Compassionate Play in The Ludic Century

In 2013 game designer Eric Zimmerman wrote a provocative manifesto entitled ‘Manifesto for a Ludic Century’ (2013a), in which Zimmerman declares the 21st Century’s dominant cultural form to be games. Consequently, Zimmerman proposes that the individual occupant of the century is therefore in a continuous state of game engagement. As such, this re-contextualisation of game space and play, indefinitely articulates the individual as a constant player and character, and thusly challenges the notions of selfhood. Importantly it should be noted, the state of a ludic century is explicitly assumed as a truth, however superficial it may appear. Accordingly, this paper is then afforded to be an extended hypothesis of the proposed ludic century, rather than a critical dissection and response to Zimmerman’s manifesto. This enables a hermeneutic framing of the questions: ‘What does it mean to live in a ludic century?’and ‘in what capacity may the self exist in the ludic century?’ These questions will attempt to distinguish play as an inherent cultural logic that extends beyond the limitations of explicit ‘gamification’ or instrumental play (Stenros et al., 2009; Zichermann, 2010). Concluding, it is claimed that the ludic century elicits a sustained delusion of self, as the player is confined to the designed game structure, which inhibits authentic engagement and interaction with environment and self. It is proposed that this evokes a form of suffering, the compassionate play within the ludic century

Editorial

Right now, video games are being discussed, dissected and developed by students from a huge range of disciplines. With some notable exceptions, the overwhelming majority of higher education institutions lack a dedicated game studies department. As evidenced by the continued success of respected institutions such as DiGRA and ground-breaking publications such as Game Studies, however, our discipline is thriving. It just happens to be thriving in some unlikely places

Precarious Play: To Be or Not to Be Stanley

Modern game scholarship in the past two decades has known two dominant, yet paradoxical, tendencies in theorizing the subject of play: an interpellationary account and a deconstructivist one. Going from Miguel Sicart\u27s concept of the ethical player as an initial compromise between the two, this article argues for an ideological subject of play that is a split subject. While a \u27playing subject\u27, as a phenomenologically present Foucaultian subject constructed by the governing structure of rules, we must recognize the parallel subjectivity of the fixed \u27played subject\u27, inherent to – and narrativized by – the game as an avatar, visual narrator or sheer content. In this constellation, the player shows to have a merely precarious position over the played, ready to lose control at the whim of the game