The corporeal turn: At the intersection of rhetoric, bodies, and video games

Abstract

Through a critical literature review, this article examines the trend in game studies toward studying bodies, both of players and of characters, in communication scholarship. Specifically, first I discuss how the field of rhetoric has gradually become more familiar with studying games. Second, I map rhetorical studies’ involvement in materialism, specifically through the investigation of bodies. Third, I offer an extensive, though not exhaustive, review of how game studies has hitherto approached research regarding bodies. The article concludes by forecasting the future of game bodies and game studies with an eye toward Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) gaming, augmented reality, and virtual reality. This article argues that instead of creating a single, unifying theory of gaming bodies, games scholars should identify themes of bodies in games.