A Ludicrous Discipline? Ethnography and Game Studies

The information age has, under our noses, become the gaming age. It appears likely that gaming and its associated notion of play may become a master metaphor for a range of human social relations, with the potential for new freedoms and new creativity as well as new oppressions and inequality. Although no methodological or theoretical approach can represent a cure-all for any discipline, in this article the author discusses how anthropological approaches can contribute significantly to a game studies nimble enough to respond to the unanticipated, conjunctural, and above all rapidly changing cyberworlds through which everyone in some way is now in the process of redefining the human project.