This is the first volume to apply insights from the material turn in philosophy to the study of play and games. At a time of renewed interest in analogue gaming, as scholars are looking beyond the digital and virtual for the first time since the inception of game studies in the 1990s, Material Game Studies not only supports the importance of the (re)turn to the analogue, but proposes a materiality of play more broadly.
Recognizing the entanglement of physical materiality with cultural meaning, the authors in this volume apply a range of theoretical approaches, from material eco-criticism to animal studies, to examine games and play as existing within worlds of matter. Different chapters focus on the material properties of board, card and role-playing games, how they are designed and made, how they are touched and played with, and how they connect with other human and nonhuman things.
Bringing together international scholars, Material Game Studies defines a new field of material game studies and demonstrates how it is a valuable addition to wider debates about the material turn and the place of embodied humans in a material world.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
About the Contributors
Introduction: Material Game Studies, Chloé Germaine Buckley (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK) and Paul Wake (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
Section 1: Provocations
1. Thinking the Things We Play With, Miguel Sicart (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
2. Analog Games as Infrastructure, Aaron Trammel (University of South California, USA)
Section 2: Materials
3. Component parts: Board games as architecture and performance, Paul Wake (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
4. A Queer Touch of Fantasy Role-Play, Jack Warren (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
5. Lead Fantasies: The making, meaning and materiality of miniatures, Mikko Meriläinen, Katriina Heljakka, Jaakko Stenros (Tampere University, Finland)
Section 3: Ideologies
6. ‘Men Should Try Playing the Woman’s Part to See What it Feels Like. Remember ~ It’s Only a Game…’: The Representation of Gendered Experience in Chance-based Board Games, Holly Nielsen (Royal Holloway University, UK)
7. Deterritorializing Game Boards: Mapping Imperialism in RISK and Modern Board Games, Jonathan Ray Lee (University of Washington, USA)
8. Nature’ Games in a time of Climate Crisis, Chloé Germaine Buckley (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
Section 4: Cultures
9. Contested Spaces, Velvet Ropes, Exclusion Zones: The Pleasures and Dangers of Face-to-Face Play in Analogue Gaming Spaces, Tanya Pobuda (Ryerson and York University, Canada)
10. ‘Hands, Face, Space’ - The Material Turn and COVID -19, Esther McCallum Stewart (University of Staffordshire, UK)
Section 5: Hybridity
11. The Cult of New (Stuff): Kickstarter’s Digital/Material Tensions, Paul Booth (DePaul University, Chicago, USA)
12. The Logic of Analogue Adaptation, Nathan Altice (University of California Santa Cruz, USA)
Index
About the Author :
Chloé Germaine is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and a co-director of the Manchester Game Studies Network.
Paul Wake is Reader in English Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and a co-director of the Manchester Game Studies Network.
Review :
This edited collection broadens the horizon of what game studies can do. Through an in-depth investigation of a number of case studies around tabletop and board games, the volume provides an essential contribution to contemporary debates around materialism, agency, and the non-human. It is essential reading for students and scholars interested in exploring the complexities of game culture.
