Games

My Life as a Night Elf Priest An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft

Bonnie A. Nardi

An anthropologist's analysis of one of the world's most popular online world games

About the Book

World of Warcraft rapidly became one of the most popular online world games on the planet, amassing 11.5 million subscribers—officially making it an online community of gamers that had more inhabitants than the state of Ohio and was almost twice as populous as Scotland. It's a massively multiplayer online game, or MMO in gamer jargon, where each person controls a single character inside a virtual world, interacting with other people's characters and computer-controlled monsters, quest-givers, and merchants.

In My Life as a Night Elf Priest, Bonnie Nardi, a well-known ethnographer who has published extensively on how theories of what we do intersect with how we adopt and use technology, compiles more than three years of participatory research in Warcraft play and culture in the United States and China into this field study of player behavior and activity. She introduces us to her research strategy and the history, structure, and culture of Warcraft; argues for applying activity theory and theories of aesthetic experience to the study of gaming and play; and educates us on issues of gender, culture, and addiction as part of the play experience. Nardi paints a compelling portrait of what drives online gamers both in this country and in China, where she spent a month studying players in Internet cafes.

Bonnie Nardi has given us a fresh look not only at World of Warcraft but at the field of game studies as a whole. One of the first in-depth studies of a game that has become an icon of digital culture, My Life as a Night Elf Priest will capture the interest of both the gamer and the ethnographer.

[http://press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=1597570 My Life as a Night Elf Priest An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft]

On Petroleum and the Uncanny: critical and satirical gaming practices

by Gabriele Ferri

Papers in Serious Games

part of the workshop 'Understanding Play Practices: Contributions to the State of the Art', ad DiGRA Conference 2009

On Petroleum and the Uncanny: critical and satirical gaming practices. part of the workshop 'Understanding Play Practices: Contributions to the State of the Art', ad DiGRA Conference 2009 by Gabriele Ferri

http://www.digra.org/dl/db/09287.28049.pdf

Panel Abstract

Semiotics draws inspiration for its qualitative methodologies from many fields of scientific and cultural discourse. It aims to understand cultural production and interpretation practices by way of core theoretical notions such as narrativity, enunciation, encyclopedia, and textual openness. A continualrefinement and renewal of these notions is driven by comparative analyses of problematic empirical objects. One such object is computer games which are among the hottest contemporary objects of study in new media semiotics.

A central theoretical notion used todayto understand computer games is practice, which is seen as standing in opposition to the more traditional notion of text.

Panel participants will discuss gameplay practices from various theoretical standpoints, with the common goal of describing these practices in ways that open for dialogue and interaction with theoretical approaches by other disciplines and fields of study.

The panel will open by discussing how, in computer games, the reader-text interface has been radically reconfigured, opening up for more effective forms of player agency. Some contemporary play practices will be discussed on the basis of video footage of actual game sessions, highlighting the role of player bodies in gameplay space. The role of keys in RPGs will be foregrounded to show how effects of player action in games may be narrations, offering us freedom or a fated end. The player is an agent situated in front of an author, a bizarre and unique experience. To argue for this, we will draw the sketch of a model describing the connection between the game world's appearances with its real decision structure.

http://www.digra.org/dl/db/09287.28049.pdf

Mobile City Chronicles: Gaming with New Technologies of Detection and Security

Anthropology Department - UC Berkeley - Anthropology 196 (4 units)

Professior: Holston, J

Course Description

This course will investigate, develop, and playtest “urban detective games” that engage systems of monitoring city life. Our objective is to expose these systems and “game the city.” The games we develop will be played on a smart phone interface. They will both resignify existing data about cities and produce new data about them that reveal previously undetected patterns. Both kinds of detection will expand the notion of urban ethnography, art, and alternate reality games.

We may model our games with data from new surveillance technologies that monitor behavior in cities. Examples include 911 calls, ER triage accounts, traffic reports, pollution analysis, and pharmaceutical sales, all data that reflect changes in the distribution of health-seeking behavior. Other kinds of data track public safety, criminal activity, financial transactions, real estate, and dating. In our games, cell phones are interfaces not only for reading from such databases but also for writing to them.

