The material production of virtuality: trials of explication in the design and development of computer games

摘要

This article seeks to contribute \udto the development of a relationship \udbetween digital game studies and science and technology studies by studying the \uddesign and development of computer games at three leading UK studios in the light of \udwhat MacKenzie refers to “the material production of virtual\udity” (MacKenzie 2007). The article examines the common ground in trea\udtment of ‘the virtual’ and ‘virtuality’ in science and technology studies and studies\ud of material culture and the importance placed in the relationship between ‘virtuality’ and ‘materiality’ as “a dialectical \udprocess of imagination followed by its realisation” (Miller 2005) for the “expressions of immaterial ideals through material forms” (Miller 2005). The article explores the concept of ‘explication’ as \uda crucial part of this dialectical process through which previously unmapped and unformatted aspect\uds of the world are articulated to the formalisms on which social life depends and through which certain of its features \udbecome gradually more explicit and ultimately knowable socially.