Torill Elvira Mortensen - The Dark Side of Game Play: Controversial Issues in Playful Environments (Routledge Advances in Game Studies)

The Dark Side of Game Play

This book is a richly diverse examination of the ways that games situate players in their perpetration of unconscionable and transgressive virtual acts. The essays in this collection are in different ways sensitive to the medial and cultural context of games and the means by which ludic context and attitudinal frames transform players relationships to such acts. The book broadens our understanding of the complex and easily misinterpreted pleasures that games offer and engage us in.

Tanya Krzywinska, Falmouth University, UK

Games allow players to experiment and play with subject positions, values, and moral choice. In game worlds, players can take on the role of antagonists. They allow us to play with behaviour that would be offensive, illegal, or immoral if it happened outside the game sphere. While contemporary games have always handled certain problematic topics such as war, disasters, human decay, post-apocalyptic futures, cruelty, and betrayal, lately even the most playful of genres are introducing situations in which players are presented with difficult ethical and moral dilemmas. This volume is an investigation of dark play in video games or game play with controversial themes, as well as controversial play behaviour. It covers such questions as: Why do some games stir up political controversies? How do games invite or even push players towards dark play through their design? Where are the boundaries for what can be presented in a game? Are these boundaries different from other media such as film and books, and if so, why? What is the allure of dark play and why do players engage in these practices?

Torill Elvira Mortensen is Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. She studies multi-user games and digital media culture. She is a board member of Norsk Tipping and the author of Perceiving Play: The Art and Study of Computer Games (2009). She was a founding member of the editorial group of the online journal Game Studies (gamestudies.org).

Jonas Linderoth is a professor at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has published several peer-reviewed journal articles about perception, learning, and cognition during game-play and is a contributor to the Routledge volume Sports Videogames.

Ashley ML Brown is a lecturer in Game Design at Brunel University London, UK. She is a board member of the Digital Games Research Association and the author of a chapter in Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy, as well as her recently completed thesis entitled Sex Between Frames: An exploration of online and tabletop erotic role play.

1 Video Games and Social Competence
Rachel Kowert

2 Sexuality in Role-Playing Games
Ashley ML Brown

3 Gender, Age, and Digital Games in the Domestic Context
Alison Harvey

4 The Dark Side of Game Play
Controversial Issues in Playful Environments
Edited by Torill Elvira Mortensen, Jonas Linderoth, and Ashley ML Brown

Controversial Issues in Playful Environments

Edited by Torill Elvira Mortensen, Jonas Linderoth, and Ashley ML Brown

First published 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The dark side of game play : controversial issues in playful environments / edited by Torill Elvira Mortensen, Jonas Linderoth, and Ashley ML Brown.
pages cm. (Routledge advances in game studies ; 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Video gamesPsychological aspects. 2. Video gamesMoral and ethical aspects. 3. Violence in video games. I. Mortensen, Torill Elvira, editor of compilation. II. Linderoth, Jonas, 1970- editor of compilation. III. Brown, Ashley M. L., 1986- editor of compilation.

GV1469.34.P79D37 2015
794.8019dc23 2015003960

ISBN: 978-1-138-82728-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73868-0 (ebk)

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PART I
Introduction

JONAS LINDEROTH AND TORILL ELVIRA MORTENSEN

PART II
Discourses of Dark Play

FALTIN KARLSEN

REN GLAS

EMILY FLYNN-JONES

PART III
Dark Play or Darkly Played?

BJRN SJBLOM

FRANS MYR

MIGUEL SICART

PART IV
Dark Play and Situated Meaning

ASHLEY ML BROWN

ADAM CHAPMAN AND JONAS LINDEROTH

TORILL ELVIRA MORTENSEN

STAFFAN BJRK

PART V
Designing for Dark Play

MARCUS CARTER

KRISTINE JRGENSEN

ISABELLA VAN ELFEREN

ALAN MEADES

Part of the editorial work with this volume was sponsored by The Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society (LinCS) and the project Rules of fiction, both funded by the Swedish Research Council. It was also sponsored by the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Their financial support and the support through providing an infrastructure for the process was invaluable.

The editors gratefully acknowledge the productive collaboration with the consortium partners, Kristine Jrgensen and Ren Glas, who both participated in the initial process of creating this anthology, and who acted as editorial advisors through the entire process. Their input and support was vital for this work.

Thank you also to our authors, whose work makes up this anthology. It is a pleasure and a privilege to see a collaboration like this come together.

Jonas Linderoth and Torill Elvira Mortensen

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