Multi-Player Computer Gaming: 'Better than playing (PC Games) with yourself'
Abstract
Based on research conducted with a multiplayer gaming group, this article introduces and
critically outlines the phenomenon of "lanning," the practice where computer game
players get together to play each other over a local area network or LAN. Swalwell
argues that lanning presents a significant challenge to a number of ingrained
assumptions about computer gaming. Primary amongst these is that lanning entails players
meeting, not just in the virtual world of a game, but also face to face, dealing a blow
to theories that gamers are anti-social. Swalwell goes on to argue that the sociality
of this form of gameplay also highlights the paucity of a range of other, binary
assumptions, in particular about what it is to encounter a game, and to "enter" virtual
environments. Attention is focussed on some of the different negotiations that lanning
involves - particularly across and between a range of materiality and reality statuses -
and the implications of negotiations such as these for subjectivity.