The thesis introduces the gameplayer’s bodily activity and experience as a significant, qualitative and meaningful dimension into game studies. This is done through investigating corporeal locomotion during gameplay, i.e. the gameplayer’s bodily activity and experience, in longitudinal empirical studies, across a variety of digital games and platforms, of gameplayers in gameplay.

The thesis explores how gameplayers as (kin)aesthetic bodies experience the joy of doing and develop craftsmanship skills through taking corporeal-locomotive ownership of their ‘gameplay craft’ – be it in the gameworld of World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Battlefield, Rock Band, Tetris or Angry Birds. The thesis thus attempts to break new ground by investigating how being a player is expressed and experienced as being a body engaged and absorbed in corporeal-locomotive play – something that have hitherto received little attention within studies of games, gameplay and gameplayers.

Therefore, Gameplay Corporeality tries to advance this new research field within game studies; a field that emphasizes the aliveness, presence, engagement and absorption of gameplayer as a corporeal-locomotive being.

The studies in this thesis are among the first to explore and investigate gameplay corporeality, that is, the bodily activities and experiences of gameplayers, the corporeal-locomotive design, composition and choreography of gameworlds and the corporeal-locomotive dimension in gameplay activity and experience, as something that carries essential qualities and important meanings within it.