My investigation focuses on the wargaming miniature model as a media technology, defined both as experience technology and as technology for media production. For this purpose, I will briefly introduce a multidisciplinary view of technology currently under development in the MIT (Multimodal and Intermedial Technologies) project at the University of Oulu. This perception of technology extends beyond the device – in this case, a set of miniature models – and takes full account of the human technologies we employ in our activities and practices of all kinds. In this presentation, I deploy the described approach to chart the workings of media technologies within the rather understudied subject of tabletop gaming miniatures. My goal is a pragmatic one rather than theoretical, as I pursue a practical analysis of the experience facilitating strategies of a media product for the Warhammer 40 000 story universe, a Kill Team hobby project entitled Sgt. Kronenberg’s Merry Pranksters.
Keywords: experience technology, ergodic media, world building, multimodality, intermediality
Author bio
Juha-Pekka Alarauhio is a lecturer in English Language at the University of Oulu. He has previously published on 19th century epic poetry and currently developing research approaches to experience technologies, such as literature, film, games and narratives in any medium.
