@phdthesis{WischertZielke2025, author = {Wischert-Zielke, Moritz}, title = {Playing Place - on digital games, spatiality, and hegemonic play}, doi = {10.17904/ku.opus-987}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:824-opus4-9871}, school = {Katholische Universit{\"a}t Eichst{\"a}tt-Ingolstadt}, pages = {xii, 392 Seiten : Illustrationen}, year = {2025}, abstract = {Playing Place develops a relational account of the emergence of spatiality in digital game play. Operating at the intersection of American cultural studies and game studies, it opposes formalist and static notions of space and place by emphasizing the processual, affect-based, and embodied aspects of practices of play. Through the metaphor of playing place, the project foregrounds the relational, spatially productive, and heterogenetic qualities of play ensembles. Its simultaneous critique of the anthropocentric subjectivity of classic theories of play on the one side and the neglect of game studies to think beyond docile and instrumental play on the other aims at an affirmative and yet critical perspective on forms of play and games as play partners. The resulting approach to the medialities of digital game play is dedicated to both exploring and questioning dominant spatialities and hegemonic forms of play in three case studies. A diverse range of recent titles is addressed as discursive cultural sites of ant/agonistic, extractivist, and mental spatialities produced and negotiated in digital game play. The project's three case-based chapters hence examine the racial connotations of the ghoul in the Fallout game series, neoliberal and colonial extractivisms of farming practices together with Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Conan Exiles, as well as counter-hegemonic practices of recent indie games in the context of mental health discourses. While reappreciating play as a vital force of socio-cultural spatialization, Playing Place thus also questions its non-innocent hegemonic forms in the wider play of politics and culture.}, subject = {Computerspiel}, language = {en} }