Sara Mosberg Iversen

Play and Productivity The Constitution of Ageing Adults in Research on Digital Games

Digital games are increasingly an integral part of daily life for people of all ages and genders. Based on a Foucauldian notion of power and discourse, the central question discussed here is how people above the age of 60 and their engagement with digital games are constituted within existing research. The available literature can be separated into two distinct themes focusing on shaping and maintaining the player and the player’s relation to games. A highly functionalistic approach to the use of digital games runs through much of the research due to its preoccupation with social, mental, and bodily health or with the needs of the game industry. This tendency is linked to notions of economical productivity, a theme that is analyzed on the basis of theory formations from cultural gerontology as well as in relation to power and discipline.

Playing with Sims as a Space of One's Own

Studies of womens use of popular media have highlighted how these contested genres may be used by women to create a space of their own. Is this also the case when the media text in question is a digital game and the community around it moves online? Investigated via a netnographic approach, this article analyses the articulated experiences of playing The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 in relation to how the players perceive the activitys function in their everyday lives. Seven emic categories are identified and discussed in the inductive analysis, namely “relaxation and dealing with stress,” “playing according to mood,” “managing and taking control,” “experimentation,” “get what one does not have,” “making something ones own,” and “creative outlet.” A central denominator of these seven categories is the notion of a space of ones own in the widest sense of the phrase. In the discussed accounts playing becomes a way not only to escape other obligations for a while but also in various ways to work with the self and its place in everyday life.