New Publication: Material Game Studies - A Philosophy of Analogue Play

We’re pleased to announce the publication of the book, Material Game Studies - A Philosophy of Analogue Play, edited by MMGC co-directors Paul Wake and Chloé Germaine. The book is available from Bloomsbury Academic and is currently available as a hardback and e-book.

The book is the first volume to apply insights from the material turn in philosophy to the study of play and games. At a time of renewed interest in analogue gaming, as scholars are looking beyond the digital and virtual for the first time since the inception of game studies in the 1990s, Material Game Studies not only supports the importance of the (re)turn to the analogue, but proposes a materiality of play more broadly.

Recognizing the entanglement of physical materiality with cultural meaning, the authors in the volume apply a range of theoretical approaches, from material eco-criticism to animal studies, to examine games and play as existing within worlds of matter. Different chapters focus on the material properties of board, card and role-playing games, how they are designed and made, how they are touched and played with, and how they connect with other human and nonhuman things.

Bringing together international scholars, Material Game Studies defines a new field of material game studies and demonstrates how it is a valuable addition to wider debates about the material turn and the place of embodied humans in a material world.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Material Game Studies, Chloé Germaine and Paul Wake

Section 1: Provocations

1. Thinking the Things We Play With, Miguel Sicart
2. Analog Games as Infrastructure, Aaron Trammel

Section 2: Materials

3. Component parts: Board games as architecture and performance, Paul Wake
4. A Queer Touch of Fantasy Role-Play, Jack Warren
5. Lead Fantasies: The making, meaning and materiality of miniatures, Mikko Meriläinen, Katriina Heljakka, Jaakko Stenros

Section 3: Ideologies

6. 'Men Should Try Playing the Woman's Part to See What it Feels Like. Remember ~ It's Only a Game…': The Representation of Gendered Experience in Chance-based Board Games, Holly Nielsen
7. Deterritorializing Game Boards: Mapping Imperialism in RISK and Modern Board Games, Jonathan Ray Lee
8. Nature Games in a time of Climate Crisis, Chloé Germaine

Section 4: Cultures

9. Contested Spaces, Velvet Ropes, Exclusion Zones: The Pleasures and Dangers of Face-to-Face Play in Analogue Gaming Spaces, Tanya Pobuda
10. 'Hands, Face, Space' - The Material Turn and COVID -19, Esther McCallum Stewart

Section 5: Hybridity

11. The Cult of New (Stuff): Kickstarter's Digital/Material Tensions, Paul Booth
12. The Logic of Analogue Adaptation, Nathan Altice