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Bold:	Interviewer
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Hello.  Can you hear me?  I can’t hear you.  I think that’s possibly your settings.  No, I still can’t hear you.  Kind of got a – let me check.  It could be me.  I don’t think it is.  Sorry, I can see you talking but I can’t hear you at all.  No, still can’t hear you.
About now?
Yes, that’s great.  I can hear you.
Okay, perfect.
I’ve just noticed as well, I’ve got a really big light behind me so you can’t – I look like I’m glowing but I don’t actually glow.
It’s okay.  It’s fine.
I’m going to turn the video off in a sec anyway.  Right, thank you very much for speaking to me.  I’m—
Thank you for the invitation.
It’s great.  So, appreciating the fact that you need to go at 12, I’m going to talk as little as possible.  I’ll give you a very brief outline of what we’re going to do and then I’ll start asking questions.  Is that okay?
That sounds perfect, absolutely perfect.
Great, I’m going to switch to audio only because it will help with my connection.
Perfect.
Okay.  So, this interview is part of the Gaming Horizons project.  You’ve been sent some information about Gaming Horizons, but essential Gaming Horizons is a European-funded project where we’re interested in looking at the kind of discourses that go on around video games and culture and ethics and society and all that kind of business, which is why we’ve asked you as one of about 60 participants who we’re interviewing about the project, so we’re talking to game designers, we’re talking to educators, we’re talking to researchers, so all sorts of people in interviews like this.  
During this interview, I’ve got some areas that I want to talk about so there’s not a fixed list of questions that I need to go through.  I’m just going to hope to steer the conversation into the areas that we’re interested in, but pretty much say whatever you feel in response to the questions.  I’m not looking for a specific answer, obviously; it’s just to get your opinions and ideas.  Is that okay?
Sounds perfect.  That sounds totally okay.  Perfect.
Brilliant.  Thank you very much.  And just to be clear for the tape, can you just say that you understand that this is being recorded?
I understand that this is being recorded.
Thank you very much.  Okay, brilliant.  Okay, so, we’re going to start then, just if you could give me an outline of what your interests are in this area, what’s your background in relation to video games?
Right, so I’m a video games scholar or a games scholar.  I’ve been studying games within the field of games studies since 2002, and my initial research and perhaps sort of the main – my main interest throughout the first part of my career was the ethics of computer games.  So that was the topic of my PhD dissertation and I’ve written a couple of books about it, so it’s very central to my interest.  And currently I’m studying more play than games, so games are objects; I’m studying more the activity and ethics and morality and the role that they play and playful activities have in society, so it’s a strong interest of mine.  And sort of by background, I’m a literary theorist who does philosophy or a philosopher who did literary theory, so I’m basically a humanist at heart.
Brilliant.  Thank you.  Okay, given that your perspective is strongly around ethics of video gaming, I’m going to shoot to the questions on that section first because I think that’s where you can really offer a particular perspective on games that we don’t necessarily get generally in the field of game studies or from research around games.  So can I just really broadly ask you, for you, what does ethics in gaming mean?
Right, so it’s a broad question, so I can talk about what I’m interested in.  What really ticks me is what role do video games play in the development of moral [perimeters 0:05:05].  So by training I’m a virtual ethicist, not a classic Aristotelian, I’m sort of very influenced by modern texts and virtual ethics, so my core interest is what is a good life, and therefore my core interest with video games is how do video games play a role in developing the good life in the information age.  That’s in a nutshell what I’m interested in.
Great, thank you.  So obviously you do a lot of thinking about this.  When you’re thinking, looking at research, what sort of context are you looking at video games in?
So, I’m trying to situate video games in two traditions, or three maybe.  So one tradition is games studies obviously, the discipline where I am rooted and the department in which I work in.  The other discipline is broadly seen philosophical ethics, so the analysis of and development of ethical theories within a philosophical context.  And the third one is philosophy of technology, because I think one of the things that we tend to forget when we discuss ethics is the role of machines and technologies in mediating, enforcing, limiting some of the moral aspects of our experiences, particularly our playful experiences.  So my work, I think, oscillates between talking to game scholars, talking to philosophical ethicists and talking to philosophes of technology.
Great, so in those contexts, again, I’m going to ask some very open questions for you to take them in a way.
Yeah.
What are games good at and what are games not good at?
So what games are phenomenal at is structuring experience, creating worlds in which we can explore ethical values, ethical sceneries, ethical content.  The activity of play has always been connected to the capacities we have to structure experience.  When we play, we are structuring our experience in a very particular way.  We use play technologies.  We use games and the rules and the settings to limit or narrow down the world so we can explore and express ourselves.  And what games allows us to do is to safely and critically explore our own subject-hood, who we are.  They allow us to practise virtues, to understand vices.  They allow us to understand others and collaborate with others.  They allow us to even have an escape valve for vices, so behaving bad in a video game and that kind of – it has a value of its own.  It has a pleasure of its own.
