In October 2016, I was the key organizer of the Cinema and Media Studies annual academic conference, First Forum, convened at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Our theme and title was Subjected to Play: Locating the Subject in the Promise of Play. The conference consisted of five graduate panels with faculty respondents; an installation of interactive media for social change as well as a roundtable discussion with the artists; a plenary address by Dr. Jeff Watson; a screening of Harun Farocki’s Immersion series; and a keynote address by renowned media scholar Dr. Vivian Sobchack. The theme was designed to investigate how the play paradigm has shaped popular academic conceptions of subjectivity within media studies. As we are increasingly inscribed within the social, political, and economic networks of interactive software and ubiquitous screen technology, this conference asked to what effect has play influenced how subjectivity is understood within a rapidly evolving media ecology.