Concerned with Computer Games: A Collective Analysis of Being and Becoming Gamer in Denmark
| Autor: | Niklas Alexander Chimirri, Mads Lund Andersen, Tine Jensen, Anders Emil Wulff Kristiansen, Dorte Marie Søndergaard |
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| Přispěvatelé: | Sørensen, Estrid |
| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Aarhus University Chimiri, N A, Andersen, M L, Jensen, T, Søndergaard, D M & Wulff Kristiansen, A E 2018, Concerned with computer games : a collective analysis of being and becoming gamer in Denmark . in E Sørensen (ed.), Cultures of computer game concerns : the child across families, law, science and industry . Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, pp. 327-347 . |
| DOI: | 10.14361/9783839439340-019 |
| Popis: | This paper suggests a collectively developed qualitative approach into inquiring and thereby shedding unexpected light on common concerns as expressed in psychological research on video gaming. For years, “The Video Game War” has been reproducing polarized debates on whether games are harmful or not. The search for universal knowledge and unequivocal answers to individual gaming behavior and its effects produces polarized positions, not only within psychological media effects research but also in opposition to it, as in digital game studies (DGS). In media effect research questions of effective and exact operationalization of variables gain prevalence over questions of conceptual clarity and conceptual development. The complexity of video game concerns, for instance in terms of their digital-analogue entanglements and how these co-enact the effects and meaning of violent video gaming, is neither conceptually debated nor of concern. In DGS, on the other hand, such specificities and entanglements are not considered and issue of concern, leaving yet another conceptual void. This chapter therefore addresses video game concerns from psychological traditions that cross disciplinary boundaries and take their point of departure from within the complexity of video gaming situations. Our approach is concerned with the aforementioned entanglements and the situated, ongoing becomings of sociomaterial and subjective phenomena, including how research itself operates with agential cuts within these becomings. The aim is to transgress one-sided questions and explanations such as video game harm versus personal traits in the gamer as risk factors. By engaging ethnographic material and qualitative methodologies, we sketch outlines of an analytical framework that will enable ways of posing new types of questions and thus leveraging more complex knowledge with regard to video game concerns. In this chapter, we focus on a particular matter of concern within computer gaming practices: the concern of being or not being a gamer. This matter of concern emerged from within our collective investigations of gaming practices across various age groups. The empirical material under scrutiny was generated across a multiplicity of research projects, predominantly conducted in Denmark. The question of being versus not being a gamer, we argue, exemplifies interesting enactments of how computer game players become both concerned with and concerned about their gaming practices. As a collective of researchers writing from the field of psychology and inspired by neo-materialist theories, we are particularly concerned with (human) subjectivity and processes of social and subjective becoming. Our empirical examples show that conerns/worries about computer games and being engaged with computer game practices always emerge as mutually entangled in the complexity of gaming subjects' everyday lives. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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