Player one, playing with others virtually: what’s next in game and player studies

ABSTRACT

This essay describes current research in player studies, focusing on how play is a social activity, and how sociality is mediated and performed in a variety of settings. It starts by explaining the concept of tandem play and then moves to an exploration of gameplay that is performed for differently sized audiences via the Twitch.tv platform. Our research finds that even single-player gameplay can very often be a social activity. Additionally, how we perform gameplay is contingent on multiple factors, including where we and others are physically located, whether play is professional or amateur, and how particular play platforms shape our expectations for play and spectatorship actions.

KEYWORDS:

• Play
• Twitch.tv
• tandem play
• gameplay
• sociality

Note on contributor

Mia Consalvo is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the co-author of Players and their Pets, co-editor of Sports Videogames and author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. She has most recently published the book Atari to Zelda: Japan’s Videogames in Global Context, about Japan’s influence on the videogame industry and game culture. Mia runs the mLab, a space dedicated to developing innovative methods for studying games and game players. She’s a member of the Centre for Technoculture, Art & Games (TAG), and she has presented her work at professional as well as academic conferences including regular presentations at the Game Developers’ Conference. She is the Past-President of the Digital Games Research Association, and has held positions at MIT, Ohio University, Chubu University in Japan and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.