Technoculture

Questioning Alternative and Standard Game Controllers Through Hegemonic Models

This paper argues that discussions of alternative game controllers (altctrls) typically define them by contrast with a loosely described "standard" set of input devices, and that this framing focuses attention on hardware rather than on the broader social and political conditions shaping play.

• The paper argues that defining alternative game controllers (altctrls) by contrast with a 'standard' set of input devices focuses attention on hardware and obscures the broader social and political conditions shaping play.
• Its central proposal is to apply hegemony-informed models, drawing on Gramsci and Raymond Williams, to analyze the alternative/standard dichotomy and to examine how altctrls are produced and circulated.
• The author contends that altctrls work in synergy with changes in action mapping, display, metaphor, and interfacing, so input devices alone are an insufficient site for understanding difference, and calls for tracing sites and effects of difference via Haraway's diffraction mapping.