Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect

by Aubrey Anable

Why do we so compulsively play video games? Might it have something to do with how gaming affects our emotions? In Playing with Feelings, scholar Aubrey Anable applies affect theory to game studies, arguing that video games let us “rehearse” feelings, states, and emotions that give new tones and textures to our everyday lives and interactions with digital devices. Rather than thinking about video games as an escape from reality, Anable demonstrates how video games—their narratives, aesthetics, and histories—have been intimately tied to our emotional landscape since the emergence of digital computers.

Looking at a wide variety of video games—including mobile games, indie games, art games, and games that have been traditionally neglected by academia—Anable expands our understanding of the ways in which these games and game studies can participate in feminist and queer interventions in digital media culture. She gives a new account of the touchscreen and intimacy with our mobile devices, asking what it means to touch and be touched by a game. She also examines how games played casually throughout the day create meaningful interludes that give us new ways of relating to work in our lives. And Anable reflects on how games allow us to feel differently about what it means to fail.

Playing with Feelings offers provocative arguments for why video games should be seen as the most significant art form of the twenty-first century and gives the humanities passionate, incisive, and daring arguments for why games matter.

Genres: Nonfiction, Games, Video Games

200 pages, Paperback

Published February 21, 2018

Reviews

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an important text for games studies. It also gave me the Kentucky Route Zero analysis I've been waiting for.

[Levi S Porto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um dos melhores livros que eu li em 2020. Fiz um grifo em cada página!

[Phoenix · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.75 stars.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know nothing about video games, but this text's feminist and queer approaches to affect theory made for an enticing read.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

The game studies text I have been waiting for. Review to come in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

[Cameron Kunzelman · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can listen to us talk about this book for nearly three hours on the 12th episode of GAME STUDIES STUDY BUDDIES. http://rangedtouch.com/2019/05/29/12-...

[Gabriel Kishida · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book that is aimed towards more “ephemeral” types of games, such as mobile and casual games.
I was particularly interested in the following points:
- Games as affective interfaces for computers and digital structures in late stage capitalism (games affectively preparing us for failure and organizing our digital work)
- Touch screens as a way of feeling the code and the representation behind it
- The relationship of casual games and the rhythm of labor

However, I feel that the writing could be a little bit more straightforward. I felt as if the author was coming back to some points just to validate and reinforce some arguements when that wasn’t really necessary.

I also felt that the author had some positive feelings to casual and mobile games without properly addressing the weight of micro-transactions, paywalls and adsense that are bound to them. Maybe this was written at a time games like these were simpler and less of a money-grabbing advertisement flooded environment. Nowadays, it’s hard to think of casual games as truly casual and not just an attempt at attracting clicks by using overstimulating themes and aesthetics. You can tell the market is now full of low effort games just by looking at some unskippable mobile game ads on Youtube and Instagram. Will capitalism ever leave some of our digital spaces for ourselves?

Still, it is a great book. Shoutout to Game Studies Study Buddies for getting me here.

[Ondřej Trhoň · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really thought-provoking and nice, although - which I guess is the feature of the term - I still don't know what affect really is and what is it's relation to interpretation. Because what especially chapter on Kentucky Route Zero and Sword and Sworcery does is - in my mind- a lot of intepretation of the game and it's affective terrain, but I am unconvinced that this kind of reading is commonplace. So perhaps the question is: if affective nature of games capture the structures of contemporary feelings, what are the limits of seeing those as collective and shared when what this book does hinges on subjective orientation? But this is not a criticism, really, just a point I want to make for myself here in order to perhaps resolve later.

Also it's almost funny how much the author dislikes Deleuze's and Massumi's affect. And while IMO the best part, the chapter on casual games and rhytms of immaterial labour in capitalism could benefit from a discussion, even minutae, of F2P business models that complicate some potentially redemptive assumptions about how affect, labour, desires for different kind of labour and these games are bound up.

[Chris Aylott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anable explores important questions about how the physical interfaces we interact with affect our emotional responses and experiences with software. She rejects the notion that we can understand a game by studying only its internal processes or only our responses and -- correctly, I think -- locates its meaning in the interaction between the two.

The book is nearly derailed by cite-o-babble. Anable brings in some useful ideas from affect theory, including a Tomkins quote on the interaction of the hand and the face that left me seeing simple juxtapositions in a completely new way. But there's also a lot of the "X said this and Y said that" that I loathe in academic writing. Anable's own close readings and observations are much more interesting and useful, and I wanted more of that.

[John Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book that makes a compelling argument for dissolving tired computational/representational binaries and grounding how games function in affect theory, and how video game studies can in turn enhance our understanding of affect theory. Smartly written, rather concise, and very lucid.

[Ainhoapachm · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last chapter saves completely the whole book.

[Gregor · Rating 5 out of 5]

My appreciation for this book is mainly based on Anable's achievement of bringing feeling into game studies. Via affect theory, she productively opens a lot of pathways to this matter - a huge toolbox made accessible to thinkers.

During the journey I could enjoy many smaller and bigger thoughts on various conditions. For instance: The linking of game studies to the "cybernetic fold" or her thoughts on the cultural meanings surrounding failure.

The lack of writing on games and feeling as well as the focus on player actions in game studies made this book very necessary. This is why I can ignore some other shortcomings, like a at times overly convoluted writing style, a missed opportunity to dive deeper into emotions and some views I deem to narrow here and there.