Questions about critical gaming…
If indeed “electronic games constitute cultural spaces” (Flanagan 2009, 253), the fundamental difference between games and any other cultural space is the relative rigidity of its rules. To wit, Anne Anthropy (2012) defines games as “an experience created by rules” (38). Rendering these rules dynamic and responsive is, Mary Flanagan (2009) suggests, an essential characteristic of critical playculture because this allows for multiple, contingent outcomes, honouring the choices of diverse users, and avoiding prescripted win/lose endings. Thus, critical gaming problematizes and renders permeable the in-group/out-group distinctions produced by given cultural spaces.
Does this mean consign critical games to specific formal structures which must refuse “winners” or “losers”? Can a game with a win/lose outcome be critical? Can critical games still reify in-group/out-group identification while expanding access to, and representation in, games?