The dissertation is premised on the assumption that video game structure is geared towards the functionality of challenging interaction by embodied human individuals. The first chapter introduces "core cognition", referring to a stable and common human embodiment of cognitive powers related to perception and cognition. The next chapter analyses intentional goal-related action and embodied awareness of action in depth. This is followed by a discussion of play and related phenomena leading to the preliminary conclusion that play and playfulness may involve goal-related actions in several ways and that play and games should necessarily be understood in connection with such processes as exploration and mastery.

The second part describes computer video game systems as materially and computationally based systems of simulation and representation with multiple levels, the most prominent being that of the game world, or virtual world. Games are, in accordance with previous claims, defined as simulations of game worlds which are recruited for game functionalities of challenges of control in relation to artificial conflict. On the basis of core cognition, intentional agency, and play-related phenomena the case is made that computer game interaction as intentional, embodied activity involves the totality of the computer game system including material control interface, computation, world simulation and representation as well as the structures of artificial conflict and challenges inherent in these levels altogether. Avatar control is dealt with in detail in relation to embodiment through the concept of "body-image-in-action". It is also argued that game simulation and representation is tailored to core cognition. Core cognition is the base of a shared semantics of physical processes, embodied actions and events in a spatial setting, which can be used to connect academic positions that may otherwise tend towards claims of media specificity or narrative structure instead of shared mental structure. The next chapter offers some sketched game analyses as examples of the utility of the analytical framework of core cognition, embodied action abilities and game system interaction.

The dissertation ends with two chapters dedicated to central concepts in the recent literature on computer games analysis, namely simulation and rules. The core cognition and embodied agency framework is applied to these concepts in turn. The chapter on simulation argues that simulation can be understood both as modelling of material systems and as modelling of activity in material contexts and that this distinction is necessary to understand what games may be said to be simulations of. It is also argued that simulations in the first sense need not be interactive and that representation is integral to simulation. The chapter on rules gives a review and detailed discussion of rules as understood outside the realm of computer games. The resulting distinctions are applied to an analysis of chess and football to show the inherent and very substantial differences between these two kinds of games, i.e. formalised board games vs. games involving precise execution of embodied skills for manipulation of material reality. It is further argued that recent proposals in the literature operate with internally inconsistent rule conceptualisation, i.e. strict mathematical formalisms vs. abstract functionalisms of challenge and control. It is also argued that the proposed study of computer games as a subset of games (i.e. ludology) needs to acknowledge differences in game structures across material, linguistic, and computational contexts for human activity.

A brief conclusion lists the primary contributions including key terms.