Thresholds of Digital Gameplay (Software Studies) - Softcover

Gardner, Daniel L

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262553589 ISBN 13: 9780262553582

Publisher: MIT Press, 2025

Synopsis

Contemporary digital gameplay is only accessible by navigating an ecosystem of interfaces that support its computational nature. Account logins, controllers, and an assortment of menus, settings, and other peripheral-to-gameplay elements support a range of practical and necessary functions that result from the transformation of gameplay into digital gameplay, as well as broader shifts toward an increasingly networked and data-driven world. The games industry has adopted usability testing on top of play testing to evaluate how these interfaces may influence the accessibility and success of their game software. But, how embedding gameplay within webs of software, hardware, and platform infrastructures impacts the medium, players, and production has not yet been fully explored.

In Thresholds of Digital Gameplay, Daniel Gardner demonstrates how a series of interfaces and other elements on the periphery of digital gameplay fundamentally alter the phenomena of gaming. This book examines non-gameplay-centered material or mechanical attachments that surround and enclose gameplay while directing or mediating our experience of it—for example, access controls, character configuration, and microtransactional storefronts.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel L. Gardner is Lecturer of Computing and Game Design at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262553589
• ISBN 13: 9780262553582
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336