Introduction to the Center for Media Philosophy and the Laboratory for Computer Games Research

The Centre for Media Philosophy and the Laboratory for Computer Games Research are glad to be a part of the Double Game Philosophy Conference and to host  the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference 2019.

As we are approaching the deadlines for the conferences we would like to introduce ourselves a bit.

The Laboratory for Computer Games Research emerged in 2013 in Saint Petersburg (Russia) within Centre for Media Philosophy (the Institute of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University).

Our team: Prof. Konstantin Shevtsov (head), Alexander Lenkevich (deputy head, organizer of the regular seminar of the Laboratory), Konstantin Ocheretyany (researcher, PhD), Margarita Skomorokh (researcher, game designer), Alina Latypova (researcher), Sergei Bugluck (researcher, game designer), Andrey Muzhdaba (researcher, editor of http://gamestudies.ru).

The Laboratory conducts researches based on the following topics: corporeality, interfaces, identity, subjectivity in computer games, computer games as a medium, language of computer games, counter-play and counter-gaming, glitches, masocore, etc.

Since 2013, the Laboratory holds a regular scientific seminar (organized by A. Lenkevich).

Important facts:

In 2013, the Laboratory together with a Centre for Media Philosophy organized the first Russian conference to be dedicated solely to the research of computer games: the all-Russian conference with international participation “Computer Games – the Theatre of Activity”. Other game conferences were held in 2014 and 2018 – “Computer Games as a Mode of Social Reality Constitution” and “Computer Games: Cultural Interfaces and Social Interactions”. Moreover, during 2013–2019 the Laboratory has organised various academic events, including panels, round tables, and workshops within other conferences in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Astrakhan, Vologda, Ulan-Ude, Copenhagen, Vilnius. Members of the Laboratory also participated in the international events on game studies: DiGRA 2018, the Philosophy of Computer Games 2018, Nordic DiGRA 2018, etc.

In 2014 and 2016, the Laboratory published two collective monographs: “Computer Games: Strategies of the Research” and “Game or Reality: the Game Studies Experience”. In 2019, it edited the volume on game studies in the International Journal of Cultural Research – “Computer Games: Game Design of Culture”.

 

The researchers of the Laboratory regularly publish articles concerning the analytics of computer games in indexed journals.

All the information can be found on the web page of the Laboratory: http://mediaphilosophy.ru/liki/

The Laboratory can be also followed on social media:
https://facebook.com/lab.liki/
https://vk.com/liki_lab

The Centre for Media Philosophy has been working since 2007 at the Institute of Philosophy at St. Petersburg State University. Director: Prof. Valery Savchuk; scientific secretary: Konstantin Ocheretyany, PhD. Researchers: Prof. Konstantin Shevtsov; Gulnara Khaidarova, D. Sc.; Daria Kolesnikova, PhD; Alexander Lenkevich; Alina Latypova, etc.

The Centre conducts annual conferences, edits books, and holds seminars on philosophy of media and other adjoining phenomena (visual ecology, photography, computer games, etc.). Moreover, the Centre regularly organizes various international and all-Russian conferences. We have established long-term relationships with colleagues from the Interdisciplinary Center for Historical Anthropology (Free University of Berlin), from Basel (Switzerland), Innsbruck (Austria), and Greifswald University (Germany), with the Catholic Center for Culture Semiotics and Media University of São Paulo (Brazil), as well as with colleagues from Serbia, Bulgaria, Belarus, and Ukraine. Over the past 10 years, a number of joint conferences have been held and several collective monographs have been published in cooperation with the Free University of Berlin.

The Centre publishes a book series “The works of the Centre for Media Philosophy”. Now it includes 14 volumes. The researchers of the Centre also published books and monographs on media, visual culture, the philosophy of photography, the philosophy of memory, the analytics of the mediated body, etc.

Within the framework of the Centre, two laboratories are working – The Laboratory for Computer Games Research and The Laboratory of Visual Ecology (organized by D. Kolesnikova).

In addition, a regular scientific seminar “Visual practices” is held. It emerged in 2001 due to the efforts of Prof. V. Savchuk, the organizer of the seminar. The secretary since 2012: A. Latypova.

