Friday, January 8, 2027: 3:30 PM-4:45 PM
518 (LACC)
Ludoception refers to a hypothetical sense-faculty allowing subjects to perceive game structures. Under capitalism, this is especially helpful in situations that don't present themselves as games. When a text embeds a game, the game's mechanical structure encodes information about how power actually operates within it. Game literacy, particularly through the most literature-adjacent game-forms, is essential to this "game-sense," because those are the games that make the "open-source" nature of texts recognizable. Some examples of non-interactive literature that describe games provide enough detail to reconstruct the game's rules (Shirley Jackson's Lottery, et al.). This criterion distinguishes ludoceptive analysis from existing approaches in narratology, game studies, and cultural criticism, and gives it a clear scope of application.
This panel takes up the convention's theme of emancipatory narratives by asking a question prior to emancipation: what does it take to perceive the game you are inside before you can narrate your way out of it? Recent presentations at NeMLA focused on works of non-interactive literature that included games, but this panel focuses on web-born interactive fiction, and clarifies how such works allow readers to recognize ergodic features of texts (especially institutional texts, whose wording indexes influences and stakeholders deliberately kept hidden from their readers) more broadly. The panel brings together four scholars applying ludoceptive analysis across literary and digital texts, tracing how designed game structures produce and conceal knowledge in interactive fiction, multimedia narrative, and speculative literature.
Here are our confirmed panelists:
Michael W. Merriam (Narrative Designer and Independent Scholar)
"Emily Short: Oeuvre as Evolving Design Project"
A reading of Short's career from Galatea through Counterfeit Monkey through Versu to Spirit AI as a sustained ludoceptive practice, in which each work formalizes a deeper hidden game (conversation, language, social dynamics) and reveals what designed interaction knows about human behavior that no other mode of inquiry can access. Short's trajectory raises the emancipatory question of whether making the rules of human interaction legible and playable constitutes a form of liberation from those rules, or a more sophisticated enclosure within them.
"Emily Short: Oeuvre as Evolving Design Project"
A reading of Short's career from Galatea through Counterfeit Monkey through Versu to Spirit AI as a sustained ludoceptive practice, in which each work formalizes a deeper hidden game (conversation, language, social dynamics) and reveals what designed interaction knows about human behavior that no other mode of inquiry can access. Short's trajectory raises the emancipatory question of whether making the rules of human interaction legible and playable constitutes a form of liberation from those rules, or a more sophisticated enclosure within them.
William Walker (University of South Florida)
"Beyond Gamification: Toward a Ludo-Epistemological Pedagogy in Jon Bois's 17776"
A ludo-epistemological analysis of Bois's born-digital multimedia narrative, in which the rules of football evolve past recognizability across millennia, and the knowledge embedded in game design outlasts the cultural memory of why anyone plays. In a post-scarcity world where every material constraint has been removed, Bois's characters remain inside games, suggesting that the emancipatory promise of liberation from systems may itself be a misreading of what games are for.
"Beyond Gamification: Toward a Ludo-Epistemological Pedagogy in Jon Bois's 17776"
A ludo-epistemological analysis of Bois's born-digital multimedia narrative, in which the rules of football evolve past recognizability across millennia, and the knowledge embedded in game design outlasts the cultural memory of why anyone plays. In a post-scarcity world where every material constraint has been removed, Bois's characters remain inside games, suggesting that the emancipatory promise of liberation from systems may itself be a misreading of what games are for.
Melanie Bigalke (Penn State University)
"The Unwitting Player: Ludoception and Concealed Game Systems in Ender's Game"
An analysis of the novel and its digital and cinematic adaptations, arguing that Ender's ludoceptive capacity is not what saves him but what makes him exploitable. The military cultivates his ability to perceive game structures precisely so that ability can be harvested and deployed without his knowledge. Being native to the world of games, in Card's work, lends the subject a form of ludoception that is not inherently liberatory, but is rather an exploitable resource. It only becomes emancipatory when subjects learn to recognize when their own preference for games over real engagement is being used against them.
"The Unwitting Player: Ludoception and Concealed Game Systems in Ender's Game"
An analysis of the novel and its digital and cinematic adaptations, arguing that Ender's ludoceptive capacity is not what saves him but what makes him exploitable. The military cultivates his ability to perceive game structures precisely so that ability can be harvested and deployed without his knowledge. Being native to the world of games, in Card's work, lends the subject a form of ludoception that is not inherently liberatory, but is rather an exploitable resource. It only becomes emancipatory when subjects learn to recognize when their own preference for games over real engagement is being used against them.
Zach Bigalke (Penn State University)
"Legible Contests: Sports Film as Ludoceptive Pedagogy"
An analysis of how cinematic representations of sport function as entry points for ludoceptive reading in kinesiology education. Sports are the most naturalized game systems in contemporary life; their film adaptations make the designed structures visible again by framing rule systems, officiating decisions, and strategic logic as narrative events that students can interrogate as interactive texts. Ultimately, making a naturalized game legible to students constitutes an emancipation from the ideology embedded in its rules.
"Legible Contests: Sports Film as Ludoceptive Pedagogy"
An analysis of how cinematic representations of sport function as entry points for ludoceptive reading in kinesiology education. Sports are the most naturalized game systems in contemporary life; their film adaptations make the designed structures visible again by framing rule systems, officiating decisions, and strategic logic as narrative events that students can interrogate as interactive texts. Ultimately, making a naturalized game legible to students constitutes an emancipation from the ideology embedded in its rules.
Organizer:
Michael Merriam
Back to: Main Listing