ABSTRACT
Though they may not be familiar with the term, most people with more than a passing interest in and knowledge of videogames will be aware of ‘superplay’. Superplay is a generic term that describes a range of gaming practices that differ significantly in their execution and implementation but that are bound together by a common desire to demonstrate mastery of the game through performance. As we shall see throughout this chapter, superplay may be oriented around completing games in the fastest possible time, or by tackling the challenge in a ‘pacifist’ mode dispatching only those enemies that actually bar progress and cannot be avoided. It may seek to use as few additional capabilities or weapons as possible, and it may involve exploring as much or, indeed, as little of the gameworld as possible by engaging in ‘complete’ or ‘low percent’ runs to completion. Moreover, some forms of superplay may even centre on pushing gameplay beyond the limits of human performance by harnessing technical tools to enact the theoretically perfect performance. All of these practices require great skill and commitment and involve meticulous planning and the utilisation of the Game Guides and walkthroughs we saw in the previous chapters as reference works that document the extent and scope of the game as well as other documents and collaborative strategies that are devised and refined by gamers reviewing and discussing
each other’s work. What we note in the practices of superplay is the use of the knowledge and techniques uncovered and laid out in Game Guides, the exploitation of the structures, (non-) linearity and limitations of videogames as designs as well as the harnessing of glitches in game code. All of these are combined by superplayers and used to gain gameplaying advantage. This point recalls Dovey and Kennedy’s commentary on Eskelinen’s (2001) and Moulthrop’s (2004) conceptualisations of gameplay as configurative practice in which they note a tendency towards an ‘incipient humanism’ (2006: 105) that privileges the player as principal or even sole agent. As we shall note, both player as performer and game system should be considered agents in the processes of gameplay. Krzywinska (2002) makes a similar point in drawing our attention to the ‘textual’ and ‘performative’ aspects of videogames and the ways in which the game system restricts and limits the gameplay potential of the player. However, we should be mindful that this system of rules and boundaries is not fixed but rather is permeable and in a state of flux as it is interrogated, operated on and played with. Moreover, the system may behave in an unpredictable manner unintended by the game designers due to imperfections in the code or unanticipated emergent contingencies.
