Cultivating ethical gameplay dispositions through the materiality of gameplay in Illuminati

Abstract

We examine how rules and mechanics act as attractors, or stabilizing end points within the multitude of trajectories in a possibility space, within games that form dispositions through the habits of material gameplay, which players can either resist or accept through a process of phronesis and metis. We videotaped a playthrough of the card game Illuminati and interviewed four players before and after the game. We discovered that the rule of allowing cheating and a player role with an unbalanced mechanic acted as material attractors (DeLanda, 2013; 2016) for gameplay dispositions. However, through a process of metis and phronesis, players resisted the dispositions of cheat and spoilsport and materially played the game so that they embodied the Aristotelian virtue of friendliness instead.