Browsing by Author "Willett, Sean R. M."

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    “One Place for All the Ways We Play”: The Corporate Sociotechnical Imaginary of Cloud Game Streaming
    (2019-08-16) Willett, Sean R. M.; Hogan, Mél; Harvey, Alison; Hogan, Mél; Pierson, Ryan
    Labeled ‘the future of gaming’ by platform owners and members of the enthusiast press, cloud game streaming is an emerging technology that is drawing investment from companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. While cloud gaming would benefit these companies by giving them more control over their platforms, the technology has a vulnerability to infrastructure failure that is absent in traditional methods of playing digital games. This thesis uses the concept of the corporate sociotechnical imaginary — a co-produced ordering of social life that ties an emancipatory vision of the future to a corporate product or service — in order to understand the way platform owners are attempting to transcend that vulnerability to infrastructural failure and position cloud gaming within the cultural hegemony. This is done by conducting close readings of press conferences made by three platform owners with cloud gaming services (OnLive, Nvidia, and Google) along with articles written by members of the enthusiast press. The corporate sociotechnical imaginary surrounding cloud streaming services associates this technology with a future where playing digital games is more convenient, more financially accessible, and free of platform-based restrictions — without any sacrifices to the authenticity of the gameplay experience. By contextualizing this imaginary within a political economic framework, this thesis argues this sociotechnical imaginary is being used to obfuscate the economic and infrastructural consequences of cloud gaming, and calls for scholars to imagine alternate futures for the digital game industry.