Playing at a Distance: Borderlands of Video Game Aesthetic - Softcover

Fizek, Sonia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262544628 ISBN 13: 9780262544627

Publisher: MIT Press, 2022

Synopsis

An essential exploration of video game aesthetic that decenters the human player and challenges what it means to play.

Do we play video games or do video games play us? Is nonhuman play a mere paradox or the future of gaming? And what do video games have to do with quantum theory? In Playing at a Distance, Sonia Fizek engages with these and many more daunting questions, forging new ways to think and talk about games and play that decenter the human player and explore a variety of play formats and practices that require surprisingly little human action. Idling in clicker games, wandering in walking simulators, automating gameplay with bots, or simply watching games rather than playing them—Fizek shows how these seemingly marginal cases are central to understanding how we play in the digital age.
 
Introducing the concept of distance, Fizek reorients our view of computer-mediated play. To “play at a distance,” she says, is to delegate the immediate action to the machine and to become participants in an algorithmic spectacle. Distance as a media aesthetic framework enables the reader to come to terms with the ambiguity and aesthetic diversity of play.
 
Drawing on concepts from philosophy, media theory, and posthumanism, as well as cultural and film studies, Playing at a Distance invites a wider understanding of what digital games and gaming are in all their diverse experiences and forms. In challenging the common perception of video games as inherently interactive, the book contributes to our understanding of the computer’s influence on practices of play—and prods us to think more broadly about what it means to play.

About this title

About the Author

Sonia Fizek is an associate professor of games and media studies at the Cologne Game Lab at Technical University of Cologne, Germany.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262544628
• ISBN 13: 9780262544627
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160