Abstract
With the advent of organized eSports, game streaming, and always-online video games, there exist new and more pronounced demands on players, developers, publishers, spectators, and other video game actors. By identifying and exploring elements of infrastructure in multiplayer games, this paper augments Bowman’s (2018) conceptualization of demands in video games by introducing a new category of ‘infrastructure demand’ of games. This article describes how the infrastructure increasingly built around video games creates demands upon those interacting with these games, either as players, spectators, or facilitators of multiplayer video game play. We follow the method described by Susan Leigh Star (1999), who writes that infrastructure is as mundane as it is a critical part of society and as such is particularly deserving of academic study. When infrastructure works properly it fades from view, but in doing so loses none of its importance to human endeavor. This work therefore helps to make visible the invisible elements of infrastructure present in and around multiplayer video games and explicates the demands these elements create on people interacting with those games.
Highlights
Video games have long been sites of interaction and competition
We follow the method described by Susan Leigh Star (1999, p. 380), who writes that infrastructure is as mundane as it is a critical part of society and as such is deserving of academic study
What sort of work can be done with an eye towards infrastructure demand? Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch League (OWL), an eSports institution, provides a good example case to demonstrate the value of narratives told within the framework of infrastructure demand, of a case where infrastructure demands push developers in contradictory directions
Summary
Video games have long been sites of interaction and competition. A decade after the creation of one of the first video games—SpaceWar! (completed in 1962)— devoted fans gathered to participate in an Intergalactic SpaceWar Olympics intended to prove whose skill with the prolific game was greatest (Brand, 1972, p. 1). The nature of contemporary multiplayer video games produces an augmented set of requirements for players, developers, publishers, spectators, and other video game actors, due in large part to the infrastructure required to support what have become massive, multi-million-dollar global products, events, and experiences. Media and Communication, 2019, Volume 7, Issue 4, Pages 237–246 upon those interacting with these games—as players, spectators, facilitators, and developers, among others— and we argue that these demands are visible, and productively explicable, in contemporary multiplayer games. This work helps to make visible the invisible elements of infrastructure present in multiplayer video games, explicates the demands these elements create on people interacting with those games, and suggests the scholarly value of conducting such a deep dive into the infrastructural elements of multiplayer video games
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