Gaming rhythms: Play and counterplay from the situated to the global (original) (raw)

"Global gaming networks are heterogenous collectives of localized practices, not unified commercial products. Shifting the analysis of digital games to local specificities that build and perform the global and general, Gaming Rhythms employs ethnographic work conducted in Venezuela and Australia to account for the material experiences of actual game players. This book explores the materiality of digital play across diverse locations and argues that the dynamic relation between the everyday life of the player and the experience of digital game play can only be understood by examining play-practices in their specific situations. Stunningly conceptualized, this volume promises to revamp how literacy researchers theorize readers’ experiences of videogame play, and texts more generally. A powerful writer, Apperley pushes at the edges in a most persuasive way. —Donna E. Alvermann, Research Professor of Language and Literacy Education, University of Georgia Apperley demonstrates patient energy in undertaking innovative case studies, and marks a significant conceptual advance in the field. —Terry Flew, Professor of Media and Communication, Queensland University of Technology Driven by a desire to understand games "as they are played", Apperley has provided us with the most well informed, knowledgeable, scholarly and instructive accounts of the experiences of play to-date. This book puts early journalistic accounts of games and ill-fitting disciplinary imports into Game Studies safely behind us. The quality of the research and breadth of insight on display here is truly outstanding. —Dr Gareth Schott Gaming Rhythms is the result of careful, meticulous, and sustained research that demonstrates Apperley‘s writing bravura. I would not use the expression 'tour de force' simply because it is a cliche. —Matteo Bittanti, Stanford Humanities Lab, Stanford University If I had chosen the title for this book, it would be called “Steps to an Ecology of Games” – as it is a tribute to scholars such as Gregory Bateson and Brian Sutton-Smith as well as a continuation of the work of McKenzie Wark, Alexander Galloway, Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greg de Peuter. But Apperley also breaks rich new ground by situating his research on gamers in Venezuela and Australia in a sophisticated and wide-ranging theoretical context. His utilization of Lefebvre’s concept of rhythm is particularly fruitful, as it injects games research with a much needed dose of flow. His methodological rigour and perceptive analysis shed light on the way in which digital play is situated in our everyday lives, how it informs our bodies, and how it arouses our minds. This is an audacious, original and genuinely novel contribution to the field of game studies. In other words, it’s all beat and no filler. —Julian Raul Kücklich, playability.de"