“Understanding gameplay and video games as performative and/or performances allows for experiencing gameplay in new ways,” Marleena Huuhka states.
In her dissertation, she approaches counterplay through the frame of performance. The research material is both autoethnographic and ethnographic, including both the researcher's own gameplay experiences as well as game performances conducted in workshops with university students.
Performative and anarchistic counterplay
Based on the material, Huuhka has developed concepts of both performative and anarchistic counterplay. With performative counterplay, Huuhka refers to practices that become visible when the video game and gameplay as an activity are framed as performances.
“It shifts the focus from the content of the game to the connections between the human and non-human, and between performance and gameplay,” she says.
Anarchistic counterplay goes even further and abandons all gameplay practices entirely.
“It generates meanings by colliding with norms and accepting the randomness and gratuitousness of the game or performance rhizomes. In my dissertation, I propose new speculative practices that can challenge existing structures and hierarchies in both gameplay and performance contexts.”
“Video games are culturally and artistically significant but also fundamentally capitalist media. The aim of my research has been to seek new practices that can challenge those hegemonic structures that shape our understanding of contemporary society in many ways. Examining gameplay in the context of performance opens new possibilities for both game studies and performance studies,” Huuhka says.
The results of the doctoral research have been published in four research articles, mapping the progression of the research project from individual experiences towards new proposals for anarchistic, performative counterplay.
Marleena Huuhka is from originally Hämeenkyrö and has been living in Tampere since 2003. Currently, she works as a researcher at the University of Lapland.
Public defense on Thursday 28 March
The doctoral dissertation of MA Marleena Huuhka in the field of performance studies titled Weird Encounters in Virtual Worlds: Towards a theory of performative, anarchic counterplay as resistance will be publicly examined at the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences at Tampere University in Auditorium D11 in the Päätalo building (address: Kalevantie 4, Tampere) at 12:00 on Thursday 28 March 2024.
The Opponent will be Dr Liam Jarvis from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. The Custos will be University Lecturer Riku Roihankorpi from the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University.
The doctoral dissertation is available online
The public defence can be followed via a remote connection