The website of the Centre: http://mediaphilosophy.ru/
The Centre on Facebook: https://facebook.com/groups/mediaphilosophy

Conference: Pretend Play and E-Cognition, 19-20 September 2019

The Centre for Philosophical Psychology at the University of Antwerp is organizing this interesting conference on pretend play on 19-20 September this year.  From their descriptions of the conference:

“E-Cognition refers to a young field of interdisciplinary research on embodied, embedded, enactive, extensive and ecological cognition. It includes philosophies of enactivism and embodiment, ecological psychology, sensorimotor theory and dynamical systems theory. It assumes that cognition is shaped and structured by dynamic interactions between the brain, body, and both the physical and social environments.”

“The conference addresses the ongoing debate between cognitivist and non-cognitivist approaches to cognition. Recently, E-Cognition has been gaining popularity, and frameworks such as enactivism have been increasingly used to understand cognitive acts as imagination or remembering (Hutto & Myin, 2014, 2017) and basic forms of pretending (Rucińska, 2016, 2017). Yet, the existing challenge to E-cognition is that it is still difficult to operationalize, as its “emphasis on holism presents problems for empirical investigations” (Gallagher, 2017, p. 21). This conference adds insight into this debate, as it seeks to explore ways of designing an empirical experiment that would include the hypotheses of E-Cognition theories.”

CfP: Computer Games – Interfaces of Media Reality

The Centre for Media Philosophy and the Laboratory for Computer Games Research invite you to take part into the conference Computer Games: Interfaces of Media Reality. The conference is a part of the Double Games Philosophy Conference, organized together with the Game Philosophy Network, on the 21-25th October 2019 in Saint Petersburg.

Call for papers

We invite participation from scholars of different backgrounds who are interested in researching computer games through the lenses of philosophy and media philosophy, which regards them as media that organize perception in a new fashion, distinct from both traditional media and non-digital games.

We propose that the interfaces of computer games represent “experience machines” for the modification of sensibility, thought, and imagination. Questions for the discussion include:

  • How is the gaming experience constructed?
  • Which interfaces are involved in this process and how do they influence our sensibilities?
  • How can we distinguish between the mediated, immediated, and hypermediated elements of the game?
  • Can we trace the connection between the mediators that produce the gaming experience, and the contemporary episteme?
  • Is it possible through the archaeology of vision, body, and the technical elements of computer games as desiring-machines, to find out the fundamentals that underlie the current configuration of media reality?
  • How are game elements transferred to non-game contexts or other media forms (cinema, literature, professional practices, etc.)?
  • What are the boundaries of game practices?
  • How do rules, narratives, and gameplay establish a balance between freedom and necessity, between mechanisms of emancipation and those of enforcement?
  • What are player strategies of interacting with the game: from conventional and habitual practices to counterplay (masocore, speedrunning, glitchware, etc.)?

Working languages of the conference: English and Russian.

Please submit your papers (4000-6000 words) or extended abstracts (700–1000 words) before the 15st August 2019 through games.interfaces@gmail.com.
All submitted abstracts will be subject to a double-blind peer review process.

The best papers and abstracts will be recommended for the publishing in the edition based on the conference and indexed in the Russian Science Citation Index.

All questions concerning the conference please send here: games.interfaces@gmail.com. We will try to reply as soon as possible.

Important dates

  • Submission deadline: 15st August.
  • Announce acceptance/rejection: 15th September.
  • Conference: 21-25th October.

Committee

Conference Chairs: Konstantin Ocheretyany (PhD, St. Petersburg State University), Alexander Lenkevich (Laboratory for Computer Games Research).

Organizing committee: Prof. Valery Savchuk, Prof. Konstantin Shevtsov, Alina Latypova, Margarita Skomorokh, Sergei Bugluck, Andrei Muzhdaba.

Contacts

For all questions, do not hesitate to contact us: games.interfaces@gmail.com

CfP: The Aesthetics of Computer Games – 2019 Philosophy of Computer Games Conference in St. Petersburg

 

Call for papers

The 13th International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Game, organised by the Game Philosophy Network, together with the Centre for Media Philosophy and Laboratory for Computer Games Research, will be held in St Petersburg, Russia, on October 21–24, 2019 as a part of a double game philosophy conference. 

