The modality of Ausspielen or: Putting the Game to Work refers to a potential end of the game, to its ending, and the beginning of the work (putting the game to work) and thus to the limits of the game. It also capitalises on the possibility and productivity of re-entering and continuing the game. On the one hand, Ausspielen reflects the end of the game; on the other hand, putting the game to work can also mean giving up a certain further option or playing off a (digital) opponent. However, this does not necessarily refer to the actual end of the game; instead, new conditions for continuation can be designed out of this situation. Ausspielen thus focuses on ways to continue playing, to keep players in the game, and to put the game to work in terms of its social, cultural, and economic productivity and capitalisation.
Subprojects
C01: Stick to the Game. Practices of Serious Gaming in the Context of Servitisation
Prof. Dr Beate Ochsner/Dr Judith Willkomm, Dept of Literature, Art, and Media Studies, University of Konstanz
In C01, we focus on servitisation as a participatory form that, on the one hand, enables the increase of profits and, on the other hand, promotes the autonomy, creative space and involvement of players in the game. We ask who provides a service to whom, and who ultimately benefits from it? We look not only at the interdependence and connections between players and publishers, but also at new roles, professions and tasks that have emerged with new forms of service. We do so by asking 1) how the football simulation franchise EA SPORTS FIFA blurs the boundaries between moments of work, sport and play on the pitch and in front of the screen? and 2) how data-driven gaming in the multiplayer online battle arena game LEAGUE OF LEGENDS blurs the boundaries between casual and professional gamers and casual and professional data practices?
C02: Speculation as a Cultural Practice Between Work and Play
Junior Prof. Dr Stefan Leins, Dept of History, Sociology, Sport Science and Empirical Educational Research, Universität Konstanz
In a time of dominance of global financial markets, economic action is characterized, among other things, by speculation. A speculative logic is defined by its unpredictability and existence between work and play. Conducting two empirical field studies on cryptocurrencies, this subproject studies the extent to which speculative practices can be understood as serious gaming. By invoking the concepts of workification and gamification, the project aims to show how economic and social logics are interdependent and how speculation as a cultural practice oscillates between work and play.
C03: Ludification of Work in Historical Perspective
Prof. Dr Anne Kwaschik, Dept of History, Sociology, Sport Science and Empirical Educational Research, Universität Konstanz
The subproject explores work/play relationships in a historical perspective and focusses on the demarcations of working from playing. To do so, it suggests the reconsideration of two key constellations: a) the establishment of the modern concept of work, its impact and underpinnings by discussing counter designs and critique in relation to transgressive concepts and practices of work in the early 19th century (WP1/WP2) and b) digital working worlds in the 20th/21st century that have embraced the usability of playing (WP3). Based on this structure, the spaims to demonstrate the mutual reflection of working/playing from early socialism to contemporary digital capitalism.
C04: Ludification of Markets in Historical Perspective
Prof. Dr Hartmut Berghoff, Institute of Economic and Social History, Universität Göttingen
How do playing and gaming enter markets? This project will investigate two ways through the lens of economic and social history: On the one hand, games can be consciously woven into the market by its organizers; this is studied for the case of commodity lotteries and marketing sweepstakes. On the other hand, specific market practices are often rehearsed and practised in games before they are carried out ‘seriously’. In its workification, practice play structures and shapes the serious economic practice, as will be investigated for the case of trading at exchanges and in financial markets.
C05: “Game of Thrones”. On the Development of Social and Gender Orders Using the Example of Early Modern Play-ing Cards and Board Games
Prof. Dr Karin Leonhard, Dept of Literatures, Art, and Media Studies, Universität Konstanz
Playing cards and board games are versatile objects that have found their way into many socio-cultural spaces. They transport images and pictorial knowledge and they depict social order. The game materials of the early modern age reveal themselves as “imagevehicles” (“Bilderfahrzeuge”; cf. Aby Warburg) whose specific pictorial program differentiates and negotiates specific forms of play. Sub-project C05 "Games of Thrones" investigates on a discourse-analytical level the practice of social negotiation of society and gender orders using the examples of early modern playing cards and game boards. The socio-cultural relevance of these media is explained, among other things, by the contemporary secondary use of the materials in portrait miniature painting. The materials of game from the pre-modern era should therefore not be regarded as a historical object that preceded digital play practices. Rather, they are to be understood as a medium of socio-political and socio-cultural negotiation processes with regard to their structural peculiarities.
C06: Game Co-Design as Critical Discourse, Educational Heuristic and Economic Opportunity
Prof. Dr Isabell Otto, Dept of Literatures, Art, and Media Studies, Universität Konstanz
C06 investigates the methodological and conceptual potential of game co-design by developing and evaluating co-design techniques by means of digital, analogue and hybrid ‘games-as-material’ – understood as a counter-term to ‘games-as-product’, which foregrounds the openness and processuality of gaming materials.Through co-design, the tentative and always unfinished quality of procedural arguments is further explicated and opened up to creative intervention.The SP is transfer-oriented in that it aims to develop concept ideas for spin-offs.