the idea of agency as a non-essential attribute toplayers, or even human beings, is more problematic.

Now, if combined these lessons with Wittgenstein’s idea inthe Philosophical Investigations to abandon the logical formof the proposition (analytical definitions), we will arriveat a holistic notion of the normative space of all games,begging the question it would clash with the idea of beingable to give a conceptual delimitation to the game as a unitof analysis. However, the possibility of avoiding thisconclusion lies in reflecting on Wittgenstein's intentionin establishing this diffuse condition of games.A non-analytic notion of games would therefore have to bepresented on the base experience of play.

for it assumes a causallink between volitions and acts, which the samevolitions can’t possess between each other otherwiseit would lead to an infinite regress

evaluation to be possible the rules must be objective inthemselves (1982; p. 110-111)3.

See (asmentioned in countless interviews) Meat Boy isn’t made of animalmeat, he’s simply a boy without skin whose name is Meat Boy.”

The food bar can be replenished by eating anyof the game’s many varieties of food, of which more than half con-sist of some kind of animal flesh. Supernatural foods aside, the mostnourishing items, alongside salmon, are all cooked red meats: mut-ton, pork chop, and, of course, steak. Most of the vegetables appearon the tier below, whilst fruit sits yet further down the hierarchy,alongside raw meats and just one step up from cakes and cookies,raw fish, and rotten flesh.

“hierar-chy of foods” in which meat dominates at the top,

That gargantuan hunk of meat, dominating the meagrefruit and vegetable matter beneath, leaves us in no doubt as to theprincipal part of this meal.

play like a loser. At the end of Into the Dead, when you lose, your com-panion is killed, too

The act ofreading, Bull argues, always engages the emotions of readers, and thesuccess of any text will depend to a large extent on a reader’s sym-pathetic involvement with it. This includes identification with thegoals and objectives of the text’s characters or types. Those charac-ters or types may well be very different from the reader in terms ofage, or race, or gender, or class, but the goals and objectives, suchas escaping death or achieving personal fulfillment, for instance,are most often ones that can be shared by every reader, in that theyreflect rational self-interest. When we read, Bull suggests, we are“reading for victory.”

you will always die

Tom Nook

Donkey Kong

Sonic the Hedgehog

Tamagotchi (Bandai, 1996), surely the best known of virtual pets(though they are, strictly speaking, extraterrestrial rather than earthlyanimals)

In mostcases, civilians can be killed—players can murder or incidentally attack the wrongperson during a gunfight—but this causes players to lose a life or fail a mission.

g rape and pedophilia, it is rare to findgames in which these (especially the latter) are possible. Developers might notalways intend to forbid these actions, but they are forbidden all the same if playersare unable to simulate them. Games therefore establish a kind of moral architec-ture as boundaries are created, all without labeling actions or the need for explicitmoralizing.

Kearney considered the girly aesthetic of what shecalls “sparklefication” and its capacity to dissolve effeminophobia.66 Girl andqueer communities that embrace “sparklefication,” Kearney writes, are “cham-pioning femininity for the various pleasures it elicits and the subversive potentialit offers within patriarchal heteronormative societies.”67 Kearney acknowledgeselsewhere, however, that “[p]ink’s signifying power has been so cemented overthe past half century that it is very difficult to associate it with anything otherthan females and femininity,” making it challenging to disentangle the colourfrom its use in upholding rigid gender stereotypes.

One of the most comprehensive of these studies isKearney’s Girls Make Media. Kearney’s book charts a history of girls’ cultural pro-duction in North America, rewriting misogynistic assumptions that position girlsand women as consumers and boys and men as producers. Kearney goes as farback as the domestic crafting activities of the Victorian era to the scrapbookingby fans of classic Hollywood cinema. By the late twentieth century these practiceshad expanded to photography, music, filmmaking, zine making, and web design.

In 2019,it attracted crowds of 5,500 at two outdoor events on Halloween night, with other eventsinvolving smaller numbers, e.g. 60 older citizens attended an afternoon tea party and 780people participated in a Dracula themed fun run.Enacting hospitality as welcome and as social controlThe data suggest that both festivals are actively fostering hospitality through their practices.

enhance integration

In festival and eventsettings where people gather, e.g. to hear a favourite musician or learn about a shared interest,there is clear potential for people to set aside differences and find common ground in taste andleisure preferences (Gilroy 2004)

This understanding highlights that hospitality is not just aboutunrequited giving but always involves an exchange. For their part, the host offers a welcome,friendliness and safety. In the narrowly defined service encounter, the reciprocation expectedof the guest involves economics, as well as a tacit agreement to respect the host’s rules andregulations.

Clear-cut distinctions between hosts and guests areno longer tenable now (Larsen 2008), given that mobility is such a prominent feature ofcontemporary living (Morley 2002).

outlets like the-Score eSports presented Korean player salaries as disproportionately low,46characterizing Korean players as supreme talents exploited by corporatesponsors paying them minimal wages.47 Even as many Korean players leftfor China, the discourse evolved to see Korean players as good neoliberalsubjects due to their ease of exploitation by corporate interest.

South Korean esports ecosystem

people almostoverwork themselves, and they feel this compulsion and duty to the degreethat sometimes I think they sometimes ruin their lives.

League of Legends (LoL)

Allen Guttmann explains how modern sports differ from the games foundin ancient society. He ascribes seven distinct features (two values and fiveprocesses) to modern sports that distinguish it from ancient games: secu-larism, equality, specialization, rationalization, bureaucratization, quan-tification, and record

Christine Yano builds on Iwabu-chi’s work and thinks through what she calls the commodity “whiteface” ofHello Kitty. 31 Remarking on Japanese companies’ desires to create globallycompatible consumer products in the 1970s by mimicking Euro-Americanstandards, Yano underscores the ambiguity of the international appeal ofHello Kitty, especially her cute white face. 32 Yano links mukokuseki to mo-dernity, whiteness, and global acceptance and adeptly points out the Japanesecompanies’ willingness to self-erase for the sake of global marketability.

TzarinaPrater and Catherine Fung argue that for the Asian body’s labor to be recog-nized, it must be converted from “the foreign threat to the assimilated modelminority.”

Thinking through Hutchinson’s and Moore’s perspectives, we could arguethat Kojima’s strategy of using racial ambiguity to cater to both the Japaneseand the Western audience permits him to embody Japaneseness without anyhistorical baggage.

Noting the racially ambiguous design of the mgs series’ protagonist Snake,Hutchinson argues that the white-passing body welcomes Western playersto empathize with its message.

lhewodd,whichhadbeenfifledwifl1reds,pinks,bhies,andpastelyellows,isnowblackandwhite,exceptforherhair,whichisgreen.Herdress,whichwasredandvolunfinous,isnowblackandgray,hanginglimplyoverherlumchedbody.Nothavecontrol.IuseflicThmnbstickstotryandmovehcrtotheriglfl;butshcsh1mblesandfalls.3

Often enough riot is understood to haveno politics at all

The opposition of strike and riot thus comes to stand, viaveiled syllogism, for the opposition of Marxism

Benjamin explains that the sociotechnical imaginary is not just about revealing “how the technical andsocial components of design are intertwined, but also imagines how they might be configureddifferently.”

that inviting nonexperts or amateurs from diverse fields to solveproblems could contribute to more effective solutions and outcomes thankeeping a problem closed and away from the public.

Cell Slider par-ticipants evaluate potentially cancerous cells, helping scientists to getbetter at diagnosing cancer in future patients. Similarly, in Biogames,players help to properly diagnose malaria in cells.

If you can’t do that, someone else can.” She cited the 2022IGDA Developer Satisfaction survey in addressing the games industry retention problem:“Diverse talent tends to leave the industry at about twice the rate as white men. So, if webroaden the funnel and we bring more diverse talent in, all we’re doing is losing morepeople, and that’s not an acceptable action plan. It’s not going to make the kind of lastingchange we need to see in our industry.” Regarding retention of diverse talent, MacLeanrecommended actions for leaders and colleagues that foster an inclusive environment:charter team agreements to define core hours of work, hold team members accountable toensure they use their vacation days, accommodate remote work, create shared definitionsfor flex time schedules, develop clear promotion paths, and demonstrate care foremployees as humans. All of these were presented as ways to retain talent, especially forcaregivers. “People are willing to make these tradeoffs,” speaking of work/life balanceand caregiving in particular, “regardless of gender, regardless of family status if they seethere is a path forward.”From my perspective, intentionality and action to create positive sustainablecultures accommodating the needs of marginalized individuals signposts that the gamesindustry has acknowledged a need for correction and is beginning to support diversityand representation in a meaningful way.

A third and very central way in which UE’s design supported player empowerment was the manner in which the game facilitated the forming of a social network among its players. This was done through the narrative of the game, which told players that social innovation requires teamwork; through the complexity of the missions, which led players to collaborate; and by facilitating player communication via the discussion forum and players’ personal pages. As the game developed and players started to befriend each other, a network emerged that was transferrable to the physical world and enabled them to share ideas, knowledge, and other resources.