Article:

Paper and Polygon. Theming and Materiality in Game Studies and Game Design

This contribution to the research on games and materiality has two goals. One the one hand, it deals with a problematic generalization in computer game research and, on the other hand, it tries to point out an omission in game studies and gives some hints as to which investigations of game ma-teriality this omission requires. The problematic generalization is that games are themable, meaning that every game can be equipped with an arbitrary representation (theme) without changing, while the omission concerns the lack of research on the decisive role of materialities in the game design process, which has only been taken into account by publica-tions on design practice. The underlying assumption is that there is a rela-tionship between both topics that makes it possible to criticize the gener-alization with regards to the omission. Accordingly, this paper is divided into three sections: (1) an explanation of critique of the idea of theming; (2) an elaboration on its generalization with reference to pedagogy in the sec-ond part, and outlining a proposal for dealing with the materiality of digital games in the third part.