Arcade tales and play cultures

Alan Meades / Arcade Tales & Play Cultures: Arcade Tales and Play Cultures is a body of research that explores the communities and cultures that form around videogame play, and particularly those that encapsulate liminoid, unconventional or undocumented practices. The intention of the body of work is to document - through ethnography, participant observation, oral histories, and mixed methods - the practices, meanings, and forms of play cultures. Research outputs include a long-term ethnography of videogame glitchers, hackers and illicit modders, resulting in the 2015 Routledge monograph 'Understanding Counterplay in Video Games' in addition to a range of articles/book chapters. Arcade Tales expands the scope of the play cultures research by exploring historic / disappearing play cultures - specifically those that formed in the British seaside amusement arcade during the 1970s - 1990s. On-going oral history capture is translated into graphic novels to maximise impact and engagement - and as an explicit mechanism to encourage community members to recognise the significance of their often ignored (and thus undocumented) memories, experiences and predilections. Future work will build upon a significant archive of East Kent arcade photography – the George Wilson archive – in collaboration with SEAS Photography. Arcade Tales and Play Cultures therefore explores two overlapping strands – transgressive / liminoid play and communities that form around it. This continues with an increasingly international perspective through links with the University of Bergen, and with subject overlap with Stanford University’s Ira Nowinski arcade photography collection.