The Player, Revisited:

Scholarly research necessary entails the making of choices and compromises in order to provide
constraints and limit scope. Such compromises are not inherently negative, but when we are not
sufficiently reflexive about the choices we are making, we run the risk of normalizing assumptions and
imposing unacknowledged boundaries with respect to fundamental aspects of our work. By searching
for such boundaries, and allowing them to become important materials for our research, we mitigate
the normalization risk and provide a more inclusive interface through which others may plug in and
expand upon our ideas.
The presenters on this panel will interrogate and critique the assumptions we make about game players
from three perspectives. Our first speaker, Andrew Keenan, will challenge the assumptions that are
often made with respect to player choice in games. Keenan will discuss recent works in which authors
have claimed that the freedoms available to players within certain games go beyond the rules defined
by developers. Keenan will argue that, to the player, code is largely immutable, so game rules must
always be obeyed. Our second speaker, Matt Bouchard, will delineate and challenge three assumptions
about players that are made in a diversity of game studies materials: the desire for strong narrative, the
desire for difficulty, and the desire for social gaming. Finally, Matt Wells will trace the history of the
player/programmer in the early years of personal computing, arguing the programming in and of itself
can be considered a game-like activity.
Our work is not wholly a critique, but rather to provide means by which researchers may recognize and
delineate the boundaries of their work. By expanding our horizons with respect to understanding the
game player, we will be able to add texture and nuance to our work.


In order to understand where we stand at present, it is necessary to understand how the player has
been defined by scholars and other interests over the years.