Towards a Relational Ontology of Computer Games: A Posthumanist Performative Account of Single-player Games and Play

Abstract

This doctoral thesis develops a relational ontology of computer games, drawing on the theoretical frameworks of new materialism and posthumanism. It challenges traditional approaches in game studies that view games as self-contained objects with inherent properties. Instead, it proposes that the entities of “player” and “game” do not pre-exist, but rather emerge through their intra-actions in the act of gameplay.

The thesis adopts a posthumanist performative approach that foregrounds the entangled relations and material-discursive practices constituting gameplay. Employing diffractive analysis, it centers the author’s embodied gameplay experiences as key sites for examining the intra-play of human and non-human agencies. Through philosophical and diffractive readings of specific gameplay encounters, the research analyzes how affect, agency, and materiality are reconfigured through human-technology entanglements in general, and player-game entanglements in particular.

By rethinking games ontologically, methodologically, and analytically, the thesis reconceptualizes computer games as virtual yet material contexts for relational encounters, and computer gameplay as a series of material-discursive practices through which the agencies of players and games are enacted and reconfigured. It decenters the human player and attends to the distributed agencies enacted among various human/non-human actors involved in gameplay. By doing so, it calls for an expanded notion of agency and responsibility that accounts for how subjects and objects are relationally (re)configured through affective gameplay.

Building upon emerging posthumanist and new materialist perspectives in game studies, this work seeks to provide a new conceptual framework for analyzing computer games, virtual environments, and human-technology relations from a posthumanist perspective. It enriches media theory and game studies by developing a nuanced, relational understanding of affect, embodiment, and materiality in technological engagement and computer gameplay.

Date of Award	23 Oct 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Olli Tapio LEINO (Supervisor)