Terms of Play

This edited collection of new essays is devoted to the terminology used in the fields of videogame theory and videogame studies. Videogame scholars provide theoretical critiques of existing terminology, mount arguments for the creation of new terminology, articulate terminological gaps in the current literature devoted to videogame studies, and share phenomenological studies of videogames that facilitate terminological theory.

Zach Waggoner has a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Arizona State University. He is Course Coordinator for The Writers’ Studio at Arizona State University and lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Edited by Zach Waggoner
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 244
Bibliographic Info: bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2013
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6970-3
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0352-0
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Introduction: Words Matter (Even When Playing with Them) (Zach Waggoner) 1

Ergodic Effort: Dynamism and Auto-Generated Path-Making (Jeffrey S. Bryan) 7

To Configure or to Navigate? On Textual Frames (Daniel Golding) 28

Rule-Playing: Gamers’ Roles in Interacting with the Rules of Play (Steven J. Engel and Chris Gerben) 47

Hunting for Identity: Community, Performance and the Curious Case of the “Huntard” in World of Warcraft  (Jeff Holmes) 60

From Social Realism to Allegorithms of Assemblage as Gaming Activism in Minecraft  (Steven Keoni Holmes) 85

After Ergodics: Noematic Work and the Function of Diegetic Information in Computer Roleplaying Games (Terrence E. Schenold) 117

Seeking the Exotic: Orientalist Agency and Space in Adventure Games  (Stephanie Scott) 139

QQMore: An Examination of the Origins and Modern Usage of QQ in an Online Game Forum  (Jon Bakos) 160

Using Components to Describe Videogames and Their Players (Michael Thomét) 178

Procedurality and the Problem of Defining Game Mechanics (Richard Colby) 212

About the Contributors 233

Index 235