The material production of virtuality: trials of explication in the design and development of computer games

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to the development of a relationship between digital game studies and science and technology studies by studying the design and development of computer games at three leading UK studios in the light of what MacKenzie refers to “the material production of virtual ity” (MacKenzie 2007). The article examines the common ground in trea tment of ‘the virtual’ and ‘virtuality’ in science and technology studies and studies of material culture and the importance placed in the relationship between ‘virtuality’ and ‘materiality’ as “a dialectical process of imagination followed by its realisation” (Miller 2005) for the “expressions of immaterial ideals through material forms” (Miller 2005). The article explores the concept of ‘explication’ as a crucial part of this dialectical process through which previously unmapped and unformatted aspect s of the world are articulated to the formalisms on which social life depends and through which certain of its features become gradually more explicit and ultimately knowable socially