By Cristo León.
last reviewed April 26, 2025.
Introduction
Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is a theoretical and methodological framework that emerged from Science and Technology Studies (STS), particularly through the work of Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law in the late 20th century. It was originally developed to study how scientific knowledge is produced within concrete environments such as laboratories (Latour, 1987). ANT has since been adapted to diverse disciplines including education, organizational studies, game design, and role-playing game (RPG) research (Bienia, 2018).
Definition and Core Concepts
ANT conceptualizes society not as a structure composed exclusively of humans, but as the dynamic and contingent outcome of networks formed by both human and nonhuman actors. According to ANT, scientific and technical entities, social phenomena, and innovations come into being through collaborative networks that include both human and nonhuman agents (Bienia, 2018). In this framework:
Actor/Actant: Any entity that acts or produces effects, whether human (such as a player or designer) or nonhuman (such as a die or a computer).
Network: An assemblage of relationships among actors, human and nonhuman, that constitute and stabilize reality.Translation: The process by which actors negotiate, enroll, and transform other actors to align their interests.
Distributed Agency: Agency is seen as emerging from the network itself rather than being located solely in humans.Importantly, ANT rejects the anthropocentric bias prevalent in traditional social theory. Whereas anthropocentric game studies often attribute agency exclusively to human beings, ANT posits that agency can be distributed across any actor within a network (Wardrip-Fruin, Mateas, Dow, & Sali, 2009). Thus, a twenty-sided die, a rulebook, or a piece of software might possess agency insofar as it influences actions and outcomes within a role-playing game.
Significance
By treating all entities symmetrically and emphasizing the material and semiotic components of social worlds, ANT provides a powerful lens for analyzing how innovations, knowledge, and social orders are co-constructed. In the context of RPG studies, ANT enables scholars to explore how game mechanics, narrative devices, players, and technological artifacts collectively shape gaming experiences and communities. This approach moves beyond human-centered narratives and highlights the distributed, emergent nature of agency and change.
Conclusion
Actor-Network Theory challenges conventional notions of agency, structure, and materiality by foregrounding the networks of relations that produce social and technical realities. It invites researchers to «follow the actors» — human and nonhuman alike — and trace the processes through which the world is continually assembled and reassembled. As such, ANT remains an indispensable tool for transdisciplinary research into complex systems such as role-playing games, science, technology, and beyond.
References
Bienia, R. (2018). Science and Technology Studies and Role-Playing Games. In S. Deterding & J. Zagal (Eds.), Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia Approach (pp. 312–327). Routledge.
Latour, B. (1987). Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Harvard University Press.
Wardrip-Fruin, N., Mateas, M., Dow, S., & Sali, S. (2009). Agency reconsidered. In Proceedings of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA).