Gamevironments (ISSN 2364-382X) is an international, interdisciplinary, diamond open access academic journal for research on digital games. The journal publishes two issues per year, one regular issue and one special issue with a guest editor on a specific topic. Each issue consists of academic articles as well as other contributions, such as research reports, interviews, or game or book reviews. There are no fees or charges for processing or publication. All articles are subjected to an external double-blind peer review process. Research reports, interviews, and game or book reviews are reviewed by the editorial team. For further information on the peer-review process, see the Submissions page. Gamevironments is hosted and published by the State and University Library Bremen (SuUB) and is affiliated with the Institute for Religious Studies and Religious Education at the University of Bremen, Germany and the International Academy for the Study of Gaming and Religion (IASGAR). The editors-in-chief are Kerstin Radde-Antweiler (University of Bremen) and Lissa Holloway-Attaway (University of Skövde).
Potentials and Limits of Decision-Making Situations in Computer Games for Ethical and Moral Judgement
This report presents the concept of my doctoral dissertation which investigates the potential of computer games as media-pedagogical tools in ethics education, particularly their ability to contribute to students’ ethical and moral reasoning and judgement. It explores whether the interactive nature of computer games makes them uniquely suited to transform ethics lessons into a moral laboratory. Given that computer games provide a space for training and practice, this research suggests that they have significant relevance for real-world decision-making processes. The study focuses on comparing various didactic theories on ethical reasoning and analyzing how decision-making situations in games can be utilized as a mode of experiential learning. Employing a design-based research methodology, a game-based teaching sequence is designed, implemented, and analyzed across four iterative loops. The research aims to determine how game-inherent prompts can initiate processes of ethical reasoning and assesses the broader implications of integrating such decision-making scenarios into ethics curricula.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rahel Stahmann-Ammour
Cards Against Anarchy: The Survival of Art and Game in the Dashavatar Cards of India
The word avatar that is so commonly used in videogames and media today has a well-known Eastern origin in Hindu mythology and loosely translates as reincarnation although the more correct thinking is perhaps re-descent of the gods in various forms to set the world right. The digital game concept has a more tangible, ludic physical version in the Dashavatar cards of India. Depicting the ten avatars of the Indian god, Vishnu, these are commonly circular or rectangular hand-painted cards that have a religious significance and are also works of art that are adaptations of the Persian ganjifa cards that presumably made their way into medieval India in the 15th or 16th centuries. Today, the makers of these cards are few and those who know how to play them are even fewer. The game survives as an art form associated with the narrative folk paintings or the patachitras and is nevertheless struggling to survive even in the artistic communities of the chitrakars who used to paint the cards in different parts of India. This paper looks at how a game is displaced almost entirely by competing ludic practices from Europe and then survives almost entirely as an art form, thus highlighting the important co-dependence of games and art but from a Global South context. In doing so, it focuses on the apparent struggle between the play and the artistic traditions of the card game while addressing how the existence of the cards as play and artistic objects continues to be threatened even as attempts to revive these traditions are underway.
Copyright (c) 2025 Adrija Mukherjee, Souvik Mukherjee
Murder on the Language Express: Bringing Murder Mystery Party Games to Language Class
This practice-based report argues that murder-mystery party games (MMPGs) offer a compelling, outcome-driven context for EFL speaking classrooms that aligns closely with Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT). MMPG mechanics beautifully fulfill TBLT’s core task conditions: focus on meaning, gap-bridging communication, free deployment of linguistic resources, and a clearly defined nonlinguistic outcome. In the practice of two trials at a university in Japan, the author used off-the-shelf commercial scenarios in a small group (two and eight students; A2-B1), with scaffoldings such as structured speaking turns and character diaries. Observed benefits included high engagement, emergent linguistic patterns beyond prudence, and sustained negotiation of meaning. Challenges were also found for cognitive/linguistic load, group-size constraints for class, and content sensitivity around the murder theme. The paper concludes that, with careful scaffolding, MMPGs can constitute practical, classroom-friendly narrative tasks that stimulate authentic speaking while preserving game enjoyment, and they merit further exploration within game-based TBLT.
Hollow yet Hopeful? Sky Islands, Hubris, and Gravity in Video Games
This article explores the symbolic significance of sky islands in gaming culture and beyond, framing them as critical dystopian spaces. Using the Queendom of Zeal (Zeal) from Chrono Trigger (1995) as a focal point, it examines how these floating landscapes function as both escapist fantasies and cautionary tales. Frequently represented as advanced ancient civilisations, sky islands offer players a vision of idyllic yet precarious utopias that challenge the norms of the world below. This article argues that the narrative and visual elements of Zeal highlight its paradoxical nature as both a utopian ideal and a dystopian reality. Drawing primarily on utopian and game studies, this analysis presents Zeal as a complex fictional world that is both merciless and inspiring. The discussion is then contextualised through queer theory, interpreting the defiance of gravity as a metaphorical challenge to normative structures. In doing so, it echoes queer theorists’ pursuits of utopian thinking as a means to challenge dominant norms and envision more inclusive futures. Ultimately, this study explores the idea that sky islands articulate queer hope and queer futurity even through their destruction. They are antinomic spaces, at once sites of unsustainable hubris, political voids, and imaginative possibility. In doing so, they invite players to reflect on progress, power, and the cyclical nature of time, capturing both the risks and the possibilities of envisioning new worlds.
Representation of Disability in Children’s Video Games. A Book Review.
A book review of Representation of Disability in Children’s Video Games (2024) by Krystina Madej.
This Right Way to Play. Western Players’ Appropriation and Reevaluation of Gold Farming in the Chinese Video Game Genshin Impact
The recent success of Chinese video games in the global market has drawn different businesses into the game industry, namely via game boosting. As a service to help new players in a game gain advantages against other players, game boosting, with its recent surge, contributes to the long-standing debate about game labor. Specifically, since Chinese workers and games are an inseparable part of the game boosting, in this paper I ask how this service adds to and complicates the racial discrimination demonstrated by the Chinese game labor in Chinese gold farming in the past. I offer a research design to first conduct a discourse analysis of the advertisements from three boosting platforms: Skycoach and LegionFarm Carry (LFCarry) from the West, and Taobao from China. These platforms offer services for the Chinese video game Genshin Impact (2020). Then, I analyze customer reviews of these boosting services. I compare how power is distributed among companies, game boosters, and customers in both Western and Chinese contexts to reevaluate game labor under a critical racial lens. I argue that Western companies, game boosters, and customers increasingly frame game boosting as a form of skill-based advancement rather than as repetitive, low-skill labor. This reframing produces a colorblind discourse that overlooks the racialized history of digital labor, promoting narratives of equal opportunity while avoiding confronting the violence and discrimination historically faced by Chinese gold farmers.
Peripheral Religions and Games. Introduction
This introduction presents the conceptual framework for the special issue Peripheral Religions and Games, peripheral religions and the relevance of focusing on such within the context of game culture studies. Considered as a rarely explicitly, but often implicitly understood phenomenon of religion in the context of game cultures, the goal of this special issue is to explore the presence, function, and design of peripheral religions and religious practices both across the fields of digital and analogue games. Based on previous research in religious studies and theology, and rooted in practice research, peripherality will be mapped out as a socio-cultural, relational, practice based, and context-based category for specific communities of religious practice. In parallel, through mapping out the conceptual framework, the specific perspectives applied by the authors of this special issue are introduced.
Copyright (c) 2025 Carolin Puckhaber, Aska Mayer, Knut V.M. Wormstädt
Gaming and Breaking Binaries in Immortals Fenyx Rising. A Feminist and Queer Analysis
This report analyses Immortals Fenyx Rising (2020) as an example of queering video games to advocate for the representation of feminist and non-binary perspectives in the English-language AAA games industry. Through a close narratological and ludological analysis, with assistance from literature from gender studies, the public and private sphere, game studies, queer game studies and Greek mythology studies, I explore how Immortals Fenyx Rising is a modern, feminist interpretation of classic Greek mythology which disrupts binaries regarding gender by shedding light on what has been deemed too feminine, domestic or non-conforming in our current societies to be discussed, illustrating the possibility of queering video games to expand non-binary representation. In an industry saturated with games inspired by Greek mythology, Immortals Fenyx Rising not only represents a feminist perspective in the typically masculine action-adventure genre, but also respects the non-binary experiences in Greek myths that are usually hidden in the patriarchal society.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anika Y. C. C. Falkenberg
Review of Christopher B. Patterson and Tara Fickle’s Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) About Us (2024)
A review of Christopher B. Patterson and Tara Fickle’s edited volume Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) About Us (2024).
Virtual Magic. The Depictions of Semi-Referential Systems of Magic in Video Game Aesthetics and Narrative
Magical practices, magical worlds, or fictional deities have been a firm aspect of video game lore from the earliest days of gaming culture. Reaching back to such iconic games as Akalabeth: World of Doom (1979) and the subsequent Ultima series (1981-2018), fantastic realms have accommodated a plethora of players throughout the years. With the rise of interest in esoteric practices and the occult, several game developers have decided to include real-life practices into their narrative as well, instead of the mostly fictional, so-called high fantasy lore. References to popular real-life sources (such as the Ars Goetia [Shaw 2017]), characters (such as Aleister Crowley), or organizations (such as the Golden Dawn) were gradually being incorporated into the story, much to the delight of occult enthusiasts. In contrast to the fictional narratives and real-life references, in recent years a third category of magical representations in video games is emerging. Serving as an amalgamation of both, several developers have created their own fictional systems of magic – built upon real-life sources but following their own aesthetics and narrative. Surprisingly, many of such magical systems are being currently absorbed back into the real-world magical practice, mostly as part of chaos magick, a postmodern school of magic, known for its strong syncretic approach to ritual design. The visual and narrative appeal of said videogame representations of magic has for many practitioners overshadowed the appeal of more traditional approaches and was thus used in their practice instead. This article will, on chosen video game case studies, demonstrate how popular fiction in video games can reimagine and reinterpret the traditional teachings, and build new, complex, and appealing systems, which can be subsequently reimplemented back to the contemporary, real-life magical practices.
Review of Robert Houghton's The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism (2024)
A review of Robert Houghton’s book The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism (2024).
Copyright (c) 2025 Markus Eldegard Mindrebø
“The World is a Maze of Illusions.” Peripheral Religion and Enchantment in Cyberpunk 2077
In this article, we examine peripheral religion and the peripherality of religion in Cyberpunk 2077 (2020). From a hermeneutic analysis of the game’s narrative and mechanical elements, we argue that – despite the secular register of the game’s techno-dystopian setting – the underlying enchantment of the gameworld subtly reinforces the epistemic legitimacy of otherwise peripheralized religious practices and beliefs. We begin with an overview of key theoretical concepts concerning simulation, representation, and enchantment that converge at the core of our argument. Following this, we situate Cyberpunk 2077’s gameworld within the longer literary history of cyberpunk as a genre of speculative fiction and conclude with a close reading of the tarot-themed questline Fool on the Hill that runs parallel to the game’s main narrative. Our analysis illustrates the complicated relationships between the game’s fictional setting, its mechanics and rules, and the game’s status as a simulation of an enchanted world, which together invite players to reflect on peripheral religion in a present day characterized by the secularizing spectre of the Enlightenment.
Copyright (c) 2025 Leonid Moyzhes, Mikael D. Sebag
Creating Cult Controversies. Peripheral Religions in the Video Game Baldur’s Gate 3
In this paper, I investigate the creation of peripheral religions, religions on the margins of society, in the video game Baldur’s Gate 3. The roleplaying game Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023) prominently features religious places, aesthetics, language, and narratives in its worldbuilding based on the classic TTRPG Dungeons & Dragons (1974). In Baldur’s Gate 3, D&D’s elaborate religious and mythological world is brought to life through a rich and interactive storyline and audiovisual design. It features a party on an adventure through temples, shrines, cults, rituals, religious quarrels, and divine blessings, while on their way through the fantasy continent of Faerûn to find a cure for a deadly infection. Religion is no mere background, but an essential part of the main quest, side quests and the design of the game. By studying the audio-visual design of the in-game peripheral religion Cult of the Absolute, I demonstrate how religions are positioned on the periphery of the religious landscape of the game. Building on theoretical considerations of religious landscape, peripheral religions, stereotypes, and religious contact situations, I explore the socio-spatial positioning explicated and implicated in the audio-visual design and narration in reference to perceptions of religion in the real world.
Designing Keep the Faith. Creating a Storytelling Game About a Religion in Transition
This piece is a design reflection, written by the designer of Keep the Faith (2025), a storytelling game about a religion in transition. The piece highlights similar games and games that inspired the design and details the ways in which the game presents arguments about religions. It describes the functions served by fictionalizing a religion (e.g., refraining from setting the game in real history), and discusses how narratives around peripherality motivate different subsets of players via the game’s goal cards, and concludes by offering advice and suggestions for game designers considering creating similar games.
Nerfing My Religion. A Cognitive Mapping of Faiths in Crusader Kings III and Europa Universalis IV
This work will primarily engage with the Ásatrú and Hussite faiths in Crusader Kings III and Europa Universalis IV respectively. The aim of the analysis is to determine the narrative and mechanical reasons and potential affects of the inclusion of religions as mechanics within videogames. In exploring these issues, it can be considered how peripheral or lesser-known faiths can be understood and interpreted from their presence within the gaming medium. Cognitive mapping will be used to highlight areas of ideological significance within the play-space enabled by the game. This methodology is informed by the work of McMahon (2022), which uses directives for the player from a schema of how the videogame can be engaged with according to certain ideological positions that arise from an interpretation of design intentionality. These directives are framed as questions that the player asks of the game. Providing answers to them allows for an analysis of structures and affects within the play-space. The methodology for this work will involve a mapping of the buffs and debuffs each faith receives as play unfolds according to likely design intentionality (following missions, established paths, or completing logical objectives). The reasoning for this follows the logic that the player will seek to min-max their capabilities (minimise loss, maximise gain), optimising the operation of the religion with regards to game’s mechanics. It will be significant to note what certain nerfs and buffs suggest about each religion, and when and how these handicaps or advantages occur are how the player will form an understanding of the faith they are engaging with. This exploration will provide critical insight into the purpose of including such religions within grand strategy and role-playing games, noting the substantial appeal of being able to engage with potential alternate histories.
Gamevironments as an Analytical Lens for Studying Gaming and Culture. A Critical Revision
This introduction unfolds the argumentation of what exactly is meant by the concept of gamevironments published in 2014 (Radde-Antweiler, Waltemathe and Zeiler 2014), what change of perspective the concept entails, and how it differs from existing research. On this basis, it critically reflects on the extent to which the concept was still thought to be too vague and, in part, not contextualized consistently enough at that time, and on the extent to which necessary changes must be made. Furthermore, it presents the further development that took place in 2017 with the introduction of the research matrix gamevironments as communicative figuration (Radde-Antweiler 2018a) and what methodological as well as theoretical implications this implies. Finally, the article critically discusses whether the concept is suitable only for the study of religion and video gaming or takes a broader approach to the critical research of video games and culture.
Copyright (c) 2024 Kerstin Radde-Antweiler
Review of Melissa Kagen’s Wandering Games (2022)
A review of Melissa Kagen’s book Wandering Games (2022).
Community, Alienation and the Experience of Networks. Gamevironments and Theories of Community
I examine Kerstin Radde-Antweiler’s (2024) updated concept of gamevironments through the lens of community. I introduce two key theories of community and consider how gamevironments relates to them. In particular, I point out that the theoretical links between actants may not be experienced as connections at all, let alone as communities. This raises the question of when and why the connections that gamevironments reveals are experience. Building from Benedict Anderson’s notion of the imagined community, I ask which communities must be unimagined in order to sustain unsustainable or deleterious systems, such as the cobalt miners who make electronic devices possible and their working conditions that make those devices economical. I then turn to datafication, relating it to deep mediatisation and deep gametisation, and consider why the hyperconnectivity on the internet seems to have exacerbated rather than resolved loneliness and alienation. I use a Marxist conception of alienation to show that datafication is fundamentally alienating, and that this impacts on how actant networks are experienced. The implications for gamevironments are that the nuances of different digital infrastructures must be taken into account in any gamevironment, in particular the kinds of connections that are and are not afforded between actants.
Video Games Beyond Play. Decolonizing Gamevironments
The true impact of videogaming is far from being fully comprehended and properly evaluated in our hypermediated world. Through theory and exploration, our scholarship examining videogames have shown us the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to unpacking the cultural and social impacts linked with this significant form of media. Videogame research demonstrates that the games we play often reflect our cultural value systems and reinforce narratives and themes linked with the dominant values and ideologies of society. However, research has also illustrated that video games provide opportunities for counter narratives that challenge the dominant ideology, including colonization, and present alternative ways of being. In this way, videogames have become a site of resistance against colonial structures and a source of hope for decolonizing societies. By expanding the focus of videogame studies beyond research that focuses upon the game, the game producers, and the game players and instead considering the gaming context within our current society, the gaming-related actants (including the non-human) and gaming-related media practices, the larger cultural impact of video games can be better evaluated beyond just play. Through this new gamevironments lens, it can be argued that videogames may be one of the most significant forms of new media for supporting decolonization and changing cultural perceptions about Indigenous identities and ways of being.
