The Fibreculture Journal http://journal.fibreculture.org/
The Fibreculture Journal is a peer reviewed international journal that explores critical and speculative interventions in the debate and discussions concerning information and communication technologies and their policy frameworks, networked and digital media, network cultures and their informational logic, new media forms and their deployment, and the possibilities of socio-technical invention and sustainability. ---- Call for Papers - Counterplay: Gaming, Cheating and Control edited by Thomas Apperley and Michael Dieter Final date for Abstracts: August 24, 2009 Final date for Full Submissions: October 30, 2009 How are illegitimate player actions in videogames collectively defined, negotiated or governed? How do the conflicts that emerge around the issue of cheating complicate the idea of software materiality as a limit for participation, or as a determining algorithmic system of regulation? Is there a complementary notion of fair play for legislative debates on the fair use of intellectual property? What can an analysis of so-called community standards in networked videogames reveal about regulatory frameworks throughout comparable global microstructures? Such questions bring to light how gaming communities are routinely forced to settle the difference between what a videogame as a designed object might allow and what players, designers and corporate owners consider to be appropriate. An exploration of these controversies can provide crucial insights into how modes of governance are elaborated in highly distributed socio-technological systems and, therefore, hold relevance for a broader understanding of the improvised political gestures that currently define network societies. In this special issue of Fibreculture Journal, we invite contributions on counterplay: a concept proposed to investigate the controversies that surround certain insurgent actions or innovations in gaming communities. From the perspective of software studies, these moments might be considered as creative interrogations which fold the material excesses of digital systems back into play in order to facilitate new possibilities for action (i.e. exploits). However, counterplay additionally suggests thinking about how this leveraging of a digital abundance challenges the purity of gamespace by facilitating the uneven accumulation of assets and agency. In other words, these differences establish the potential for unfair advantage, the consequences of which should be considered in terms of the strict control of designers, programmers and corporations, but also highly invested players. This is crucial for understanding the networked contexts of contemporary new media, since distributions of agency inevitably overflow the artificial borders of the game and are subject to continual renegotiation as a result. The connective dynamics of media ecologies, for instance, can be understood as providing one such pathway for material advancement by leveraging points of difference between systems, standards and agential flows. An example like real-money trading (RMT) is exemplary of this situation; often a partisan issue in online communities, recent studies have nevertheless revealed that the legitimate economies of networked games are dependent on these exterior exchanges of commodities. The millions of people and dollars invested in the development and maintenance of online communities demonstrates the high stakes of governing instances of unruly invention, especially in their attempt to guide expressions of counterplay in all forms toward processes of economic capture and valorisation. Counterplay, therefore, emerges from dynamics unleashed between the intertwined qualities of the virtual and the actual, which work to mobilize a series of subjects, objects and things toward a variety of ends. We seek contributions that consider counterplay as a response to these potentialities and the politics of their real outcomes, particularly studies that provide theoretical resources for broader discussions of governance, contestation and control in the context of network societies. Some topics might include: Cheating Gaming Governance Software Materiality Modification and Hacking Exploits and Exploitation Real-Money Trading Media Ecologies Distribution and Piracy Political Activism Game Art Articles must be submitted, via email, to the editors (as below) in full Fibreculture Journal house style. You must first read the Guidelines for Submission at http://journal.fibreculture.org/polstyle.html#submit. You can access information about house style at http://journal.fibreculture.org/polstyle.html#style. Please note, submissions not in house style will automatically be returned to authors for formatting. That is, you will not be able to have your paper considered for publication unless you have formatted it correctly. The journal is peer reviewed and authors are expected to take readers reports into consideration when finalising their articles for publication. Negotiation with the editors over potential changes is usual practice (and there is no guarantee of publication). Editors: Thomas Apperley ([email protected]) Michael Dieter ([email protected]) For editorial enquiries. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
