Video games are known for producing communities, and gamers often interact with games in ways that supersede their intended purposes. James Newman provides an excellent overview of this phenomenon in Playing with Videogames. Newman describes players creating their own challenges (for example “speedruns” to complete games as quickly as possible), modifying and altering games, and sharing game experiences online and in recorded and shared videos. A more recent exploration of this type of interaction with games is Patrick Jagoda’s Experimental Games: Critique, Play, and Design in the Age of Gamification. Jagoda examines video games that subvert expectations, deconstruct or modify traditional game elements or interfaces, or challenge the player’s perspectives. Placing games in the historical perspective of the Cold War and neoliberalism, Jagoda suggests that game creators and players can develop new models of games and play that are not strictly beholden to the traditions set up by game precedents. The author also uses alternate reality games—games in which the players guide the story or affect the outcome by taking actions in the real world as well as electronically—to illustrate new models of interaction between players and the capacity of games to evolve, adapt, and educate.