Ludonarratology and Gamevironments in Dialogue
This article argues that game studies will benefit from an acute attentiveness toward religion, and that a gamevironments approach refined by insights generated in the recent developments in ludonarratology is what we need to study religion, a phenomenon and force diffused in the technical and cultural environments of games and gaming. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler (2024) emphasizes that a research design taking a gamevironments perspective must consider gaming, gaming-related actants, and gaming-related media practices, all located in the unity of technical and cultural environments. This holistic approach resonates with ludonarratologists’ attempt to dissolve the divide between technical systems and cultural narratives. Ludonarratologists such as Brendan Keogh (2008) and Weimin Toh (2008) specify what Radde-Antweiler calls actants as mediated (or embedded, enacted, and extended) bodies beyond the human. In this light, we may consider shifting from actant-centeredness to a focus on the embodied experiences of gamers, developers, branders, and other gaming-related practitioners, and the affective force that brings them and various media objects together. Moreover, following the lead of Tison Pugh (2019) who, among many others, applies ludonarratology to the study of narratives in general, we may proceed to discuss the mediatization and gametization of entire societies, a commitment shared by both gamevironments and ludonarratology. It is to be added that while we can discern a gaming structure in all kinds of narratives and other human endeavors, gamification as a labor paradigm, business strategy, and governmentality needs to be considered if we intend to study games as not just reflections of but part and parcel of reality. To demonstrate why the study of religion and gaming needs the gamevironments-ludonarratology paradigm, an analysis of Black Myth: Wukong (2024), China’s first AAA game inspired by Journey to the West (Wu 1592), a vernacular novel that has been transforming in the environments of Chinese religions, politics, and economy, is provided.
Review of Tom Tyler's Game: Animals, Video Games, and Humanity (2022)
A review of Tom Tyler's book Game: Animals, Video Games, and Humanity (2022).
A Ludic Litmus Test. Sara Is Missing, Gamevironments, and Gregory Bateson's Theory of Play
This paper introduces the Ludic Litmus Test (LLT) as a tool to determine whether digital interactions constitute a gamevironment – an analytic concept recognizing video games within their cultural, social, and broader contextual significance. With the proliferation of digital media, distinguishing between a game and non-game environment is increasingly complex. The LLT scrutinizes digital interactions for ludic traits, evaluating whether they are part of a playful domain or a regular context. Using the game Sara Is Missing (2016) as a case study, the paper found the test to be particularly useful in assessing ludic elements when the distinction between the game’s fictional narrative and real-world cues is blurred. Central to the LLT is the identification of ludic communication, which juxtaposes an overt message against a subtle metamessage, indicating that the context is playful. The LLT aims to refine the ambiguous terms game and play, preventing circular reasoning and enhancing academic discourse.
Videoludic Metalepsis. A Review of Agata Waskiewicz's Metagames: Games on Games (2024)
A review of Agata Waszkiewicz's book Metagames: Games on Games (2024).
Gamevironments Revisited from the Perspective of Game Production Studies
The original concept of gamevironments, introduced by Radde-Antweiler, Waltmathe, and Zeiler in 2014, was an actor-centered approach to video game research that integrated the analysis of games as digital artifacts with the broader cultural and social context in which these games were produced and consumed. In this issue, Radde-Antweiler (2024) revisits the concept, calling for a holistic actant-centered approach that takes not only the human, but also the non-human actors into consideration. While the revisited concept of gamevironments is a useful approach to studying video games, it still largely omits the economic dimension of producing and consuming video games in different cultural, economic, and political backgrounds. This article aims to bridge this gap and analyze the 21st century video game industry through the lens of political economy and game production studies, aiming at integrating these perspectives with the analytical framework of gamevironments. The economy and global financial flows make up an important part of the analysis of video game development, and it is important to consider the economic dimension of video game production and consumption in different contexts. The video game industry is shaped by concerns around profitability, and the oligopolistic power of corporations has a significant impact on the cultural production of video games in terms of which projects get funded and marketed to global audiences. Additionally, the politics of the video game industry and the sociopolitical issues within the game culture discourse are important topics that need to be investigated. In this article, we identify ten key challenges for studying video games and game culture using the revisited gamevironments approach that game production studies can help in addressing.
