Geek Chic

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between computer gamers and their machines in an effort to characterize cultural attitudes toward the materiality of information technology. Whereas dominant culture desires a world in which information technology performs seamlessly within the fabric of everyday life, case-modding gamers prefer to foreground both their computer machinery and their virtuosity in its manipulation. Instead of desiring the disappearance of machines into the background of a world that those machines produce, case modders revel in, and indeed identify with, the material guts of their computer systems. This machine aesthetic is explored further in the context of the LAN party, where the case modders' machines become as much of a spectacle as the games on the screen.