Serious Gaming or: Taking Gaming Seriously

As part of the planned Collaborative Research Center, the 28th issue of the Journal of Media Studies (zfm) "Protocols" features the article Serious Gaming or: Taking Play Seriously. A Research Program. 

Abstract: 

In his keynote at the 8th Annual Games for Change Festival Al Gore described digital games as ««the new normal».»The expansion and normalization of the concepts of game and play corresponds with a far less frequently described workification of games. It is not just that gaming feels like work: games are being integrated ever more deeply in the commercial dogma of usability. Examining these practices and situations under the rubric of «serious gaming,» we open up a new transdisciplinary field of research – one that focuses on the productivity, both risky and exciting, of the social, inter- and transcultural, corporeal, economic, and epistemic shifts and dislocations between ‹playing› and ‹working›.

Click here to read the full article.