The theme of this year’s conference is ‘The Aesthetics of Computer Games’. Playing games yields particular kinds of playful experiences or perceptions through the senses, which can be studied with an aesthetic focus, emphasising aísthēsis over noêsis. Computer games can be regarded as playful media that organise our perceptions and modify our sensibilities. For this conference, we welcome submissions on (but not limited to) the following themes and questions:

1. Aesthetics as aesthesis (aísthēsis). Is there an aesthetics or mode of experience that is specific to computer games? How do their visual, audio, and haptic aspects come together to produce distinctive experiences? How are ‘experience’ and ‘perception’ explored in computer games and shaped by them? Can concepts such as ‘affect’, ‘atmosphere’, and ‘rhythm’ be productively applied to computer games? What is the role of game interfaces on player experience?

2. Games as art? What are the conditions of possibility of games being art? How do computer games fit into established categories or conventions of aesthetics, and how do they contribute to new ones? Do games recognised as having a claim to artistic status differ from mainstream games? How do accounts of art based on necessary and sufficient conditions match up against anti-essentialist accounts in terms of gauging the status of computer games?

3. The aesthetics of gaming practices. Are games collaboratively authored? How do different kinds of play, or player-game conjunctions, bring about different kinds of gaming pleasures or aesthetic experiences? How do different bodies encounter computer games and what can be said about the way in which gameplay experience is mediated by our bodies?

Do some kinds of gameplay or extra-gamic player practices have an aesthetic orientation? Are computer games performances?

4. The ethical, political, and social dimensions of game aesthetics.
What is the transformative potential of computer games and how does this compare to the transformative capabilities ascribed to artworks? How do aesthetic issues interconnect with ethical, social, and political ones – what is the autonomy or heteronomy of the aesthetic domain? How are taste, sensibility, and habit acquired with respect to gameplay and what are the social implications of this?

In addition to this central theme, the conference also features an open category, for which we invite welcome contributions that do not fit this year’s theme, but that nonetheless offer a valuable contribution to the philosophy of computer games.

Submitted proposals should have a clear focus on philosophy and philosophical (including media philosophical) issues in relation to computer games. They should also refer to specific games rather than invoke them in more general terms. Submissions should be made in the form of extended abstracts of up to 1000 words (excluding bibliography). Please indicate if you intend your paper to fit in the open category. The deadline for submissions is 23:59 GMT, Sunday, 11th August, 2019. Please submit your abstract through review.gamephilosophy.org. All submitted abstracts will be subject to a double-blind peer review process.

Notification of accepted submissions will be sent out in late August 2019. A full paper draft must then be submitted by Monday, 14th October 2019 and will be made available on the conference website.

We also invite proposals for themed panels and workshops that will take place on the 20th and 24th October, 2019. Please contact the program committee chair if you are interested in organising one.

We cannot provide grants or subsidies for participants. There will, however, be no conference fee.

For more information about the conference please visit http://gameconference.mediaphilosophy.ru/pcg2019.html and gamephilosophy.org.

Program chair: Feng Zhu (King’s College).

Organizing chairs: Alina Latypova (St Petersburg State University) and Konstantin Ocheretyany (St Petersburg State University).

 

About

The Centre for Media Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University, in collaboration with the Game Philosophy Network, have come together to organize a double conference on philosophical issues raised by computer games.

The 13th International Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, “The Aesthetics of Computer Games” (Oct 21-24), will explore various philosophical issues in thinking about the aesthetics of games and gameplay, whilst “Computer Games as Interfaces to Media Reality” (Oct 21-25) will address issues that spring from considering computer games to be “experience machines” for the modification of sensibility, thought, and imagination. Our aim is to provide a meeting place for scholars of media philosophy and game philosophy in order to inspire future investigations into the commonalities and differences between these approaches.

 

Program Committee:

Alina Latypova (St Petersburg State University)

Anita Leirfall (University of Bergen)

Darshana Jayemanne (Abertay University)

Feng Zhu (King’s College London) (chair)

Grant Tavinor (Lincoln University)

Hans-Joachim Backe (IT University of Copenhagen)

John R. Sageng (Game Philosophy Network)

Konstantin Ocheretyany (St Petersburg State University)

Marc Bonner (University of Cologne)

Margarita Skomorokh (St Petersburg State University)

Mathias Fuchs (Leuphana University of Lüneburg)

Olli Leino (City University of Hong Kong)

Pawel Grabarczyk (IT University of Copenhagen)

Sebastian Möring (University of Potsdam)

