Cultural techniques of play: A media philosophical approach to the study of time, history, and memory in games

Abstract

Taking Johan Huizinga’s work on games and culture as a starting point—particularly his arguments about how play can be considered as primary to culture— this paper gives a new account of twenty-first-century play as Kulturtechniken (cultural technique). Using examples including the art games and indie games That Dragon, Cancer (Numinous Games, 2016), The Outlands (Haines and Hinterd-ing, 2011), and Superhot (Superhot Team, 2016), the paper explores the way time is ordered in gaming and develops a media theoretical approach to explain the way play might “cultivate” a certain way of living in and thinking about the world, particularly through its time-critical operation. The three examples are chosen because in each of them we can see a different element of digital temporality, including the way time is ordered by computational systems; the way memories and histories are archived and made discoverable by digital systems; and the way interface design can facilitate experiences of being-in-time. By exploring gaming as a cultural technique, the paper enters into a field of debate in media and cultural studies that addresses the concepts of contemporaneity and digital temporality and offers a new way to approach these areas of study through a focus on games.