Resources for Research in Games & Gaming
Game Studies
Game studies is a field of cultural studies that deals with all types of games as cultural phenomena throughout history, the act of playing them, and the players and cultures surrounding them. It is also known as ludology, from the Latin word for game, ludus. Game studies emerged as a distinct field in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with the development and spread of video games and digital media. However, game studies also covers traditional games, such as board games, card games, sports, and gambling. Game studies draws on methods and theories from various disciplines, such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, media studies, design, and engineering.
An Introduction to Game Studies by ISBN: 141293446XPublication Date: 2008-03-03An Introduction to Game Studies is the first introductory textbook for students of game studies. It provides a conceptual overview of the cultural, social and economic significance of computer and video games and traces the history of game culture and the emergence of game studies as a field of research. Key concepts and theories are illustrated with discussion of games taken from different historical phases of game culture. Progressing from the simple, yet engaging, gameplay of Pong and text-based adventure games to the complex virtual worlds of contemporary online games, the book will guide students towards analytical appreciation and critical engagement with gaming and game studies.Students will learn to: Understand and analyze different aspects of phenomena we recognize as 'game' and 'play'Identify the key developments in digital game design through discussion of action in games of the 1970s, fiction and adventure in games of the 1980s, three-dimensionality in games of the 1990s, and social aspects of gameplay in contemporary online gamesUnderstand games as dynamic systems of meaning-makingInterpret the context of games as 'culture' and subcultureAnalyze the relationship between technology and interactivity and between 'game' and 'reality'Situate games within the context of digital culture and the information societyWith further reading suggestions, images, exercises, online resources and a whole chapter devoted to preparing students to do their own game studies project, an An Introduction to Game Studies is the complete toolkit for all students pursuing the study of games.The companion website contains slides and assignments that are suitable for self-study as well as for classroom use. Students will also benefits from online resources at www.gamestudiesbook.net, which will be regularly blogged and updated by the author.Frans Mäyrä is the Professor of Hypermedia, Digital Culture and Game Studies in the University of Tampere, Finland.
The Play Versus Story Divide in Game Studies by ISBN: 9780786497232Publication Date: 2015-11-30Since the emergence of digital game studies, a number of debates have engaged scholars. The debate between ludic (play) and narrative (story) paradigms remains the one that famously ""never happened."" This collection of new essays critically frames that debate and urges game scholars to consider it central to the field. The contributors examine various digital games, assessing the applicability of play versus narrative approaches or considering the failure of each. The essays consider the broader history of game studies, while applying notions of play and story to recent games in an attempt to foster serious debate and analysis.
Playing with Virtuality: theories and methods of computer game studies by ISBN: 9783631640609Publication Date: 2013-06-05Computer games have fascinated millions of users for more than 30 years. Today, they constitute the strongest sector in the media-entertainment industry and are part of the experience of digital daily life. Computer Game Studies require a deep understanding of functional and communicational mechanisms of games that support the player's immersion in virtual worlds. Unfortunately, the discussion and the academic research about usage and effects of computer games mostly takes place isolated within different scientific contexts with various theoretical and methodological approaches. Therefore, this anthology combines the perspectives of Media Studies, Game Studies, and Communication Studies, and presents their findings in an interdisciplinary approach.
Gaming the System: deconstructing video games, games studies, and virtual worlds by ISBN: 9780253035721Publication Date: 2018-05-09Gaming the System takes philosophical traditions out of the ivory tower and into the virtual worlds of video games. In this book, author David J. Gunkel explores how philosophical traditions--put forth by noted thinkers such as Plato, Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, and Žižek--can help us explore and conceptualize recent developments in video games, game studies, and virtual worlds. Furthermore, Gunkel interprets computer games as doing philosophy, arguing that the game world is a medium that provides opportunities to model and explore fundamental questions about the nature of reality, personal identity, social organization, and moral conduct. By using games to investigate and innovate in the area of philosophical thinking, Gunkel shows how areas such as game governance and manufacturers' terms of service agreements actually grapple with the social contract and produce new postmodern forms of social organization that challenge existing modernist notions of politics and the nation state. In this critically engaging study, Gunkel considers virtual worlds and video games as more than just "fun and games," presenting them as sites for new and original thinking about some of the deepest questions concerning the human experience.
Game After: a cultural study of video game afterlife by ISBN: 9780262019989Publication Date: 2014-01-24A cultural study of video game afterlife, whether as emulation or artifact, in an archival box or at the bottom of a landfill. We purchase video games to play them, not to save them. What happens to video games when they are out of date, broken, nonfunctional, or obsolete? Should a game be considered an "ex-game" if it exists only as emulation, as an artifact in museum displays, in an archival box, or at the bottom of a landfill? In Game After, Raiford Guins focuses on video games not as hermetically sealed within time capsules of the past but on their material remains: how and where video games persist in the present. Guins meticulously investigates the complex life cycles of video games, to show how their meanings, uses, and values shift in an afterlife of disposal, ruins and remains, museums, archives, and private collections. Guins looks closely at video games as museum objects, discussing the recontextualization of the Pong and Brown Box prototypes and engaging with curatorial and archival practices across a range of cultural institutions; aging coin-op arcade cabinets; the documentation role of game cartridge artwork and packaging; the journey of a game from flawed product to trash to memorialized relic, as seen in the history of Atari's infamous E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial; and conservation, restoration, and re-creation stories told by experts including Van Burnham, Gene Lewin, and Peter Takacs. The afterlife of video games--whether behind glass in display cases or recreated as an iPad app--offers a new way to explore the diverse topography of game history.
