Games as Actors - Interaction, Play, Design, and Actor Network Theory

When interacting with computer games, users are forced to follow the rules of the game in return for the excitement, joy, fun, or other pursued experiences. In this paper, we investigate how games a chieve these experiences in the perspective of Actor Network Theory (ANT). Based on a qualitative data from a study of board games , computer games, and exergames, we conclude that games are actors that produce experiences by exercising power over the user’ s abilities, for example their cognitive functions.

Games are designed to take advantage of the characteristics of the human players, and by doing so they create in humans what in modern play theory is known as a “state of play”