This study investigated gender traits and sexual orientation to further explain why people play games and what leads to gaming enjoyment. We argue that attention to these often invisible or transactional aspects of gameplay experiences will allow games scholars to better observe how power and authority are negotiated by players of games.Įxisting research has focused on sex and gender to explain video games playing motivations and enjoyment. We use these examples to position the notion of the periludic at an intersection between game studies, media studies, HCI and social science. Character configuration constrains who players are allowed to be within game worlds, and thus who games are about. Authentication processes control who is permitted to access games and gameplay, and under what legal and conceptual terms. We focus on interfaces for authentication and character configuration because of the practical, legal and performative outcomes they enable and enforce. We term these kinds of peripheral-to-gameplay interfaces periludic, drawing on Genette’s formulation of peritext. These systems-such as authentication and login systems, distribution platforms, menu systems, controllers and character configuration and selection interfaces-serve as thresholds that mediate and dictate who may experience gameplay, and what kind of experience they are permitted to have.
In this paper we focus on the interfaces on the periphery of gameplay. While much of the scholarship around games focuses on either communities of play, or the content of the games and gameplay themselves, comparatively little attention has been paid to the infrastructures that players must negotiate to gain access to the gameplay experience.
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