Introduction to

Game Studies
WHY STUDY GAMES?
Artifact – a thing “characteristic of or resulting
from a particular human institution, period,
trend, or individual”

Artifacts are characterized by a “twin relationship between

doing and making.”
Material Artifacts
 Embodied Practice – what it “feels”
like to play a game
 Phenomenology -- the study of
consciousness through the objects of
direct experience.

Consider this: Could you talk about Wii

Sports without mentioning the Wiimotes?
Procedural Artifacts
Emphasis on games as rule-based systems and
the algorithms that power them.

Procedurality– a way of creating, explaining, or

understanding computational processes

Procedurality is “the specific way in which

computer games build discourses of ethical,
political, social, and aesthetic value” (Sicart
2011).
Cultural Artifacts
“Games must be played as their meanings
are inherently co-created in a dialogue
between game developers, games
systems, and game players”

Two modes of meaning making:

• Semiosis – meaning making through

decoding media representations or
symbols

• Ludosis – meaning making through playful

action
 Espen Aarseth’s Cybertext
 Ergodic – requiring non-trivial effort to traverse.

“The boundaries between these three

elements are not clear but fluid and
transgressive, and each part can be
defined only in terms of the other two”
(Aarseth 21).

“Cybertext shifts the focus from the

traditional threesome of author/sender,
text/message, and reader/receiver to
the cybernetic intercourse between
various part(icipants)s in the textual
machine” (Aarseth 22).
3 Artefactual Characteristics of Video Games

• Material
• Procedural (Software)
• Cultural
 For Next Week:

How do games communicate their

systems to players?

“Being a Game” – Miguel Sicart from

Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical
Gameplay