Technologies between games and culture

This article introduces and situates the ensuing collection of four essays on the theme of games and technology. It argues the need for videogame studies to develop a more rigorous and focused perspective on the theorization of technology as it relates to research into games and culture. The "and'' in games and culture cannot begin to be understood comprehensively without a thinking of the profound reliance of both terms on technology. Players and their cultural and collective involvements should be taken not as stable categories of research and development but as processes of becoming intertwined with lineages of technological development and disjunction which are the condition of these processes. Video games are not the least component and proponent of these technological lineages today. The essays collected in this section of the journal issue are described and characterized as offering such a focus on ludic technicity through their diverse but intersecting considerations of game hardware, software, game play, and other practices appropriating game technologies.