Rethinking Playing Research

Playing games has a crucial methodological role within the study of games. At the same time, detailed overviews of how academic playing is conducted are difficult to find. In this article, the authors begin with Espen Aarseth’s outline of playing research and offer some updates to it in order to build a more context-aware approach. To exemplify the elaborated methodology, the authors apply it to the rhythm game DJ HERO. They emphasize in this article that a game not only creates a world of its own, but also is in many ways connected to the traditions directed by real-world culture and economics. Thus, playing research needs to go beyond the limits of gameworld and normative gameplay, and move toward a concept or assemblage of play that takes into account games as singular and multifaceted technocultural entities.