New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

In computer and video games, the player resides at the interface of viewer and actor. This position makes possible the playerʼs creative participation in these interactive media, a contribution that cannot be described in terms of the traditional roles of creator or consumer. The player is more than a consumer of what game developers and designers have created, and more than a reader or viewer. A game designer “creates a context to be encountered by a participant, from which meaning emerges” (Salen and Zimmerman 41). In the last decade or so, game players have used computer games as platforms for creating their own games, narratives, texts, and performances. They have reshaped the context of computer play, not simply by creating personal artifacts equivalent to a home movie, doodle, or diary, but by fully exploiting games as a new medium for performance and artistic expression. These efforts on occasion have challenged storytelling technologies such as frame-based animation, and have entered the mainstream through music videos, web-based serial programming, and other popular formats. The performer has pushed forward into the spotlight of game culture. So, how might game studies reveal players as performers? Learning more about the meanings players attach to play gestures, studying high-level competitive play, understanding what it means to watch others as they play, examining more closely the significance of replays and game movies in game culture, describing the formation of player identities, documenting in-game social dynamics, and tracing the networked virtual communities that thrive around computer games are but a few of many topics that might contribute to better understanding of game performance. This article presents a few ideas about playersʼ active participation in game culture through one mode of visible public performance: machinima and related game movies.