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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Thresholds of Digital Gameplay

Thresholds of Digital Gameplay

Gardner, Daniel L.

Paperback

Series: Software Studies

Games & Activities GeneralTechnology & EngineeringGeneral Sociology

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0262553589
ISBN13: 9780262553582
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: Dec 16 2025
Pages: 324
Weight: 0.75
Height: 1.01 Width: 6.01 Depth: 8.91
Language: English
How the often-overlooked interfaces, interactions, and inequities on the edges of gameplay are more central to gaming than we realize.

Contemporary digital gameplay is only accessible by navigating an ecosystem of interfaces that support its computational nature. Account logins, controllers, and an assortment of menus, settings, and other peripheral-to-gameplay elements support a range of practical and necessary functions that result from the transformation of gameplay into digital gameplay, as well as broader shifts toward an increasingly networked and data-driven world. The games industry has adopted usability testing on top of play testing to evaluate how these interfaces may influence the accessibility and success of their game software, but how embedding gameplay within webs of software, hardware, and platform infrastructures impacts the medium, players, and production has not yet been fully explored.

In Thresholds of Digital Gameplay, Daniel Gardner demonstrates how a series of interfaces and other elements on the periphery of digital gameplay fundamentally alter the phenomena of gaming. This book examines non-gameplay-centered material or mechanical attachments that surround and enclose gameplay while directing or mediating our experience of it--for example, access controls, character configuration, and microtransactional storefronts.

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