Gaming Systems

Creative Critiques of the Ludic Real

Abstract

The ubiquitous adoption of mobile computing devices has implicated all of us in a techno-social system of interaction dominated by the codified and computational logic of the game. This paper will examines the modes by which these computational structures, in the guise of games, have come to dominate our understanding of, and interaction with, the non-game world. It will then identify how the application of this logic creates cognitive and phenomenological ruptures, which can be leveraged by creative individuals to reveal logical fallacies within the applied structures. Throughout, it will identify and analyze creative practices that exemplify responses to these logical fallacies in order to identify ways in which a new class of creative individuals is emerging to tackle the dangerous slippage between gamespace (the space of play, games) and gameic (gamic) space (ordinary/real life to which ludic properties have been applied).