Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture
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Editorial: Critical
No full textThe editorial argues for the necessity of thinking and acting critically in times of multiple crises. Then it introduces the contributions brought together in the present issue and, finally, takes up some internal issues as Eludamos
Deconstructing esports: Why we need to acknowledge bodies in a move toward more equitable esports practices
No full textBranding competitive gaming as esports, part of a process known as sportification, has contributed greatly to the wider acceptance of competitive gaming as legitimate leisure and professional activity. However, the social effects of sportification remain largely overlooked in current research. In this paper we argue that in order to understand the normative and formative social effects of sportification of competitive gaming, we need to forefront the bodies in esports. Building on scholarship that highlights inequities in (competitive) gaming and esports, we identify four ways in which bodies are made relevant in esports: 1) the obscuring of the playing body and establishment of an idealized and normative masculine athletic body; 2) the ‘visibility’ of women\u27s bodies as deviant from the norm; 3) the invisibility (and impossibility) of disabled bodies through design (embodied nature of design of both games and gameplay); and 4) the embodied nature of infrastructural issues that cannot be reduced to materiality. We argue for a deconstruction of esports as a social practice that forefronts bodies. Understanding exactly how bodies become relevant will allow us to deconstruct the structural conditions of participation that dictate which bodies are possible or not in esports and move towards more equitable esports practices
Videogame Formalism: On Form, Aesthetic Experience and Methodology by Alex Mitchell and Jasper van Vught (Amsterdam University Press, 2023): Book review
No full textA review of Alex Mitchell and Jasper van Vught\u27s Videogame Formalism. On Form, Aesthetic Experience and Methodology. Published by Amsterdam University Press, 2023. ISBN: 978-9-048-55423-2, 264 pages
Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis, edited by Laura op de Beke, Joost Raessens, Stefan Werning and Gerald Farca (Amsterdam University Press, 2024): Book review
No full textA review of the voluminous anthology Laura op de Beke, Joost Raessens, Stefan Werning and Gerald Farca (eds.): Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis. Published by Amsterdam University Press in their Green Media series, 2024. ISBN: 978-9-463-72119-6, 612 pages
Equitable forms of participation on a gaming-adjacent platform: The platformization of a youth center
No full textTo connect with youth online, a non-profit organization in Finland is organizing a youth center on a server on the gaming-adjacent social platform, Discord. We focus on the infrastructuralized platform and study ethnographically how the labor of moderation and technical competencies that platforms require on the part of the youth workers. We want to better understand the technical conditions by which youth workers have to navigate equity in platformized communities. How does the platform and connected infrastructure determine what forms of communication and interaction are and are not permitted and when and to whom? The results indicate that the employment of opening hours and the presence of youth workers who actively moderate the server during those opening hours, seem to create a safe space for a diversity of youth. The moderation, largely invisible and frictionless, becomes an intricate part of the infrastructuralized platform and the socialization on the platform. This infrastructuralized moderation requires technical, pedagogical and psychological knowledge, competence and resources
A future already past? The promises and pitfalls of cryptogames, blockchain, and speculative play
No full textThe article argues that blockchain-based games should be conceptualized as an emerging social practice that attracts financial speculators under the guise of online games. The article first outlines the blockchain-gaming discourse, which promises ownership and benefits to players, while it encourages financiers and publishers to exploit players. The article presents the performative discourse of blockchain advocates as well as the counterarguments presented by journalist, players, and developers, in order to demonstrate that arguments against cryptogaming are not anticapitalist and politicized, but mostly based on common sense. Then, the article investigates game studies concepts for their capacity to further explicate cryptogames, and finds that neither gamification nor playbor are completely fitting. Instead, the article turns to the game research fundamentals of Huizinga and Caillois to cast blockchain gaming in a new light. From this perspective, games like CryptoKitties and Axie Infinity emerge as nested activities that can be approached as play of financial speculation, with the latter approach being significantly privileged in existing games
Fancies explained: Converting symbolic capital into NFTs
No full textThe concept of symbolic capital, introduced by Pierre Bourdieu (1986), has been applied to explain the circulation of value between game communities and the industry. The bottom-up approach can be found in the studies of so-called “gaming capital” accumulated by gamers (Consalvo, 2009), while the top-down approach focuses on the agents who hold the most power in the gaming industry (Nichols, 2013). These perspectives may require reconfiguration today: since the end of the 2010s, traditional power relations have been contested by ‘decentralized’ gaming that uses blockchain technologies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Their early adopters suggest that NFTs may disrupt traditional circulation of value to the benefit of players as opposed to major corporations. Many gamers, however, vehemently oppose NFTs in games. By combining these top-down and the bottom-up approaches, this article explains that the specific symbolic gaming capital remains systematically underappreciated in blockchain gaming, which operates along different vectors of power. To support my argument, I turn to the longest-running blockchain-based game CryptoKitties (Axiom Zen, 2017), and analyze the elements of the role-playing genre that appeared in the game during the collective process of continuous development. In the first case, these elements (‘fancies’) were added by the developers of the game, and in the second case, an RPG-like extension emerged as one of its fan spin-offs (KotoWars). I conclude that symbolic capital is community-specific in the case of blockchain gaming. It is only available to those who already possess considerable symbolic, and, much more importantly, financial capital within the crypto community
Reimagining a future for game studies, from the ground up
No full textThis article posits a future for game studies based on considering the ground—metaphorically and quite literally—upon which we play, produce, distribute, and work with games. Offering a critical consideration of the mobile game Temple Run inspired by both postcolonial and anticolonial scholarship, I explore some of the ways in which games transform our relations to land. This offers a multiscalar understanding of games and (in) place. From this perspective it becomes possible to understand how games are materially imbricated in some of our most urgent challenges—a central task for game studies, both present and future
Game worker solidarity: Mapping collective actions in the video games industry
No full textThis commentary discusses the Game Worker Solidarity (GWS) Project. It documents instances of collective action in the games industry, presenting the data in a map and accompanying database. The aim of the project is to facilitate sharing information on the emergent movement for unionisation in the games industry after 2018, as well as archiving the longer history of worker resistance. We argue that understanding worker organisation—both the existing forms of collective action as well as the potential in the future—is vital for understanding the future of games and game production
Young video game players’ self-identified toxic gaming behaviour: An interview study
No full textIn this study we analyze negative behaviour in the context of digital gaming through interviews of players (N=12) aged 16–27 who self-reported as having behaved in a manner they acknowledged as toxic. Through thematic analysis of the interviews, we highlight three central themes: Games as affective spaces; affordances and norms facilitating negative behaviours; and players’ navigation of negative behaviours. Our study demonstrates the situational and affective nature of negative behaviour and offers solutions for reducing it in gaming.