Slow play strategy: digital games walkthroughs and the perpetual upgrade economy

Ashton, Daniel and Newman, James (2011) Slow play strategy: digital games walkthroughs and the perpetual upgrade economy. Transformations, 20.

Abstract

Drawing on notions of obsolescence, redundancy and supersession, this paper examines the perpetual upgrade economy of digital games with reference to the archiving of gameplay in player-produced “walkthrough” texts. In concentrating on these largely overlooked documents, we draw attention to a variety of disruptive and resistant practices that exploit, explore, dissect, and above all, linger on the “old games” that videogame advertisers and marketers would perhaps rather see resigned to the bargain bucket or the back of the cupboard.

It has become something of a cliché to talk of “disruptive” fan practices yet we feel there is merit in aggrandising the production of walkthroughs in this manner. Walkthroughs present and promote unexpected and, indeed, unintended, ways of engaging with digital games that question where game expertise lies, the forms of authority and governance that exist, and above all the flexibility and mutability of games as systems open to investigation, informal customisation and reinvention through often self-consciously exploratory (re)play. Further, in pausing and focusing on specific (areas of) games in detail, even interrogating their malfunctions through glitch- and bug-hunting, walkthroughs might be seen to arrest the otherwise relentless flow of completion and discarding as they encourage the development of new ways of playing (and reasons to play) old games. It is our assertion that player-produced walkthrough texts are essentially documents that codify and archive a slow media approach to gameplay and gaming culture

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Contributors

Author: Daniel Ashton

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