Foreword to the Special Section on XVII Brazilian symposium on computer games and digital entertainment (SBGames 2018)

The work analyzed the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on digital entertainment. The focus is on three types of digital entertainment: computer games, virtual reality and streaming, respectively. The first two types of entertainment were analyzed based on data from the Steam platform, while streaming was analyzed based on Twitch. Data were collected from 2019, i.e. the period before the pandemic, and 2020, i.e. the time of the pandemic. Then the data from both of these years were compiled for analysis. The study particularly focused on events related to the pandemic, such as the March declaration of the Covid-19 virus as a pandemic by the WHO or the holiday period in which the restrictions were reduced.

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2018 17th Brazilian Symposium on Computer Games and Digital Entertainment (SBGames)

10.1109/sbgames46082.2018 ◽

2018 ◽

Keyword(s):

Computer Games ◽

Digital Entertainment

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2017 16th Brazilian Symposium on Computer Games and Digital Entertainment (SBGames)

10.1109/sbgames43639.2017 ◽

2017 ◽

Keyword(s):

Computer Games ◽

Digital Entertainment

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From a Biopolitical ‘Will to Life’ to a Noopolitical Ethos of Death in the Aesthetics of Digital Code

Theory Culture & Society ◽

10.1177/0263276411417458 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 28 (6) ◽

pp. 67-90 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Anna Munster

Keyword(s):

Computer Games ◽

The Other ◽

Artistic Expression ◽

Digital Culture ◽

Entertainment Industry ◽

Digital Code ◽

Political Analysis ◽

Digital Entertainment ◽

The One ◽

Networked Publics

In a range of digital creative productions and digital culture, questions of how to deal with finitude are on the rise. On the one hand, sectors of the digital entertainment industry – specifically computer games developers – are concerned with the question of how to manage `death' digitally. On the other hand, death and suicide have become the impetus for humorous artistic expression. This article tracks the emergence of a digital ethos that is cognizant of consequence, finitude and even death. Rather than pit a 1990s `will to life' against an emerging `death drive', I argue that the shift to an ethos in which dark consequences ensue from digital actions must be understood by working through digital code's technicity and unfolding this relation of technics to both ethics and politics. Although Bernard Stiegler's analysis of technicity goes some way toward unfolding a political analysis of the aesthetics of digital code, his articulation of noopolitics fails to provide us with a way to conduct ourselves digitally in an era of cognitive capitalism. I look to critical software practices and their provisional networked publics, with potential lines of flight for contemporary technoculture via novel digital `codings'.

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