The Thing about gaming experience

Despite the increasing popularity in the academic and practical fields of digital gaming, little has been explored and documented about gaming experience, especially firsthand account. This study uses Bruno Latour's concept of the Thing while investigating digital gaming experience from frequent gamers' standpoint using focus groups methodology. Additionally in-depth interviews were conducted with developers in order to gain a business perspective on the status of digital games development with regard to gamers. From the findings, Reality, Game, and Player were identified as agencies and their associations with the experiences of the gamers were gathered in making the Thing about gaming experience a matter of concern providing new meanings and further understandings of the abstract sets of experiences. Acknowledgements I would like to express my deep gratitude to Lars-Erik Janlert, my supervisor, for his guidance, valuable discussions, support, and proofreading throughout my project. I would also like to thank Frank Drewes for helping me overcome practical issues at the startup of the project. A special thanks to all participants of the focus groups and developers in this study for their time, important input, and good spirit. I would like to extend my thanks to Omar Alaqra, dad, for his generous support, thesis discussions, and financing the project, Andreas Hagenbo who helped me throughout the project with game and thesis discussions, critiquing my thesis, and overall support, and my family for their continuous encouragement and care. And finally I would like to thank my colleagues and friends for reading and supporting the project.