In recent decades, what could be considered a gamification of the world has occurred, as the ties between games and activism, games and war, and games and the city grow ever stronger. In this book, Anne-Marie Schleiner explores a concept she calls 'ludic mutation', a transformative process in which the player, who is expected to engage in the preprogramed interactions of the game and accept its imposed subjective constraints, seizes back some of the power otherwise lost to the game itself. Crucially, this power grab is also relevant beyond the game because players then see the external world as material to be reconfigured, an approach with important ramifications for everything from social activism to contemporary warfare.

Anne-Marie Schleiner is artist, designer and an instructor of communications and new media at the National University of Singapore.Anne-Marie Schleiner is engaged in gaming and media culture in a variety of roles as a critic, curator, activist, artist, and designer. She has participated in art residencies and given workshops in Germany, Belgium, Spain and Mexico. She has exhibited in international galleries, museums and festivals. Documentation of her performative culture work is available on the Video Data Bank. She holds a doctorate in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam, and her book, The Player's Power to Change the Game (Amsterdam University Press 2017) explores media art, activism, and game rhetoric. She has taught game design and digital art at universities in the United States, Mexico, and Singapore, and is a Lecturer in Design at the University of California, Davis.

Introduction: The Player's Power to Change the Game 1. The Game vs. the Player 2. ChaptersChapter 1. Lightness of Digital Doll Play 1. The KiSS Doll 2. From Dolls to Avatars3. The Collaborative Unfolding Game4. Ludic Mutation vs. Ludic Stasis in M.M.O.R.P.G.s5. A Virtual Space of Appearance 6. Gender, Identity Play, and the Active Disclosure of the Who 7. Disembodied Sensual Pleasure 8. Beyond the Dollhouse Chapter 2. Modding: Cross-Over Mutation and Unwelcome Gifts 1. A Brief History of First Person Shooter Modding 2. Sandbox World-building, Interface Mods, and Expert Cheats 3. Artistic Noise in the System 4. Cross-Over Mutation of Play Material 5. Thieving Parasites 6. A Common Sphere of Gifted Games 7. Rejected Gifts Chapter 3. Activist Game Rhetoric: Clockwork Worlds, Broken Toys, and Harrowing Missions 1. The Toy World System2. Overseers of Toy World Operations3. The Ordinariness of Interactive Toy World Equipment4. Player vs. Game5. Harrowing Missions of Refugees6. Broken Toys and the No Play ImperativeChapter 4. City as Military Playground: Contested Urban Terrain 1. Military Playgrounds 2. Military Theories of Urban Occupation3. From Deadly Play to Administrators of Life 4. The Artist's Intervention as Situationist Game 5. Hacking the City 6. Contesting the Terrain7. Funny Resistance 8. Points of DétournementChapter 5. Toys of Biopolis1. Biopolitics, Apparatus, Gadget 2. The Biocontrol Society3. Augmented Urban Reality and Paidiaic Toys 4. A Children's BiopolisChapter 6. A Tactical Sketchbook for Ludic Mutation1. Tactic #1: Elude2. Tactic #2: Mutate from Within3. Tactic #3: The Broken Toy Tactic 4. Tactic #4: Artistic Hacktivism5. Tactic #5: Reprogrammable Toy GadgetryBibliographyIndex