ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on 'actual' gameplay. One of the most interesting elements about this research is the relationship between 'imagined' gaming in terms of what gamers say about it, and 'actual' gameplay. Gameplay brings all elements together and, through an ontological narrative lens, offers a way of theorizing the action of gameplay. This is quite a complex manoeuvre, but is necessary for a number of reasons. Ontological narratives therefore continue to be theorized in relation to the praxis of narrating gameplay. Although gamers continually placed emphasis on the social function of technology in their discussions of gaming, actual recordings of gameplay demonstrate that the game has more power and agency than was perhaps initially claimed. King and Krzywinska's suggestion that gameplay offers the opportunity for 'other preoccupations and anxieties to be forgotten'. Gameplay as praxis suggests that it is the experience of the relations with the technology that are forged through practice and made meaningful through narrative.