Yes.
And another good thing they do is that they are hedonistic machines.  They are all about pleasure.  And, of course, you know, protestant ethic thinks that pleasure is bad, but not coming personally from a protestant ethics, coming from the south of Europe, I think that pleasure is extremely underrated and anything that allows us to pleasurably be in the world is a thing in itself.
What video games do very bad, and this is not necessarily video games as a technology or video games as a medium, but video games as a social, technical or socioeconomic construct is to foster – video games foster certain cultures of, let’s call it hatred or – yeah, I mean I wouldn’t be – it’s a little bit of a harsh principle. 
Okay.
But video games, because of the way they have been situated in culture and particularly in popular culture, they have been really good at providing a safe space for extremely unethical behaviour.  And I think the events of Gamergate that peaked some two and a half, three years ago, but now is still pervasive in video game culture are just the tip of the iceberg of these cultures that are also present in video games.  But, again, that’s not a fault of the medium in itself; it’s a part of the way the medium has been currently made or situated within a sociotechnical and an economic context.
Thank you.  I don’t want to linger for too long on the negative aspects, but being as we’ve just left it there, what is it about how they’ve been framed that’s kind of promoted that sort of behaviour or that sort of attitude, do you think?
Well, I think they’ve been framed and sold as the core identity of a subculture, and the video games have been marketed as the unique identity-building medium for a culture that was deeply marginalised, both in media, so the nerds and the geeks in popular media were always the buffoons, and in general in society.  So video games were sold as this kind of exclusion or identity creation power fantasy that allowed these marginalised communities to build their identity, build their communities around these products.  As soon as these products started being open to other communities that are marginalised, other forms of expression and other types of power or powerless fantasies, then we started seeing this tremendous backlash because they were branded as an identity thing and somebody was stealing somebody else’s identity.  There was a rhetoric of it, so, yeah.
That’s fascinating.  So, given that that’s the situation and that’s maybe the position we’re at now, who’s in a position to be able to challenge that or kind of move things in a different direction, do you think?
So, the obvious answer is video game developers and video games publishers.
Okay.
And I think we are seeing some green sprouts there, where many mainstream video games are marketed or even targeted economically at different target audiences and not just that sort of white male heterosexual player.  So I think the main responsibility comes into or lies on those who initially created and marketed games to these communities.
Now, that being said, I think that us academics, we very easily complain about how bad video game developers sell their products and yet we don’t do enough in actually fostering a different type of video game culture.  So I think on our side and our responsibility, we should do a bigger effort to try to write scholarship, to try to teach more those things that are in the periphery and to challenge the default video games.  So even though I think many academics are against this kind of culture or subculture of hatred in video games, when you look at the main video games that are analysed in games scholarship, it seems like we are all still playing violent triple-A video games with questionable gender policies.  So why is it that we don’t teach our students about independent games, about—?  I mean it’s there, but I think we need to do a bigger effort in analysing and therefore legitimising these new forms of video games that are actually broadening the expressive palette of the medium.
Thank you.  You’ve talked there about a particular type of game still being the focus of research.  Do you think there’s a – are there reasons why people gravitate towards that sort of video game in terms of research, in terms of teaching, do you think?
Well, in terms of teaching, I think the answer is a little bit easier because games courses tend to be extremely heterogeneous, so one always has to try to find the minimum common denominator, and that tends to be these highly popular Grand Theft Auto kind of video games.  So it’s a question of comfort, and I think it’s also a question of not teaching proper media history of video game history to students.  So that’s what they’re teaching, and I think it’s very reasonable and it’s going to be complicated to change, but, you know, we are working on it, I think.
The other aspect, in terms of research, that’s a little bit more puzzling, but I think it has to do with the fact that many of the earliest scholarship in game studies, and many of us, we started studying the big video games, right?  So at some moment, game studies was basically World of Warcraft studies.
Yes.
And it’s very difficult not to feel – because these triple-A video games, things like Grand Theft Auto, they have a tremendous cultural impact, right?  Everybody has heard of them.
Yeah.
The media refers to them, so it’s very difficult to isolate ourselves in a field that’s still in development and say like, “Well, you know, there’s these big video games, but actually what we study is these kind of super-weird independent video games that are downloadable on the internet.”  It’s very complicated to justify, I guess, politically that our field actually studies other types of games.  So we’re a little bit between a rock and a hard place.  We need to study the big video games because that’s what audiences and people and the public know, but at the same time we should not be seduced by them because they are not at the forefront of what the medium can do.  So it’s tricky, I mean it’s really complicated.
