PRODUCTIVE PLAY

The Promise of Play: A New Approach to Productive Play

Games are woven into webs of cultural meaning, social connection, politics, and economic change. This article builds on previous work in cultural, new media, and game studies to introduce a new approach to productive play, the promise of play. This approach analyzes games as sites of cultural production in times of increased transnational mediation and speaks to the formation of identity across...

The Promise of Play: A New Approach towards Productive Play

Games are woven into webs of cultural meaning, social connection, politics, and economic change. This paper builds on previous work in cultural, new media and game studies to introduce a new approach to productive play, the promise of play. This approach analyzes games as sites of cultural production in times of increased transnational mediation and speaks to the formation of identity across pl...

Productive Gaming: The Case for Historiographic Play

Situating Productive Play: Online Gaming Practices and Guanxi in China

Economic activities in and around online gaming in China are often correlated in the West with practices of gold farming, or selling in-game currency to players for real money in online games. What can we learn about online gaming in China and about online gaming and online sociality more broadly when we look at economic and other “pragmatic” practices through which online gaming becomes meanin...

Transformative Play Let Me Take You to The Movies : Productive Players

This article examines the contested issue of player productivity, with a focus on the multifaceted relations between players and the game industry. These relations are explored using the movie studio simulation The Movies (Lionhead Studios, 2005) as a case study. Firstly, through an examination of the game, some of the prevailing game industry’s practices, and their relations to the ones applie...