Sonia Fizek (Media Academy Stuttgart)

Veli-Matti Karhulahti (University of Jyväskylä/University of Turku)

William Huber (Abertay University)

 

Organizing Committee

Alexander Lenkevich (St Petersburg State University)

Alina Latypova (St Petersburg State University)(chair)

Konstantin Ocheretyany (St Petersburg State University)(chair)

Margarita Skomorokh (St Petersburg State University)

 

 

 

Organizing Committee and Host for PCG2019

It is our pleasure to announce that the next Philosophy of Computer Games Conference will be hosted by the Center for Media Philosophy and the Laboratory for Computer Games Research at the Saint Petersburg State University. It will be a part of a double conference that will serve to explore commonalities and differences between media philosophy and game philosophy.

Alina Latypova and Konstantin Ocheretyany will give an introduction to the Center for Media Philosophy and the Laboratory in a separate post.

The calls for both of the conferences will follow shortly.  

The organizing committee for PCG2019 has the following members:

Profile picture of Alexander Lenkevich

Alexander Lenkevich

Profile picture of Alina Latypova

Alina Latypova (chair)

Profile picture of Konstantin Ocheretyany

Konstantin Ocheretyany (chair)

Profile picture of Margarita Skomorokh

Margarita Skomorokh

Feng Zhu is Program Committee Leader for PCG2019

It is our pleasure to announce that Feng Zhu has accepted the invitation to chair the next conference in the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference series.

Feng is a teaching fellow at King’s College in London and has contributed extensively to the programs at earlier conferences in the series.

The new program committee is presently being constituted and a call for papers will follow within a few weeks. More information about the program work and the new conference host will also follow shortly.

CfP: DiGRA 2019 Call for Papers (Deadline February 5, 2019)

***Dear fellow game philosophers, please note that DiGRA 2019 features a philosophy track!***

It is our great pleasure to announce the CfP for Digital Games Research Association’s 2019 Conference. Papers are invited under the theme ‘Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo Mix’, where ‘media mix’ serves as a starting point for considering games’ convergence, transformation, replication, and expansion from platform, technology, and context to another. For more information and updates, please see http://www.digra2019.org/.

DiGRA 2019 Conference will be held at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan from August 6 to 10, 2019.

Submission deadlines: 
Full Papers, Abstracts, Panels, and Doctoral Consortium: February 5, 2019
Workshops: April 8, 2019

Please share this call with any potentially interested parties.

Best wishes,
Program Chairs Hanna Wirman, Masakazu Furuichi and Torill Mortensen

CfP: Workshop on Games, Language and Philosophy (deadline January 10.)

The connection between games and language is undeniable. From Wittgenstein’s language games, through Sellars’ rule base theory of meaning to Robert Brandom’s notion of scorekeeping and Jaroslav Peregrin’s analogies between chess and language. What is important, the relationship between games and language goes beyond mere analogies or examples, because both phenomena can be jointly studied as artificial rule systems which govern social behavior. This creates a need for a common platform for researchers of games and language. The aim of the workshop is to bring both academic communities together in order to exchange perspectives and broaden the overlap between both fields.

Applications to present should be made via the PhiLang submission process, with abstracts clearly marked ‘for PhilGame’. Details can be found on the conference home page.

Topics should explore the relation between games and language and could include:

– Games as rule based systems

– Language as rule based system

– Analysis of the concept of a “rule”

– Difference between notions of game “mechanics” and game “rules”

– Wittgenstein’s notion of “language games”

– Conceptual role semantics

– The notion of “rule following”

– Normativity in games and language

Enquiries should be directed to the workshop organiser, Paweł Grabarczyk, IT University of Copenhagen: pagrab(at)gmail.com

Panel @ PCG2018: ‘Subjects’ and ‘Objects’ in Game Studies

itu14th August, 2018

9am – 10:30am

Location: ITU, AUD 1

 

 

 

Panelists:

Espen Aarseth

Andreas Gregersen

Justyna Janik

Sebastian Möring

Feng Zhu

 

Panel abstract

This panel aims to address the philosophical issues underlying so-called player-centred and game-centred approaches in game studies. It will take stock of the changes in the theoretical climate of the last decade. In particular, it will review the possible contributions from various theoretical frameworks to game studies.

