Queer Thinking with Digital Stones

By situating stones in play, this chapter explores the ecological and affective dimensions of the digital environments of World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004–). Much of the intervention of this chapter entails considering the entanglements between videogames and the environment to recognise how nonhuman matters determine the nature of, and participate in, play. Reprising works at the crossroads of game studies and (new) materialisms (Bienia, Role-Playing Materials, Zauberfeder Verlag, Ph.D, 2016; Germaine, Rosen (ed), Diseases of the Head: Essays on the Horrors of Speculative Philosophy, Punctum Books, Santa Barbara, 2020; Germaine and Wake, Germaine and Wake (eds), Material Game Studies, Bloomsbury, London, 2022), thinking with nonhuman matters decentres the human body as the leading affective site in play. This chapter takes up a queer and materialist position to challenge notions that stones are inert and mundane, finding them instead the substance of narrative, temporality, and sensation. Stones and their inherent sensations are understood as a foundational matter of digital and actual worlds. In recognising the material, artistic, and philosophical links between digital stones and their lithic counterparts, this essay determines what real effects stones generate in play. World of Warcraft is taken as the primary example here, though the affordances of digital stones are irradiated alongside other games, art, literature, and performances that likewise ‘play’ with matter. Through an interdisciplinary lens encompassing game studies, philosophy, and ecological thinking, this chapter highlights the pervasive presence of stones as a matter of reality and investigates the efficacies of stones generated in gameplay.