Social Justification | Conceptural Justification

Advancing Game Studies
An exploration of rhetoric in player-created game artifacts carries with it an implicit need to understand the composition of the medium's communication networks, its purpose, and its interactors. As such, it will be a valuable component to our overall understanding of the medium.

Focus and assumptions
This research extends theory and discourse in several areas of game research, including game ideology , game hacks and patches, player authorship and meta-gaming. It is based on the following points and assumptions:

• Computer games are a rhetorical medium.
  
  
• Games are more than a simulation, more than a representational medium, more than a ludology-- it is this combination that draws attention to games in this form, over abstracted games past and/or other media forms.
  
  
• Online game players manifest agency through the construction of artifacts, in which they are primary producers of these artifacts.
  
  
• Computer games have distinct cultural structures that influence creation and reception of content.