Building on the ‘intriguee’ of Cybertext (1997, p. 113), Aarseth’s essay ‘Transgressive Play and the Implied Player’ (2007) argued for the relevance the ‘implied player’. It has been over a decade since the essay characterised the methodological terrain in game studies with regard to player-focused approaches and game-focused approaches, as the conflict between the ‘critical player-theorist’ and the ‘ethnographic player-observer’ (Aarseth, 2007, p.131). Aarseth was concerned that game studies researchers who studied players were insufficiently focusing on what ‘typical’, as opposed to ‘subversive’ players, did. The struggle between the humanities and social sciences over the control of the idea of the player is that between the player as a ‘function’ of the game, and the player as a real embodied individual. If ‘games are both aesthetic and social phenomena, [then] a theory of the player must combine both social and aesthetic perspectives to be successful’ (Aarseth, 2007, p.130). The ‘implied player’ was the concept to accomplish this. Coming from seemingly the opposite side, Sicart’s position against what he saw as the reductive formalism of ‘proceduralism’, which subordinated everything to the game’s rules, nevertheless led him to the view that ‘for each procedural analysis there must be an orthogonal analysis of play that completes the arguments of meaning by means of accounting the play experience’ (Sicart, 2011, Against Procedurality section, para.7).

This panel proposes to discuss the justifications for this ‘bridging’ between the humanities and social sciences, and what may be entailed by them. We intend to review the different philosophical assumptions involved in a theorist attributing certain qualities to the ‘subject’ and to the ‘object’, in any assumed (a)symmetry of the subject-object conjunction, and in the veracity of the binary division of ‘subject-object’ or ‘player-game’ itself. As a non-neutral means of controlling or delimiting interpretation, such attributions demand a closer examination of the intentions at work. If we abstract the characteristics of specific players, such as their psychological disposition, idiosyncratic memories, and physical (dis)ability, into an ‘implied’ player, do we necessarily normalise the play experience despite our best intentions? Yet if we do not, are we confined to fragmented forms of analyses that can make no claims beyond their own specificity, let alone attempt to comprehend the role of computer games in a larger socio-cultural context?

Various philosophical frameworks, most notably ‘new materialism’ (Barad, 2012; Braidotti, 2006), ‘object-oriented ontology’ (Harman, 1999; Bryant, 2011), Actor-Network Theory (Law & Lodge, 1984; Latour, 2005), assemblage theory (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988), ecological thought (Morton, 2010), and media ecologies (Fuller, 2005), have grappled with the subject-object issue. The broad shift seems to have been an opposition to the more linguistic or representational turns of the 1970s through 1990s, a turn to ‘materiality’, and a critique of anthropocentrism. The way that some of these ideas can be and have been taken up in game studies will be considered. Notably, Taylor (2009) has argued for the ‘assemblage’ of play that is constituted by interrelations beyond that of player and game, whilst Giddings (2009) has proposed a ‘microethnography’ of video game play that foregrounds the ‘event’. We ask: what is to be gained by moving away from a subject-object framework of understanding the relationship between users and technologies? What are the problems of doing so? And how might it be possible to theorise contingency and plurality whilst also retaining focus on larger categories?

The terrain covered by this panel will be expansive; as such, we will prioritise establishing and exposing connections between different theoretical problematics involving ‘subject’ and ‘object’, drawing attention to their foundational points of convergence and divergence.

 

References

Aarseth, E. (1997) Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press.

—— (2007) ‘I Fought the Law: Transgressive Play and the Implied Player’, Situated Play, DiGRA, pp.130-133.

Barad, K. (2012) Interview with Karen Barad. New materialism: Interviews and cartographies, pp.48-70.

Braidotti, R. (2006) ‘Posthuman, all too human: Towards a new process ontology’, Theory, culture & society, 23(7-8).

Bryant, L. (2011) ‘The Ontic Principle: Outline of an Object-Oriented Ontology’, in Bryant, L., Srnicek, N. & Harman G. (eds.), The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. re. press

Deleuze G. & Guattari F. (1988) A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Fuller, M. (2005) Media ecologies: Materialist energies in art and technoculture. MIT press.

Giddings, S. (2009) ‘Events and collusions: A glossary for the microethnography of video game play’, Games and Culture, 4(2), pp.144-157.

Harman, G. (2011) The Quadruple Object. Zero Books.

Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford university press.

