Games to Live With

Abstract

In this paper I offer an alternative way to look at games that require no form of play. The player of these games is only supposed to keep them always up-to-date and running, but no specific action is required. NikeFuel is a significant example of this kind of game. NikeFuel, a technology for the quantification of body movement developed by the sports company Nike, is applied in a series of gadgets. The most popular, Nike+, is a wristband that quantifies the movements of the user and converts them into a NikeFuel score, which can later be visualised on a laptop or mobile phone. The act of moving throughout the day is transformed into a game-like experience, according to the principles of gamification. Gamification and quantified-self technologies have been noted for their performative potential and their capacity to control and inform our bodies (Whitson 2015). From a Foucauldian perspective, quantified-self technologies are attempts to rationalise the practices and movements of living organisms, as forms of biopolitical control (Foucault 2005, Schrape 2014). However, these are also spaces of transformation of the conditions under which the self becomes possible. Through NikeFuel, and other examples that I explore in this paper (Farmville, Cookie Clicker, CarnageHug), the player has to come to terms with games that act as parasites on their own lives. Thus, I argue that Nike+ can also be seen to complicate our thoughts about the contemporary digital technologies that surround us on an everyday basis. In this paper I will argue, possibly counter-intuitively, that gamification and quantified-self technologies are not necessarily tools that we use for a specific purpose; these are technologies we carry around with us and live with. As such, we are transformed by them as much as we transform them. Thus, the problem raised in this paper is about how we can cohabit and be hospitable with these 'parasites' (Serres, 1982).

Molecular Politics, Wearables, and the Aretaic Shift in Biopolitical Governance

“…And it is perfectly conveyed by the fact that the guiding principle of the branch in recent years has become gamification (Fuchs et al, 2014) -a concept which sounds much more self-explanatory than it actually is. Video games and gambling environments serve as blueprints (Ruffino, 2016) because they successfully create the kind of affective and physical attunement (Ash, 2013) that app developers in the health sector are aiming fornot only to achieve sustainable health effects but also as a marketing model to create customer loyalty, as Schollas (2016) argues. The aim is to get the user in the 'machine zone' (Gekker, 2016: 114;cf.…”

Enhancing social exergames through idle game design

“…Researchers have identified the potential for idle games to support a balance between gameplay and daily activities because the waiting mechanic, an intrinsic part of idle games, encourages players to leave the game and embark on their daily activities [2,10,11,19]. We believe that this balance makes idle games a particularly suitable game genre to incorporate with regular physical activities and into players' daily routine for an extended period of time.…”

“…of idle games makes it possible to incorporate regular gameplay into players' daily schedule [10,11,19]. For these reasons, researchers hypothesized that idle games could facilitate behavioral change [2].…”

Let’s not play: Interpassivity as resistance in ‘Let’s Play’ videos

“…This article explores the logic of game spectatorship, delegated play (Fizek 2018a) and their relation to the media environments we inhabit today. The same things that make videogames enjoyable -carefully curated interaction loops, clear conditions of success and failures, immediate feedback -have become integrated into our work routines with the rise of efficiency management and gamification (Gordon and Walter 2016;Sampson 2016). Quantification and gamification of the workplace are in turn linked intrinsically to anxiety and stress of the worker (Moore and Robinson 2016;Rossiter 2015), recounting the early warnings of virtual worlds' economics (Terranova 2000;Castronova 2005).…”