Playful Identities

Michiel de Lange is Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. He is co-founder of The Mobile City, a platform for the study of new media and urbanism, and works as a researcher in the field of (mobile) media, urban culture, identity and play. He is a researcher in the NWO Creative Industries funded project The Hackable City, about the ways digital media shape the future of city making. Joost Raessens is Full Professor and Chair of Media Theory at the Faculty of Humanities of Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Jos de Mul is full professor of Philosophy of Man and Culture at the Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has also taught at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and Fudan University (Shanghai). His publications include: The Tragedy of Finitude. Dilthey's Hermeneutics of Life (Yale UP 2004) and Destiny Domesticated. The Rebirth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Technology (SUNY, March 2014). Valerie Frissen is Managing Director of the SIDN Fund and professor of ICT & Social Change at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Sybille Lammes is Full Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at The Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) at Leiden University. She has been a visiting Senior Research Fellow at The University of Manchester, and has worked as a researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick, as well as the media studies departments of Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam. Her background is in media studies and play studies, which she has always approached from an interdisciplinary angle, including cultural studies, science and technology studies, postcolonial studies, and critical geography. She is co-editor of Playful identities: The ludification of digital media cultures (Amsterdam University Press 2015), Mapping time (Manchester University Press 2018; forthcoming) and The Routledge handbook of interdisciplinary research methods (Routledge 2018; forthcoming). She is an ERC laureate and has been the PI of numerous research projects.

"Playful Identities is an illuminating study on the increasing complexity of digital playgrounds, ludic media, ludic interfaces and technologies of the self. The book presents a variety of roles and identities such as: players, learners, gamblers, users, fans, role-players, theory crafters, cheaters, and digital savages." Prof. Dr. Mathias Fuchs, Leuphana University Lüneburg "What a brilliant, refreshing, and positively playful approach to the ludic imperative. In stark opposition to the business world's cynical application of "gamification" to productivity or even the social do-gooders urger to make games "serious," these essays reveal and reify play as the essence of human experience. Herein lies access to the truth: the play is the thing. These are the smartest, most articulate, and up-to-date essays on this subject, by the very people creating this field of study" - Douglas Rushkoff, author, Present Shock, Program or Be Programmed, and Playing the Future.

• 1. Valerie Frissen, Sybille Lammes. Michiel de Lange, Jos de Mul & Joost Raessens - Homo Ludens 2.0: Play, media, and identity Part I. Play 2. Introduction to Part I - Play 3. Kenneth J. Gergen - Playland: Technology, self, and cultural transformation 4. Stef Aupers - Spiritual play: Encountering the sacred in World of Warcraft 5. Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath - Playful computer interaction 6. Menno Deen, Ben Schouten, Tilde Bekker - Playful identity in game design and open ended play 7. René Glas - Breaking reality: Exploring pervasive cheating in Foursquare 8. Valerie Frissen - Playing with bits and bytes. The savage mind in the digital age Part II. Media 9. Introduction to Part II - Media 10. Gordon Calleja - Ludic identities and the magic circle 11. Adriana Souza e Silva & Jordan Frith - Location-based mobile games: Interfaces to urban spaces 12. Richard Ling - The playful use of mobile phones and its link to social cohesion 13. Sybille Lammes - Digital cartographies as playful practices 14. Patrick Crogan - Play (for) time 15. Joost Raessens - Playful identity politics: How refugee games affect the player's identity Part III. Identity 16. Introduction to Part III - Identity 17. Jeroen Jansz - Playing out identities and emotions 18. Jeroen Timmermans - Playing with others: the identity paradoxes of the web as social network 19. Leopoldina Fortunati - New media, play and social identities 20. Michiel de Lange - Playing life in the metropolis: Mobile media and identity in Jakarta 21. Frans Mäyrä - The conflicts within the casual: The culture and identity of casual online play 22. Jos de Mul - Afterplay