Law, J. & Lodge, P. (1984) Science for Social Scientists. Macmillan Press.

Morton, T. (2010) The Ecological Thought. Harvard University Press

Sicart, M. (2011) ‘Against Procedurality’, Game Studies, December 11(3).

Taylor, T.L. (2009) ‘The assemblage of play’, Games and Culture, 4(4), pp.331-339.

 

Espen Aarseth

Is the implied player a pleonasm?

In literary theory, the implied reader is, in Wolfgang Iser’s words (1978:34), “a textual structure anticipating the presence of a recipient without necessarily defining him”. Using novels as his example, Iser distinguishes sharply between four perspectives of reading: The narrator, the characters, the plot, and the fictitious reader (p. 35). For Iser, these perspectives are all different aspects that converge as the real reader attains the position (standpoint) of the implied reader. Iser’s model is not useless to understand the gaming experience (at least not in diegetic games: games with a world and characters), but the main difference is that the game’s player is already defined by the game and overlapping with at least one of its characters, and indigenous to the game world.  We would also have to add, indigenous to the game mechanics, an extra perspective Iser did not have to worry about.  In other words, there is nothing ‘implied’ about the game’s player, it is a most explicit standpoint, defined by, among other things, the game’s user interface.  And yet, it corresponds well to Iser’s intended meaning of the implied reader, which supports questions and explorations of the gameplayer’s position between the artistic intentions of the game designers and the aesthetic experience of the real player.  On the one hand, the game’s player overlaps with the (usually main) character and does therefore not need a ‘fictitious reader’, and on the other hand, the game’s player is a concrete and explicit position that does not need a process of convergence because it already is well-defined: syntactic rather than semantic.

However, diegetic games, in particular, typically have ‘textual’ aspects (or “textual structure” as Iser would call it) so a more radical conclusion would be that while (e.g.) massively singleplayer games such as Fallout: New Vegas or Skyrim do not have implied players, merely an explicit player function, they still have implied readers, unlike, say, minimalist games like chess or Tetris.  To sum up this claim, games do not have implied players, but instead, a player function and, depending on the textual anatomy of the game, they may have implied readers.

 

Reference

Iser, W., 1978. The act of reading. Baltimore and London.

 

Biography

Espen Aarseth is professor of game studies and head of the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen.  He holds a Cand.Philol. in comparative literature and a Dr.Art. in humanistic informatics, both from the University of Bergen. He is co-founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Game Studies (2001-), and author of Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Johns Hopkins UP 1997), a comparative media theory of games and other aesthetic forms. He recently received an ERC Advanced Grant for the project MSG – Making Sense of Games (2016-2021).

 

 

Andreas Gregersen

Implications (of a practice theory) of games and gaming

This presentation aims at interrogating the issue of computer games and their “implied structures” by way of a discussion of practice theory. Within general media theory, a recent and influential practice theory proposal has been offered by Couldry (2012) and two points from this work are especially relevant here: The first is a clarion call for all scholars to move from analyses of media texts towards analyses of media practices. The second is the claim that a single media text may lead to very diverse practices. The overall question is what consequences this (type of) standpoint might have for analyses of games and gaming, both in general and with respect to what one might call the “the issue of implication” of computer games. A small selection of pertinent questions would be: What are the pros and cons of shifting from game objects to practices? Do we “leave the objects behind” in favour of practices or do we try to make connections? Is gaming a practice or rather a set of practices? If the latter, how large is this set, roughly – and how do we distinguish between practices? What type of ontological entities are implied by the structure(s) of a given game? Does it make sense, for instance, to say that games do not have implied players, but rather implied practices? If we opt for “how about both?” where does that lead, if anywhere?

The answers to these questions arguably depend, to varying extent, upon what version of practice theory one adopts (if any). Given that practice theories are (notoriously) heterogeneous (Schatzki, Knorr Cetina, & Savigny, 2011; Warde, 2005), I will sketch some answers based on a synthesis of Bourdieusian (Bourdieu, 1977) practice theory and cognitive sociology (Brekhus, 2015; Zerubavel, 1997), with some bits from Archerian and Schutzian sociology added for good measure. The resulting framework assumes that individuals are socialized into a particular habitus through their upbringing in a particular culture, but it also emphasizes agential reflexivity (Archer, 1995) and “projects” as well as individual biographies (Schutz, 1967). In addition, it maintains the analytical distinction between embodied routine actions and higher-order reflexive thinking. This version of practice theory is deliberately conservative, and my main point will be that this conservatism has the virtue of allowing for cultivation of fruitful connections between a series of existing perspectives on games and players.

