Playing Plague: Disease Narrative and the Need for Innovative Bio-Ontological Games

Barrios-O'Neill, Danielle and Garcia Rangel, Sherezade ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0166-690X (2019) Playing Plague: Disease Narrative and the Need for Innovative Bio-Ontological Games. Games and Culture, na. ISSN 1555-4120 (Submitted)

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Abstract / Summary

This paper argues for the potential of games to enact new ontological modes of engagement with disease, both as a concept and a living system. Drawing from a speculative-materialist framework, we use the phrase bio-ontology to denote ontological flexibility concerning which lifeworlds (bio-) might become the context for knowledge-making (whose perspective is most useful to take, and when?). A key premise is that game interfaces can render more legibly how humans and nonhumans coexist, and thus amplify the meaningfulness of decisions within complex systems, including but not limited to disease systems. Working within a trajectory of evolving cultural narratives concerning disease, and using the immensely popular mobile game Plague, Inc. as a key point of reference for new bio-ontological possibilities, we argue the need for games that, by requiring us to play disease differently, will enable us think disease differently.

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