Copyright (c) 2024 Vit Šisler, Jan Švelch
Cultural Heritage, Video Games and Video Gaming. Researching Global Actants with Gamevironments
This article discusses the study of cultural heritage, video games and gaming and in particular reflects on the advantages and applicability of the gamevironments approach for this. To do so, it first summarizes the gamevironments approach and offers context information on tangible and intangible heritage and their study. In this, it considers the complex and partly contested nature of the concepts. Building on these reflections, the article then discusses cultural heritage, video games and gaming as well as their research. In its main section, it brings cultural heritage, games, gaming and gamevironments into a conversation. The article finds that a gamevironments lens is overall advantageous as the approach stresses the benefit of moving beyond studying games only and including their environments. Additionally, and more concretely, a gamevironments perspective can support especially two so far less studied aspects in the study of cultural heritage and video games and gaming: researching global contexts with an actant-centered approach.
Video Game Characters and Transmedia Storytelling: The Dynamic Game Character (2023) by Joleen Blom. A Book Review
A review of Joleen Blom's book Video Game Characters and Transmedia Storytelling: The Dynamic Game Character (2023, Amsterdam University Press).
The Byzantine Army in Video Games. Common Misconceptions Shaping Popular Perceptions
Scholars of Byzantium cannot afford to ignore the growing medium of video games, which play a key role in shaping the modern perception of Byzantium among a formative audience. In numerous popular strategy games, Byzantium is differentiated from other contemporary civilizations and factions through a series of highly specific historical vectors including the Varangian guard, kataphraktoi, and the so-called Greek fire. Given the constraints of the medium, this leads to significant distortions in its reception by players. This problem is further exacerbated by the same emphases and omissions being persistently deployed across disparate video game titles spanning the last three decades. Byzantium is thus molded into something it was not. Reasons for this range from Enlightenment thought to modern political discourse, and from gameplay concerns to marketing demands. Understanding these are essential to course-correcting Byzantium’s historical legacy in the modern milieu, particularly since younger demographics often first encounter Byzantium in the medium of video games.
Understanding Modern Views on the Middle Ages Through Research-led Learning. A Teaching Report
This report brings insights from a course in Medieval game studies held at Kiel University from April to July 2023. In games, the medieval era is often depicted as a dark and cruel time on the one hand and a romanticized time on the other. One of the main focuses of the course was to look behind these narratives and how to examine games as an object of research further than just looking for historical inaccuracies. This shows some important methods for teaching game studies and discusses opportunities and representative results, as well as possibilities to improve this type of course embedded in regular studies of history without a gaming focus. We hope to demonstrate some approaches to involve game studies in curricula in which it was not included previously. This teaching report focuses on the research-led learning aspect of the course, which had a high amount of individual space for the students to create their research process, discusses some results that evolved out of the seminar, highlights the problems of teaching game studies to an audience which is not familiar with researching modern media and propose some solutions to these problems.
Copyright (c) 2024 Philipp Frey, Joana Hansen
Gamification. A Conceptual Critique to Move Forwards
Gamification has become a considerable part of game culture. Alongside that, it has garnered significant support and criticism that has left researchers and practitioners polarized on their perception and utilization of gamification as a label and a practice. The aim of this article is to attempt a re-clarification of the gamification concept and to utilize the gamevironment analytical framework on a larger analytical scale that allows us to reflect on gamification and game studies as research fields. Based on that, I view gamification through the lens of gamevironments and provide directions for future researchers.
The Subject of Games. Cartesian Anxiety in Game Cultures, Game Studies, and Gameplay
This article argues that game studies must directly confront the heretofore implicit conflict between different constructions of the human subject at the center of games research and criticism. The conception of a self-coherent and rational player is at odds with a relativistic notion of the player as a malleable surface of inscription, and this tension manifests as Cartesian anxiety. But both these constructions of the subject are bound to the figure of the cogito and thus to the present. Lacan’s theory of the split subject is advanced as one possible way forward, as it postulates a thinking, reasoning subject that is nevertheless irreconcilably sundered from the libidinal and affective dimensions of its being. This theory of the subject is articulated to an approach to games analysis that centres gameplay, the agonistic interplay of forces animating players’ engagement with games, and illustrated through a discussion of the public outcry around the release of No Man’s Sky (2016) and its subsequent updates and patches.