Yeah, that’s fascinating.  Thank you, that’s really useful.  So, if we turn it back to the kind of positives, and you’ve talked about the possibility for video games for kind of positive thinking, positive experience, are you talking about a particular type of video game when you talk there?
No, not really.  I think there’s many types of video games, there’s many genres and there’s many specific instances that can be used for that.  I can give you examples.  For instance, I think these video games made with the game engine called Twine, which are sort of text-based, hypertext-ish interactive experiences, they have been instrumental in opening up the discourse in video games to the queer community, so now there’s a queer games [sin 0:16:29] that is also acknowledged and has deeply contributed to growth in what we can say with gays.  So I think that’s the type of examples.  I’m really not that interested into games expressively made for learning or for teaching or for education; I’m much more interested in either commercial or artistic products that intervene in the public discourse, to in the general discourse about games.
Thank you, and that’s the kind of game that you would advocate researchers kind of having a closer focus on, a closer interest in?
Yes, I think that would be – that would be really important.  So, for instance, I’ve been following game studies for a while and there was this game some years ago called Hard Life, which was a fantastic exploration of poverty, a game that used the procedural rhetoric, and I mean for me to say that it works procedurally, it takes some because I’m not very fund of procedural rhetoric, but that was a game that used the medium of the game to explore poverty in the North American economic conditions in a really interesting and deep way.  And the scholarship about Hard Life has been minimum.  So, you know, that’s the kind of games that I think we should be writing about, rather than other games.
It seems like it’s easy to study the [0:18:06], but it’s complicated to study things like Hard Life or any Twine game or there’s this fantastic game about fake news that it’s just brilliant.  It’s educational but it’s just really good, and I don’t see many scholars submitting papers saying like, “Hey, by the way, look at what this game is doing with the media.”
Yes.
Somehow we are still a little bit too stuck and a little bit too fascinated by all these polygons.  Sorry, I guess I’m not that cynical, but it’s just I feel like sometimes we are missing – we are almost missing cheap shots just because need to talk about Grand Theft Auto 7 or whatever it is now.
Yes, yes, absolutely.  I think that’s a really important perspective to hear in this project as well, where we’re particularly interested in kind of opening up the other possibilities.  If we think about – I’ve lost my train of thought now.  Sorry.  You’ve given me too much to think about.
Sorry.
No, no, it’s great.  It’s brilliant.  I’m trying to think how to go next to get the best kind of response in a short period of time.  So, given that there’s potential games out there that have a real kind of strong potential for players who potentially don’t know about them, do you think – is there a role for people making people aware of these games?  How are people meant to know about these games if people aren’t talking about them?
Right.  That’s a great – so, first of all, and I think that’s where there is actually a lot of work done on the video games media to try to highlight these games.  Some people call it games criticism, but it’s just basically non peer review, long-form web writing about video games, so things like First Person Scholar on occasions, Rock Paper Shotgun, they are doing a phenomenal job highlighting these, let’s call them, other games. 
Yes.
They are doing a great thing.  And now sort of pulling it back to academia, the word canon is something that, because we are all postmodern, we should not use, but then again I think we should be using it.  I think one of the things that we do in academia is define the canon, whether we like it or not, what we teach becomes canonical, at least for the students we have in front of us, right?  So I would say that we would need to embrace the fact that we are canon-makers.  And, you know, forget for, say, five years that everything about how bad the canon idea is and then establish a canon in universities where we are a little bit aware that the video game medium is broader than whatever is published by – whatever is published on consoles, because I think that’s the other thing super-interesting.  I don’t know if you – you’ve probably noticed, right?  But most video games that we analyse are console games, even if we play them on PC.
Yes.
And by analysing those games, so console development and console distribution is highly regulated, right?  So you submit games to Sony or Xbox and they curate it and Sony is doing a really good job opening for interesting independent games and interesting smaller games, but still they are gatekeepers.  They are canon-makers.  Whatever gets published on the PlayStation network or even on Steam, it’s canon.
Absolutely.
So I’m thinking, so we should do the same in academia.  We should be aware that we are also canon-makers.
Yeah, so we have a responsibility to turn the focus onto other possibilities.
I think so.  I think we definitely – this is not to say that we should ignore the big video games.  We cannot afford ignoring the big video games, but it would be interesting to, say, make a parallel study, you know, get our students to make parallel studies between the portrait of socioeconomic realities in Grand Theft Auto 5 compared to Hard Life, so how is poverty represented in one and in the other one, because then that way we will be anchoring some of these secondary canon or sort of new canon in this more conventional mainstream canon, something like that.  I mean I think it’s very much up to us to sort of do it.     