 

References

Archer, M. S. (1995). Realist Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brekhus, W. H. (2015). Culture and Cognition. Cambridge: Polity.

Couldry, N. (2012). Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice. Cambridge: Polity.

Schatzki, T. R., Knorr Cetina, K., & Savigny, E. v. (Eds.). (2011). The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London: Routledge.

Schutz, A. (1967). The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Warde, A. (2005). Consumption and Theories of Practice. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(2), 131-153. doi:10.1177/1469540505053090

Zerubavel, E. (1997). Social Mindscapes. An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

 

Biography

Andreas Gregersen is Associate Professor at Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at University of Copenhagen. His research is predominantly oriented towards cognitive theory (formalist media theory as well as social theory) and computer games.

 

Justyna Janik

Between the video game object and the player: posthuman perspective

While there are a few publications in the field of game study that focus on posthuman approaches (Bogost 2010; Jessen & Jessen 2014; Wirman 2014; Gualeni & Westerlaken 2016; Fizek 2017), there is still a need for works that would focus on the creation of meaning inside the player-game relation and the play process itself, which, at the same time, would emphasize the ethical foundation of a posthuman approach focused on the human relation with technology. With that in mind, in this presentation, I shall introduce the idea of the “bio-object” (Kantor 2004) and the concept of posthuman performativity (Barad 2007), which would not only show how both the video game object and the player co-create meanings, but also determine their own ontic borders.

The idea of the bio-object emerged from the playwright Tadeusz Kantor’s aesthetical explorations concerning the nature of objects, their meaning, and their place in the surrounding reality. Kantor coined this notion to describe the special relation between the actor and the stage object that is established during a dramatic performance. Here, I shall make the argument that the notion can also be applied to the situation between the player and the video game. The stage object/video game defines the moves and motives of the actor/player and the actor/player not only animates the object/game, but in fact becomes the living part of it. They are both equal in this qualitative new unity and, as equals, they are both the main conduit of the play’s meaning.

However, even if they appear as one, the ontological status of the bio-object is more nuanced. In Kantor’s theory, this happens because of two reasons: first, the bond between actor and object is not exactly stable. It is based on constant rivalry (Pleśniarowicz 1990): either the actor/player dominates the object and uses it as she wishes, or the object/game imposes itself over the human and confines her movements. Second, it is possible because of the specific status of the Kantorian object, which is not defined by its given, human functionality, but also has the capacity to define and transform human actants when they are using it.

This is attuned with Karen Barad’s concept of intra-actions (2007), in which agency is not something that actants have and can use, but rather a dynamic force that happens between them. By not differentiating between human and non-human agency, Barad wants to escape the anthropocentric tendencies that can appear when using those terms in a traditional understanding, while also emphasizing the transformative power of the intra-actions. This performative power is especially important in her development of agential realism, because it is only through the intra-actions, rooted as they are in the material-discursive practices, that the borders of objects, their features, materiality and properties can be established.

By meshing together Kantor’s and Barad’s ideas, I would like to focus on this exact performative force and ask question about how the equal status of both actants – the video game object and the player – can result in the production of new meanings.

References

Barad, K. M. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.

Bogost, I. (2012). Alien phenomenology, or, What it’s like to be a thing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Fizek, S. (2017). Self-playing Games: Rethinking the State of Digital Play. Paper presented at The Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Kraków 2017.

Jessen, J. D., & Jessen, C. (2014). Games as Actors – Interaction, Play, Design, and Actor Network Theory. International Journal on Advances in Intelligent Systems, 3-4 (7), 412 – 422.

Kantor, T. (2004). Teatr śmierci: Teksty z lat, 1975-1984. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich.

Pleśniarowicz, K. (1990). Teatr Śmierci Tadeusza Kantora. Chotomów: Verba.

Westerlaken, M. & Gualeni, S. (2016). Situated Knowledges through Game Design: A Transformative Exercise with Ants. Paper presented at The Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Malta 2016.

Wirman, H. (2014). Games for/with Strangers: Captive Orangutan (Pongo Pygmaeus) Touch Screen Play, Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, 30, 103-113.

