Well Played -- Vol.10, No.2 (2025)

What Applied Theatre Practitioners can Learn from MMORPGs

2012

Games as Structures for Mediated Performances

Video games structure play as performance in both the virtual and the physical space. On the one hand, the player encounters game worlds as virtual stages to act upon. On the other hand, the game world stages the player and re-frames the play space. This essay sets out to suggest some of the elements that are at work in this dualism of games as performative media. The two key elements here are the mediation of the game environment and the transformation of the player through virtual puppetry. Both cases will be argued with a focus on spatiality in performance.

Performing Gameplay – A Study of Video Game Performance Workshops

2021

This article examines performances produced in two Performing Gameplay workshops in 2017 and 2019. These performances are labeled as intermedial, as they were produced by using video games alongside live performers. The aim is to explore the changes frame of performance causes in players and games, as well as in performances, performers, and spectators. The article focuses on two main themes: the transformative process from gameplay to performance, and vice versa; and the significance of non-human participants in this process.

"Screening Play: Rules, Wares, and Representations in 'Realistic' Video Games"

"In highlighting the apparatus as the keystone for the magic circle of video gaming, we displace players—the subject of ludology—and “text”—the subject of narratology. This is not to deny the importance of players’ agency or the meanings of texts in video gaming; rather it is to reconsider these with regard to the screening of player from played inherent in the gaming apparatus. To better understand the situation of homo ludens in these more mediated play spaces, we turn to Jacques Lacan’s account of “split” subjectivity and retread it by explaining how it may well explain the operation of a magic circle spanning three dimensions of screen-play: rules (Symbolic dimension), representations (Imaginary dimension), and wares (Real dimension). In the end, we come around to the other space of Huizinga’s theory—the connections with the non-game world—to show that the value of video game play is also found beyond the apparatus, that the experience and enjoyment of video games are affected in part by social reality and, in turn, social reality is being affected by the experience and enjoyment of video games. Arriving at this point by first theorizing the video game apparatus, however, highlights matters of video game design more so than issues of audience or textual analysis. To illustrate this perspective, we conclude by defining three ways to analyze video games in terms of “realism,” proposing three types of video game realism: representational, simulative, and inverse. "

Live Performance and Video games

2022

Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater

2018

away to incredible places. Foremost among my supporters are my parents, Louis Bloom and Bernice Schmitz, who have always made sure I know how proud they are of me. Both sacrificed a lot to give me the unbelievable education that serves me to this day, and they ought to take much more credit than they do for my achievements. My greatest debt of all is to Flagg Miller, who has done far more than his fair share these last years to make it possible for me to finish this book. Well before I started this project, our motto was "in play we trust." And so it remains. This book is dedicated to my son, Max, who always wants more time to play and reminds me that I should, too. I am inspired every day by his creativity, passion, and love of words.

Performance and Games : A Love Story

2010

Video games structure play as performance in both the virtual and the physical space. On the one hand, the player encounters game worlds as virtual stages to act upon. On the other hand, the game world stages the player and re-frames the play space. This essay sets out to suggest some of the elements that are at work in this dualism of games as performative media. The two key elements here are the mediation of the game environment and the transformation of the player through virtual puppetry. Both cases will be argued with a focus on spatiality in performance.

Towards a Discourse Between the Performative and the Iconic. Drama and Immersion in Larps (and mmorpgs)

The aim of this paper is double: to contribute in the reconsideration of the position of theatre, drama and performance theory in the study of larps and secondly mmorpgs, by indicating that narratological terminology “blurs the landscape”, and in the development of a potential bridge between the performative and the iconic. It is a bridge which might be of interest with regards to the immersion/simulation split, as outlined in larp literature, and possibly also in the study of mmorpgs as performative phenomena.

Playing the game: notes on games, play and gameplay in interactive installations

In the practice of building large scale interactive situations, we have followed various paths in order to achieve maximal effectiveness. This paper investigates some of those paths and the way that they relate to the practice of games and gameplay. Considering these practices, we find that there are strong connections of both these areas to the theories and practices of contemporary theatre. One of the main connections is the idea of a game or installation as a form of structured public improvisation. This paper investigates these three aspects, game(play), large scale interactive installations and contemporary the-atre, and brings out some of the ways that they can be seen in our work and work of colleagues working in related areas. We find several ways that theatrical theory can be used to improve the details of large scale interactive environments as well as gaming spaces.

Play’s the Thing: A Framework to Study Videogames as Performance

Performance studies deals with human action in context, as well as the process of making meaning between the performers and the audience. This paper presents a framework to study videogames as a performative medium, applying terms from performance studies to videogames both as software and as games. This performance framework for videogames allows us to understand how videogames relate to other performance activities, as well as understand how they are a structured experience that can be designed. Theatrical performance is the basis of the framework, because it is the activity that has the most in common with games. Rather than explaining games in terms of ‘interactive drama,’ the parallels with theatre help usunderstand the role of players both as performers and as audience, as well as how the game design shapes the experience. The theatrical model also accounts for how videogames can have a spectatorship, and how the audience may have an effect on gameplay.