norsk medietidsskrift | 2011 | årg. 18 | nr. 1 | [ 89 ] | bokanmeldelser | epiteter som «media», «digital», «economic» osv. Hvis vi holder oss til den vide for- ståelse av begrepet, hvis det å være «literate» er ensbetydende med å være dannet i betydningen å fungere som borger i et samfunn og delta i formingen og omformin- gen av det (med rette sammenlikner flere av forfatterne begrepet med Aristoteles’ «fronesis»), så er «literacy» best tjent med å stå alene. I læreplanene vil «literacy» kunne stå for skolens overordnede kompetansemålsetting, mens mediepedago- gikk («media education») kan være betegnelsen på det faget som i dag synes best egnet til å fremme dette målet. Svein Østerud, professor emeritus Intermedia, Universitetet i Oslo Epost: svein.osterud@intermedia.uio.no The diversity of computer games research Torill Elvira Mortensen Perceiving Play: The Art and Study of Computer Games New York: Peter Lang, 2009 According to its author, Perceiving Play: The Art and Study of Computer Games «gives a quick and not quite exhaustive overview of this rapidly growing field [of computer games research]» (p. 1). Much of the discussion in the book is indeed simply introductions to the main perspectives of the study of games supported by examples. However, some parts of the book offer original research that could be used in more robust research. Chapter 4, for example, presents a strong argument for game aesthetics, while Chapter 5 is an exemplary analysis of the gendered meaning of role-playing games. In general, the latter part of the book is more com- prehensive than the first. Mortensen notes that at the time the book was published games research had reached a critical point in terms of the accumulation of basic research. Her work is one of several textbooks on game studies (e.g. Carr, Buckingham, Burn and Schott 2006; Dovey and Kennedy 2006; King and Krzywinska 2006; Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith and Tosca 2008; Mäyrä 2008). Of these works, Perceiving Play is particularly informative in its many-sided exploration into why games are unique and require various complementary research methods. The book explores the multidiscipli- nary nature of the field from the point of view of media studies and the humani- ties, thus disregarding the views of engineering scientists and design researchers. The first of six chapters, «The Nature of the Game», setting up a working defini- tion for a computer game, is about the particularity of computer games and the characteristics and elements that they constitute. Here, seminal definitions of play by Johan Huizinga (1950) and Roger Caillois (1961) are taken as primary sources, while the more recent body of work on the topic is largely neglected. The chapter