Rhythms of gaming bodies

ABSTRACT

In Martin Amis' description of Pac-Man (Namco, 1979) from The Invasion of Space Invaders (1982) he notes: 'I have seen bloodstains on the PacMan joystick... ...I know a young actress with a case of PacMan Hand so severe that her index finger looked like a section of blood pudding - yet still she played, and played through her tears of pain'. This is a far cry from notions of videogames as immersive virtual worlds, and the player as an actor in those worlds! Amis is highly aware of the way that videogames engaged both the mind and the body of the player: 'the vivid melodrama of these games doesn't just involve and absorb the player: it makes him sweat and pant. With his lips thinning and his eyes bulging, he seems to take it all very personally'.

The body of the game player is an under-theorized area of videogame scholarship. Martti Lahti is 'As We Become Machines: Corporealized Pleasures in Video Games' (2003), argues that the focus on the cerebral process of play in early videogame scholarship ignored the ways in which videogames were increasingly seeking to immediately realise the audio-visual aspect of the human sensorium. In this paper I wish to move beyond this examination of representational strategies to explore the role that the body of the gamer has in game play.

This approach, exploring the game beyond the screen, demands a more open, contextual approach to the praxis and processes of videogame play. Using data from fieldwork conducted in Caracas, Venezuela and Melbourne, Australia during 2005, this paper will explore the role that the body of the gamer has in videogame play.

REFERENCES

• 1: Flynn, B. 2003 "Geographies of the Digital Hearth", Information, Communication and Society 6(4).
• 2: Lefebvre, H. 1984 Everyday Life in the Modern World {translated by Sacha Rabinovich}. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.
• 3: Lefebvre, H. 2004 Rhythmanalysis: Space Time and Everyday Life {translated by Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore}. London: Continuum.
• 4: Lefebvre, H. & Réégulier, C. 2004 "The Rhythmanalytical Project", Rhythmanalysis: Space Time and Everyday Life {translated by Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore}. London: Continuum.
• 5: Murphie, A. 2004 "Vertiginous Mediations: Sketches for a Dynamic Pluralism in the Study of Videogames", Media International Australia 110.

INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
bodies, cyclical rhythms, everyday life, videogames