Pokéwalkers, mafia dons, and football fans

  • This paper addresses a theoretical reconfiguration of experience, a repositioning of the techno-social within the domains of mobility, games, and play, and embodiment. The ideas aim to counter the notion that our experience with videogames (and digital media more generally), is largely “virtual” and disembodied – or at most exclusively audiovisual. Notions of the virtual and disembodied support an often-tacit belief that technologically mediated experiences count for nothing if not perceived and valued as human. It is here where play in particular can be put to work, be made to highlight and clarify, for it is in play that we find this value of humanity most wholly embodied. Further, it is in considering the design of the metagame that questions regarding the play experience can be most powerfully engaged. While most of any given game’s metagame emerges from play communities and their larger social worlds (putting it out of reach of game design proper), mobile platforms have the potential to enable a stitching together of theseThis paper addresses a theoretical reconfiguration of experience, a repositioning of the techno-social within the domains of mobility, games, and play, and embodiment. The ideas aim to counter the notion that our experience with videogames (and digital media more generally), is largely “virtual” and disembodied – or at most exclusively audiovisual. Notions of the virtual and disembodied support an often-tacit belief that technologically mediated experiences count for nothing if not perceived and valued as human. It is here where play in particular can be put to work, be made to highlight and clarify, for it is in play that we find this value of humanity most wholly embodied. Further, it is in considering the design of the metagame that questions regarding the play experience can be most powerfully engaged. While most of any given game’s metagame emerges from play communities and their larger social worlds (putting it out of reach of game design proper), mobile platforms have the potential to enable a stitching together of these experiences: experiences held across time, space, communities, and bodies. This coming together thus represents a convergence not only of media, participants, contexts, and technologies, but of human experience itself. This coming together is hardly neat, nor fully realized. It is, if nothing else, multifaceted and worthy of further study. It is a convergence in which the dynamics of screen play are reengaged.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author details:Katie Salen
URN:urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-49824
ISSN:1867-6219
ISSN:1867-6227
Title of parent work (German):DIGAREC Series
Subtitle (German):play mobile with me
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Publication year:2011
Publishing institution:Universität Potsdam
Release date:2011/05/18
Issue:6
First page:70
Last Page:86
Source:Digarec Series, 06 (2011), S. 070 - 086
RVK - Regensburg classification:AP 15963
RVK - Regensburg classification:SU 500
Organizational units:Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Künste und Medien
DDC classification:7 Künste und Unterhaltung / 79 Sport, Spiele, Unterhaltung / 793 Spiele und Freizeitaktivitäten für drinnen
Collection(s):Universität Potsdam / Schriftenreihen / DIGAREC Series, ISSN 1867-6227 / DIGAREC Series (2011) 06
License (German):License LogoKeine öffentliche Lizenz: Unter Urheberrechtsschutz
External remark:
See video recording of this DIGAREC Keynote-Lecture on:
Multimediaserver of the Potsdam University Library
[urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-mms-71-205-7]
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