Disability and Video Games: Practices of En-/Disabling Modes of Digital Gaming (Palgrave Games in Context)

Markus Spöhrer; Beate Ochsner

ISBN 10: 3031343735 / ISBN 13: 9783031343735

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2024

About this Item

Hardcover, xix + 357 pages, NOT ex-library. Book is clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Issued without a dust jacket. -- This interdisciplinary book explores the relationship between digital gaming, accessibility, and disability studies. It shifts away from medical models that view disability as a "deficit" and instead examines how gaming infrastructures - human and technological - can either enable or disable players. The volume's central premise is that disability is not an essential characteristic of a person, but a result of complex infrastructures of play. The authors argue against the traditional view that users are either "normal" or "unable to play" due to physical limitations. The book analyzes how the interplay between hardware, software, and human practices creates situations of access or exclusion. Individual chapters provide historical, technical, and critical perspectives on the gaming landscape. They trace the development of accessible gaming back to the 1970s, covering amateur "DIY" practices, voice-enabled gaming, and the history of eye-tracking as an alternative interaction method. The book also explores how commercial games often reinforce ableist power structures through mechanics that prioritize mastery, autonomy, and precision - traits that align with "toxic meritocracy". A roundtable discussion addresses why gaming with disabilities is often categorized as "serious" or "therapeutic" rather than purely for pleasure or entertainment. The volume features interviews with leaders in the field, including Mark Barlet, co-founder of AbleGamers, regarding the development of inclusive hardware like the Microsoft Adaptive Controller. Contributors review current game accessibility guidelines and how they intersect with broader socio-political trends toward inclusion.

Seller Inventory # 012718

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Disability and Video Games: Practices of En-/Disabling Modes of Digital Gaming (Palgrave Games in Context)
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3031343735
• ISBN 13: 9783031343735
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

This collection intends to fill a long overdue research gap on the praxeological aspects of the relationships between disabilities, accessibility, and digital gaming. It will focus on the question of how Game Studies can profit from a Disability Studies perspective of en-/disabling gaming and issues of disability, (in)accessibility and ableism, and vice versa. Instead of departing from the medical model of disability that informs a wide range of publications on “disabled” gaming and that preconceives users as either “able-bodied,” “normal” or as “disabled,” “deficit,” or “unable to play,” our central premise is that dis/ability is not an essential characteristic of the playing subject. We rather intend to analyze the complex infrastructures of playing, i.e., the complex interplay of heterogeneous human and non-human actors, that are en- or disabling. 

About the Author

Dr. Markus Spöhrer is a Postdoc research associate in the project “The Interactive Gaze: On the Status and Ethics of Surveillance Images in Digital Games” at the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW, University of Tübingen,Germany). He studied American Studies, German and English literature (University of Tübingen), and Media Studies (University of Miami). He has a doctorate in Media Studies from the University of Konstanz, Germany. His main research areas are dis/ability and digital Media, digital games, and Science and Technology Studies (STS).

Prof. Dr. Beate Ochsner is a Professor of Media Studies at the University of Konstanz. Before, she was an assistant professor at the University of Mannheim and a guest professor at the Universities of Innsbruck, Basel, and St. Gallen. In 2002, she habilitated with the thesis DeMONSTRAtion. Zur Repräsentation des Monsters und des Monströsen in Literatur, Fotographie und Film. Also she is spokesperson of the research unit “Media and Participation” and principal investigator of subproject 2 “Techno-sensory processes of participation: App-practices and dis/ability.”