Playful Materialities: The Stuff That Games Are Made Of

Playful Materialities: The Stuff That Games Are Made Of, edited by Benjamin Beil, Gundolf S. Freyermuth, and Hanns Christian Schmidt, emerged from the Cologne Game Lab at the Technical University of Cologne. Published in 2020, the volume serves as an interdisciplinary academic inquiry into the physical and digital components that constitute games. It was designed to bridge the gap between media studies and material culture, challenging scholars to look past the virtual experience and consider the hardware, peripherals, and tangible ephemera that ground gameplay in the physical world.

The editorial team sought to formalize 'materialities' as a critical framework for game studies. By assembling essays from diverse contributors, Beil and his colleagues aimed to document how gaming is not solely a cognitive or software-based activity but a deeply material practice. The resulting collection was well-received within academic circles for providing a foundational text on the intersection of ludology and object-oriented philosophy, effectively expanding the discourse beyond screen-based analysis.