ABSTRACT
As a conclusion to this project, this chapter provides a re-examination of the concept of ludo-egregore as a conceptual tool that enables us to examine play in public as a shared and situated common engagement between human and non-human agents, which emphasize the notions of plurality, simultaneity, and ephemerality. This is followed by a brief summary of the concepts covered by the case studies comprising the volume’s last chapters, which include performance in public play, tactics for the appropriation of space, and the individualization of play through cabinet design affordance. It also examines the opposition between commercial interests of venue operators and the function of game centres as socially and emotionally invested sites characterized by the emerging forms of subversive appropriations of games.
This conclusion also provides two main paths for future work on the topic of Japanese arcade videogame culture. One concerns the place of ludo-egregore within an expanded conception of the preservation of Japanese game centres and their culture; the other suggests reading the figure of the game centre as a heterotopia through its reinterpretation in other media forms.