 

Biography

Justyna Janik is a PhD student at the Faculty of Management and Social Communication at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, as well as a member of the Jagiellonian Game Studies Research Centre. She holds MAs in Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Cultural Studies. Her thesis concerns the subject of the relationship between a player and a video game, with a focus on post-human and performative nature of this bond. She is also fascinated by works of Tadeusz Kantor, which she uses as a theoretical tool to better understand a video game as an object.

 

Feng Zhu

A Foucauldian ‘topological’ analysis of player typologies

How do we approach the study of player practices or implied player practices, with a view to saying something about the game? And how do we connect the analysis of both players and games to a broader context? We can aim to show that the kinds of play practices involved in relation a game are multiple. This mitigates the danger of normalising everyday common sense and so ignoring both the actual uncertainties of evaluation in everyday life and the institutional strategies of building authority from particular claims to reality (Boltanski, 2011, pp. 54-56). But a naive focus on transgressive and heterogeneous forms of practice can obscure both political and historical insights that might otherwise be gleaned if a much broader perspective beyond the differences between specific players were adopted. As Peter Dews (2007, p.xiii) argues, the outcome of an celebration of the infinite play of desire, non-identity, difference, repetition and displacement beloved by poststructuralism can be ‘a wilful self-restriction of analysis to the fragmentary and the perspectival [that] renders impossible any coherent understanding of our own historical and cultural situation’ (cf. Jay, 1984, p.512; Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005, p.xi; Hardt & Negri, 2000, pp.137-138).

To explore whether an emphasis on homogeneity or on heterogeneity is analytically preferable in each instance of analysis, I will reflect on an approach informed by Foucault’s ‘topological’ turn (Foucault, 2007; Collier, 2009) in his later work, one that rejected epochal framings in favour of patterns of correlation in which heterogeneous elements are configured, as well as the redeployments through which these patterns are transformed. This approach moves us away from settling on there being a single implied player as one that would not be adequate to convey the multiplicitous layers and very distinct implicit player positions contained within contemporary games. Distinct ergodic pathways signify different patterns of action, diverse dispositions and attitudes, and they can be summed up as referring to various player ‘typologies’ (Bartle, 1996; Yee, 2007, no date; Hamari & Tuunanen, 2014). The critical move, however, lies in the way that we might seek to tie these typologies together; it is possible that there are overarching tendencies or rationalities among these typologies, such that there is a concatenation of micro-reactions in a systemic fashion. I will explore the philosophical assumptions behind how such a position may be argued for and derived in light of the recombinatorial and problematising role that Foucault (1984) attributed to ‘thought’, which complicates any attempts to homogenise away specificity.

References

Bartle, R. (1996) ‘Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDS.’ Available at: http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm.

Boltanski, L. (2011) On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation. Polity.

Boltanski, L. & Chiapello, E. (2005) The New Spirit of Capitalism. London and New York: Verso.

Collier, S. J. (2009) Topologies of power: Foucault’s analysis of political government beyond ‘governmentality’. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(6), 78-108.

Dews, P. (2007) Logics of Disintegration: Post-structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory. London and New York: Verso.

Foucault, M. (1984) ‘Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations: An Interview with Michel Foucault’ (L. Davis, Trans.). In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault’s Thought. London: Penguin Books.

Foucault, M. (2007). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-1978 (G. Burchell, Trans.). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Hamari, J. & Tuunanen, J. (2014) ‘Player Types: A Meta-synthesis’, TODIGRA: Special Issue, Selected articles from Nordic DIGRA 2012, 1(2).

Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2000) Empire. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press.

Jay, M. (1984) Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Yee, N. (2007) ‘Motivations of Play in Online Games’, Journal of CyberPsychology and Behaviour, Issue 9, pp.772-775.

—— (no date) Motivations of Play in MMORPGs: Results from a Factor Analytical Approach. Available at: nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/pdf/3-2.pdf.

Biography

Feng Zhu is a teaching fellow in the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. His research interests lie in self-transformative gameplay practices, particularly in relation to Foucault’s work on the technologies of the self. This extends into considerations of theories of habitus and hexis, the ethico-aesthetics of the self, neoliberal subjectivity, and thinking the limits of individualising techniques of power. He is a section editor for The Journal of the Philosophy of Computer Games.