Introduction When Filippo Marinetti sat down to pen his polemical Founding Manifesto of Futurism (1909), the French language treatise that gave rise to the Italian Futurism avant-garde movement, the streets of Milan hung with electric lights, the Italian landscape was slashed with steel railway lines carrying double-decker train cars, the air crackled with early experimental … Continue reading Of Madness and Metaphysics: Italian Futurism at the Dawn of the 20th Century

Introduction Are digital games empathy machines? How do they differ from other modalities in their ability to produce affective empathy? Drawing specifically on the perspectives Flanagan (2009, 2014), Isbister (2016), Gee (2007), Bogost (2007) and Keogh (2018), I will demonstrate how digital games are a means to share lived experiences, and can help players experience … Continue reading Digital Games As Empathy Machines

Introduction  The magic circle has been described as a sacred space that separates play from the seriousness of ordinary life (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004; Huizinga, 1955). The concept has been used by early and contemporary games scholars as a way of explaining the allure, uncommon pleasure and immersion experienced by players of analog, digital and … Continue reading The Magic Circle and the Modern Gamer

Introduction Have digital technologies created greater individual or cultural anxieties? I will argue that the blame can not be heaped at the doorstep of technology. Hegemonic dynamics and neo-capitalist imperatives have hijacked every aspect of our lives, including the creation, dissemination, adoption of media technologies. Rather than putting digital technologies, and in this case specifically, … Continue reading ‘The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Mechanism’: Does Digital Technology Create Anxiety?

Introduction  The role that technologies, particularly media technologies, play in our culture has been hotly debated. On one side of the debate, the members of the Toronto School, Innis (1951) and McLuhan (1964, 1998) have influentially argued that as the dominant communication media of the era goes, so goes the human mind and cultures. These … Continue reading Technology: Sabretooth Tiger or Narcissus Mirror?