The new technologies that chronicle these kinds of data produce predictive models of social networking and narratives of human agency. In real terms, such chronicles become the basis of government intervention and policy, often under the rubric of security. The Mobile City Chronicles research will study the new kinds of profiling on which states, corporations, and inhabitants worldwide increasingly rely to understand and exploit one another.

The seminar will be organized as a research team/lab both to study the histories of urban detection and to develop game narratives. The course has limited enrollment. Interested students may apply (jholston@berkeley.edu) for enrollment by sending the instructor their name, email, departmental affiliation, information about their current cell phone, their software development experience (not required), and indications about their current readings and gameplay experiences. The deadline for applying for the course is December 11, 2009. Students who have applied should come to the first class for a brief interview about their interests in taking the course and their qualifications. The instructor will notify students during the first week of instruction about their enrollment status.

(add to courses)

Masters Thesis - Concordia University

2010 Graham Candy (Anthropology) Mapping Gaming Infrastructures

http://anthro.edublogs.org/students/

Approaching game-studies: towards a reflexive methodology of games as situated cultures

Sybille Lammes Utrecht University, Netherlands Sybille.Lammes@let.uu.nl

Abstract

This paper will address why and how a reflexive and situated methodology could be employed to study cultural functions of play. Starting from the supposition that playing is pivotal to all game-research, I will follow Aarseth’s claim that any (cultural) approach of games asks for an inclusion of the position of the player/researcher in its methodology [1]. Being particularly interested in games as a cultural practice, I will add to his claim that for such kind of research a methodology is needed that enables us to see games as culture. My hypotheses will be that reflexivity and situatedness lie at the heart of any approach that wants to include both issues. I will show that reflexivity and situatedness may be needed as complementary tools to come to a cultural study of games that takes Aarseth’s call for reflectivity serious.

I will claim that the researcher needs the combined tools of reflexivity and situatedness because both situatedness (intertwining agent and environment) and reflexivity (distance/proximity) take into account the involvement of the researcher/player with its material and view this as a cultural praxis. Situatedness allows for game-research that shows the physical locality of playing whilst still relating play to a more global or national context. Reflexivity permits us to show how the researcher is culturally and locally involved in her quasi-object of study through play.

Full article link

http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07311.28016.pdf

TED Talk by SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch

Seriously Considering Play

Lloyd P. Rieber The University of Georgia

Rieber, L. P. (1996). Seriously considering play: Designing interactive learning environments based on the blending of microworlds, simulations, and games. Educational Technology Research & Development, 44(2), 43-58

Abstract

Little attention has been given to the psychological and sociological value of play despite its many advantages to guiding the design of interactive multimedia learning environments for children and adults. This paper provides a brief overview of the history, research, and theory related to play. Research from education, psychology, and anthropology suggests that play is a powerful mediator for learning throughout a person's life. The time has come to couple the ever increasing processing capabilities of computers with the advantages of play. The design of hybrid interactive learning environments is suggested based on the constructivist concept of a microworld and supported with elements of both games and simulations.

Full paper link

http://www.coe.uga.edu/~lrieber/play.html

Professor Gets $100,000 World of Warcraft Grant

by Blake Ellison Sep 18, 2008 12:19pm CST

Bonnie Nardi, an infomatics professor at the University of California, Irvine, just got a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to "study" Blizzard's mega-hit MMO World of Warcraft.

Nardi, herself a World of Warcraft player, will use the grant "to figure out why Americans go to greater lengths than the Chinese to modify World of Warcraft," according to the Orange County Register. Nardi presumably refers to the thriving collection of user-produced "mods" for the game that add everything from maps and tactical advice to in-game money management and combat information.

Full article: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54809

Approaching game-studies: towards a reflexive methodology of games as situated cultures

Sybille Lammes Utrecht University, Netherlands Sybille.Lammes@let.uu.nl

Abstract

This paper will address why and how a reflexive and situated methodology could be employed to study cultural functions of play. Starting from the supposition that playing is pivotal to all game-research, I will follow Aarseth’’s claim that any (cultural) approach of games asks for an inclusion of the position of the player/researcher in its methodology [1]. Being particularly interested in games as a cultural practice, I will add to his claim that for such kind of research a methodology is needed that enables us to see games as culture. My hypotheses will be that reflexivity and situatedness lie at the heart of any approach that wants to include both issues. I will show that reflexivity and situatedness may be needed as complementary tools to come to a cultural study of games that takes Aarseth’’s call for reflectivity serious.