I think that’s a really important point, thank you.  You’ve mentioned that you’re not particularly specifically interested in what we might call serious games or educational games.  Do you think therefore that kind of the – what would you call – entertainment games or commercial games…
Yeah.
…do you think they’re better positioned to do the sorts of positives things that you would want them to do than a kind of serious targeted game?
I think so, but don’t get me started with serious games because I don’t think I want to be on record with my opinions on serious games.  One day we’ll get a beer and I’ll rant about serious games.
Oh, that’s lovely.
Sorry, but commercial games have this exposure advantage, right?  So they are almost household names and they are very good at leveraging already existing platforms of distribution for pushing new content or pushing new ideas, right?  So the fact that Sony wants to release games like Gone Home and supports them is a [really good 24:17] step forward that commercial games can do and serious games cannot, because the channels of distribution, the channels of usage and their quality are worse.  So if we want to look at sort of having a broader impact on society, both commercial games and more artistically minded video games, are the place where I think change can happen.
Fantastic.  So what sort of ethical or political questions should be considered, do you think, when games are developed if they want to achieve a kind of social change?
So, I think to put it very briefly, the two main elements to take into consideration would be the questions of representation, so how our community is represented in the video game world, what do they do?  How can they do?  How do they look?  How do they act?  And then the other one is to call it somehow respect for the players, so to be extremely aware that people are going to be investing a lot of physical physics time and a lot of emotional time in playing these games, and they need to get something out of it that if it is only pleasure, if it’s only dumb fun, it needs to be proper dumb fun.  
So this is difficult to explain, right, but to me there’s an inherent value in Super Mario Cart that has nothing to do with – you know, it doesn’t make me a better human being.  It doesn’t teach me anything.  But at the same time, it respects my leisure.  It allows me to engage in meaningful social interaction with other people.  It streamlines and guides meaningful social interaction.  It’s the pleasures of fun in a way that respects my own agency, which I think many other games don’t do.  You can compare it to these terrible online environments for shooters, like Call of Duty, where, you know, the instances of hatred and racism and hate speech, and nobody cares.  Nobody gives a damn.  People are just going to talk shit all the time and it feels like a waste.
And I think in that sense, League of Legends is really interesting because they are – you know, Mario Cart is a Nintendo game and therefore, you know, it has its own ecosystem, but if you think about League of Legends, League of Legends has a very similar community than that of online shooters, so it’s like really aggressive, highly competitive people, but they have historically a big effort trying to make a game as inclusive as possible, trying to eliminate instances of harassment, instances of racism.  And I think in that way, that’s a way of showing that they respect the leisure and they respect the pleasure they are giving people, so that’s the other thing that they should be focusing on.
That’s fantastic.  Thank you very much.  I’m very conscious of the time.
Yeah.
Final thing to say, I suppose, is is there anything, in this very brief conversation, is there anything that you’ve not talked about that you think would be important for you to say in light of the kind of things we’ve been asking?
I don’t know.  No, I think I’ve said a lot of things.  I’m pretty sure that if you asked me another question I can rant for another half an hour.  I’m very good at ranting.  If you want to continue the conversation some other day, I’m pretty open.  My final exams are tomorrow, so I have Wednesday and Thursday kind of moderately free, and then on the other side of the summer break, so starting in August I also have a lot of time, just in case, if you feel like you really want to, you know, listen to me ranting about other things.
It’s fascinating to listen to you and I’d love to have more of a conversation, so I will be back in touch.  The final thing to say is has anyone been in contact with you about our event in Brussels on the 19th of July?
No, nobody.  No.
Okay, are you potentially free on the 19th of July to come to a one-day event in Brussels?
I’m flying back from the US actually, so, yeah.
Oh, so not a good day.  That’s such a shame.  I’ll send you the information just in case it fits in in some way, but bearing in mind that you’re travelling on that day, you probably won’t be available.
Yeah.
But I’ll send you the information anyway.  Feel free to have a look at it.
That would be great, yeah.
Thank you so much for the conversation.  I very much appreciate you making yourself available today.
Of course.
And I will be back in touch.
Perfect.  It’s a really interesting and important project you’re running, so everything I can do to help, just let me know.  It’s a really, really good project.
Thank you.  Your perspective is very valuable, so thank you.  I appreciate that very much.  Enjoy the rest of your day.
Thank you.  You too.
Thank you.  Bye-bye.
Bye.