Players unleashed!

How do players take a finished game apart and rebuild it? This academic study follows that question through modding, the practice of changing a game's content or code, using The Sims as its case. The title draws on that idea of players being let loose on a game's inner workings. The Sims is one of the most commercially successful computer games ever made, which makes it a useful test case for examining how fans push against a product's design.

Tanja Sihvonen looks at both the technical and material side of Sims mods and the cultural settings in which they circulate. Her argument is that modding is a form of participatory culture, and that it makes PC games far more flexible than their publishers intended. Players add new content, rewrite parts of the code, and alter how the game engine responds, so the finished product becomes something they can reshape.

The book builds a semiotic framework to describe how players make meaning from a game. Sihvonen identifies four stages in this process: representation, interpretation, investigation, and experimentation with the game's system and rules. Readers interested in game studies, digital culture, or the relationship between software and its users will find the book speaks directly to their concerns.