I will claim that the researcher needs the combined tools of reflexivity and situatedness because both situatedness (intertwining agent and environment) and reflexivity (distance/proximity) take into account the involvement of the researcher/player with its material and view this as a cultural praxis. Situatedness allows for game-research that shows the physical locality of playing whilst still relating play to a more global or national context. Reflexivity permits us to show how the researcher is culturally and locally involved in her quasi-object of study through play.

http://academia.edu.documents.s3.amazonaws.com/610955/DIGRAtokyo.pdf

New Players, New Games

by Brenda Laurel

Abstract

Cultural change accelerates as the children of the Atari generation get their pudgy little hands on media we never thought of. Technology literacy evolves into a subconscious expectation that things work and are fun. After decades of thinking we knew what that meant, game designers suddenly find themselves facing an explosion of diversity in terms of both the technological landscape and the potential audience for interactive entertainment. This talk will explore some approaches to research and design that will help us grow both our audiences and our ideas.

New Players, New Games

MMORPG Anthropology: Video Games and Morphing Our Discipline

Posted by dlende on December 27, 2007

By Daniel Lende

Excerpt

World of Warcraft is a MMORPG. And what is that, you ask? A massively multiplayer online role-playing game, in this case the most successful one in existence. It is run by Blizzard Entertainment, based on fantasy role-playing (i.e., swords and sorcery), and has more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. These subscribers pay a monthly fee (currently $14.99 if you pay month-to-month) and for that, Blizzard says, “thousands of players adventure together in an enormous, persistent game world, forming friendships, slaying monsters, and engaging in epic quests that can span days or weeks” in the realm of Azeroth.

Blizzard has built a game that appeals to both causal and persistent players, though most of its monthly income is derived from people who put in lots of hours (Ducheneaut et al. 2006; http://gac.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/1/4/281). It relies in part on an underground economy, including Chinese “gold farmers” (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/magazine/17lootfarmers-t.html) to help create some of the in-game wealth that rich players can then utilize in achieving higher and higher levels and better and better items and spells. Besides the joys of “leveling up” and coordinating massive attacks on either mythical monsters that no one hero can slay alone or on other “guilds” of human players in Azeroth, research has shown that “in keeping with current Internet research findings, players were found to use the game to extend real-life relationships, meet new people, form relationships of varying strength, and also use others merely as a backdrop (Williams et al. 2006; http://gac.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/1/4/338 ).”

Full article: http://neuroanthropology.net/2007/12/27/mmorpg-anthropology-video-games-and-morphing-our-discipline/

Game pleasures and media practices

Authors: Elisenda Ardévol, Antoni Roig, Gemma San Cornelio, Ruth Pagès, Pau Alsina (Open University of Catalonia - UOC) 9th Bi-Annual Conference, Bristol, UK, 18th-21st September 2006 EUROPE AND THE WORLD W013 Understanding media practices

Excerpt

"Play and games are relevant subjects of research in anthropology, and videogames are, no doubt, part of media anthropology studies. The few ethnographic accounts that we have reached about videogames from an anthropological perspective have mainly looked at social aspects surrounding the games: community formation, identity, gender and youth lifestyles, especially in online games. We acknowledge these studies, but our idea here is to construct an interdisciplinary wider view and to explore play as a key feature in new media models of consumption. For that purpose, we will try to develop a preliminary theoretical approach that would include pleasure and sensorial issues in media practices understanding".

"We depart from two starting points: On one hand, we consider videogames as a cultural form that hybridises audiovisual media culture with game logics. In that respect, we want to especially focus on console and PC games with a strong audiovisual representation component, no matter if the game is played off or online. On the other hand, we understand videogames as a set of practices related with consumption, leisure and peers sociability".

"Going further of these two assumptions, we want to develop a working hypothesis that might be useful for future empirical research, which consists in the statement that videogames introduce a “playful” subject position in our relation with audiovisual technologies, transforming the established “spectatorship” relation with audiovisual products to a more active engagement with images. This implies a model of image consumption characterised by a playful production, re-elaboration and remixing practices as a way of appropriating digital audiovisual technologies, which includes practices of sharing domestic and amateur content production through the Internet".

http://www.media-anthropology.net/ardevol_etal_gamepleasures.pdf