Technicity: power and difference in game cultures

Kennedy, Helen W.; Dovey, Jonathan

Abstract

As technologies of communication and creativity become more deeply embedded into the fabric of our every day lives understanding subjectivity becomes a matter of understanding people’s individual relation to technics as much as understanding geographies, class, race, gender, age or sexuality. The paper is based on two small scale ethnographies with game designers and players which have been generative of some critical insights in to the ways in which dominant forms of technology use emerge and are valorised as well as providing us with the means of identifying how these dominant styles are reworked and contested. These conclusions are contextualised by a review of some of the influential ways that the subject – technology relation has been theorised. We use these accounts in order to elaborate a particular notion of ‘technicity’ that enables us to more clearly identify the complex way in which power and difference are operative in the emerging participatory cultures of computer game production and consumption.

Citation

Kennedy, H. W., & Dovey, J. (2007, June). Technicity: power and difference in game cultures. Presented at Keynote: GameInAction

• Presentation Conference Type: Keynote
• Conference Name: Keynote: GameInAction
• Start Date: Jun 13, 2007
• End Date: Jun 15, 2007
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 1-30
• Keywords: games, technicity, technology, players, ethnography