Games and Society includes the social, cultural, psychological, economic, political, and ethical aspects of gaming, games and play. This includes how games are affected by and affect individuals and groups, and how games may be designed and played by and through communities.
In this Core Topic, research and practices from the social sciences and humanities provide useful insights into games, gaming, and play, including disciplines such as sociology, economics, ethics, anthropology, cultural studies and psychology. Rather than being seen as texts or playable media only, games are also considered in terms of culture and community, and how they are constructed by, and reflect individuals, groups, and culture.
This area includes topics such as work on virtual economies; community building and emergent play; fan cultures and participatory cultures; crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and crowd play; “modding” or creative modifications of game content; the role of play in human culture; ethical and moral considerations; and the relationship between online and offline identity. Also found here are issues of representation, ideology, and rhetoric as they relate to gaming, including intersections among sexual identity, race, ethnicity, class, ability, religion, political ideologies, and gender/gender identity.
This Core Topic also covers the psychological aspects of games, including understanding how games affect motivation, problem solving, and other cognitive areas; shapes social, developmental and personality areas, and bio-psychological and health psychology domains. It delves into issues around how players interact with the game and other people and characters, including accessibility, collaboration and competition, and attachment. It also includes studies of media effects and the psychological impact of games on individuals and groups, such as in addiction and violence, as well as how these topics may drive and be drive by culture and cultural norms.
This core topic also examines how individuals and groups collaborate through games, co-create and construct games, and how play cultures emerge around and within games. It also delves into the intersection of games with ethics and morals, and explores how values, ethics, and moral identities shape and are shaped by games. This includes topics such as ethical decision-making, cheating, cyberbullying and online harassment, and bias. Finally, this core topic examines how laws and legal institutions, government policies, and corporations, and their cultures, affect and are affected by the production and use of video games. In sum, courses that cover games and society place games in a broader social, political, cultural, and economic context, providing insight into how games are created, played, and participated in.