The question of computer games

Abstract

A short, speculative account of the state of play in the formation of a discipline or field of computer games studies. The processes of academic teaching, research, and institutional positioning in regard to computer games are viewed from the perspective of wider cur - rents and crises influencing knowledge formation today. It is argued that the different approaches to computer games cannot ignore the differences in their conceptions of the object of study in a naive pluralism. These different conceptions of games as parts of the technocultural milieu must encounter each other in the name of the struggle against the avoidance of critical thought concerning the nature and forms of technoculture that often prevails in the production of specialist “knowledge” today.