Plenary Speaker for the 2015 Special Focus: The Work of Art in the Age of Networked Society

excerpt from the introduction:

They say we live in a gameful world with the ‘game escaping into everyday life’ (Waltz, Deterding 2015; 2). Perhaps we were hoping for the opposite, that we would escape into virtual worlds but this unfortunately did not happen. Edward Castronova turned out to be wrong while McKenzie Wark was right. We entered “a gamespace that is everywhere and nowhere…” at the same time (Castronova: 2008, Wark 2008: 2). We left the ‘magic circle’ (McGonigal, 2015: 655) for a territory of connected game like territories where we are invited to always be present and perform better each time. If we are gameful, ‘having the positive traits of the gamer’, this might be quite an advantage (ibid:656) but yet, it should be made clear that there is not much of a choice. In the condition we are in, you need to be “a gamer whether you like it or not”(Wark ibid). Our ongoing tracked performance is now our life. This game is our life.