Platforms

Whether hardware or software, platforms are “an abstraction” or “simply a standard or specification” that makes it easier to build other things (Bogost & Montfort, 2007, p. 2). While a formal discipline for studying platforms has only emerged recently, the idea of standardized sets of things enabling games has earlier roots. Ron Hale-Evans (2001) referred to a deck of playing cards as a “game system” because it was “a set of components that function together in multiple games.” In a series of articles, Evans studied board games that enabled variation to demonstrate that a “game system is less an individual work than an actual medium” (2001).