Experimental Games: critique, play, and design in the age of gamification by ISBN: 9780226629834Publication Date: 2020-12-15In our unprecedentedly networked world, games have come to occupy an important space in many of our everyday lives. Digital games alone engage an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide as of 2020, and other forms of gaming, such as board games, role playing, escape rooms, and puzzles, command an ever-expanding audience. At the same time, "gamification"--the application of game mechanics to traditionally nongame spheres, such as personal health and fitness, shopping, habit tracking, and more--has imposed unprecedented levels of competition, repetition, and quantification on daily life. Drawing from his own experience as a game designer, Patrick Jagoda argues that games need not be synonymous with gamification. He studies experimental games that intervene in the neoliberal project from the inside out, examining a broad variety of mainstream and independent games, including StarCraft, Candy Crush Saga, Stardew Valley, Dys4ia, Braid, and Undertale. Beyond a diagnosis of gamification, Jagoda imagines ways that games can be experimental--not only in the sense of problem solving, but also the more nuanced notion of problem making that embraces the complexities of our digital present. The result is a game-changing book on the sociopolitical potential of this form of mass entertainment.
Game History
Game history is a subfield of game studies that focuses on the origins, development, and impact of games throughout different periods and cultures. Game history covers various types of games, such as board games, card games, sports, video games, and more. This discipline also examines how games reflect and influence social, political, economic, and technological changes in society. Game history is an interdisciplinary field that draws on methods and sources from history, archaeology, anthropology, art history, media studies, and computer science.
Before the Crash: early video game history by ISBN: 9780814334508Publication Date: 2012-05-30Contributors examine the early days of video game history before the industry crash that ended the medium's golden age.
Replayed: Essential Writings on Software Preservation and Game Histories by ISBN: 9781421445946Publication Date: 2023-06-06A leading voice in technology studies shares a collection of essential essays on the preservation of software and history of games. Since the early 2000s, Henry Lowood has led or had a key role in numerous initiatives devoted to the preservation and documentation of virtual worlds, digital games, and interactive simulations, establishing himself as a major scholar in the field of game studies. His voluminous writings have tackled subject matter spanning the history of game design and development, military simulation, table-top games, machinima, e-sports, wargaming, and historical software archives and collection development. Replayed consolidates Lowood's far-flung and significant publications on these subjects into a single volume.
Debugging Game History: a critical lexicon by ISBN: 9780262034197Publication Date: 2016-06-03Essays discuss the terminology, etymology, and history of key terms, offering a foundation for critical historical studies of games.Even as the field of game studies has flourished, critical historical studies of games have lagged behind other areas of research. Histories have generally been fact-by-fact chronicles; fundamental terms of game design and development, technology, and play have rarely been examined in the context of their historical, etymological, and conceptual underpinnings. This volume attempts to "debug" the flawed historiography of video games. It offers original essays on key concepts in game studies, arranged as in a lexicon-from "Amusement Arcade" to "Embodiment" and "Game Art" to "Simulation" and "World Building." Written by scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines, including game development, curatorship, media archaeology, cultural studies, and technology studies, the essays offer a series of distinctive critical "takes" on historical topics. The majority of essays look at game history from the outside in; some take deep dives into the histories of play and simulation to provide context for the development of electronic and digital games; others take on such technological components of games as code and audio. Not all essays are history or historical etymology-there is an analysis of game design, and a discussion of intellectual property-but they nonetheless raise questions for historians to consider. Taken together, the essays offer a foundation for the emerging study of game history.
Gaming Empire in Children's British Board Games, 1836-1860 by ISBN: 9780367209353Publication Date: 2019-04-03Over a century before Monopoly invited child players to bankrupt one another with merry ruthlessness, a lively and profitable board game industry thrived in Britain from the 1750s onward, thanks to publishers like John Wallis, John Betts, and William Spooner. As part of the new wave of materials catering to the developing mass market of child consumers, the games steadily acquainted future upper- and middle-class empire builders (even the royal family themselves) with the strategies of imperial rule: cultivating, trading, engaging in conflict, displaying, and competing. In their parlors, these players learned the techniques of successful colonial management by playing games such as Spooner's A Voyage of Discovery, or Betts' A Tour of the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions. These games shaped ideologies about nation, race, and imperial duty, challenging the portrait of Britons as "absent-minded imperialists." Considered on a continuum with children's geography primers and adventure tales, these games offer a new way to historicize the Victorians, Britain, and Empire itself. The archival research conducted here illustrates the changing disciplinary landscape of children's literature/culture studies, as well as nineteenth-century imperial studies, by situating the games at the intersection of material and literary culture.
Oxford History of Board Games by ISBN: 0192129988Publication Date: 1999-06-03For thousands of years, people have been planning attacks, captures, chases, and conquests - on a variety of different boards designed for an astonishing diversity of games. Today the compelling mix of strategy, skill, and chance is as strong as ever; new board games are invented almost daily,while the perennial favourites continue to attract new devotees and reveal new possibilities.The Oxford History of Board Games investigates the principles of board games throughout the ages and across the world, exploring the fascinating similarities and differences that give each its unique appeal, and drawing out the significance of game-playing as a central part of human experience - asvital to a culture as its music, dance, and tales. Beautifully illustrated and with diagrams to show the finer points of the games, this is a fascinating and accessible guide to a richly rewarding subject.In his trade-mark accessible, entertaining style, David Parlett looks at the different families of games: games based on configuration or connection, races or chases, wars or hunts, capture or blockade. He focuses mainly on traditional games, the folk entertainments that have grown up organicallythrough the centuries, and which exhibit endless local variations, although he discusses also the commercial products that have tried, with varying degrees of success, to match their astonishing popularity.This is not primarily a how-to book, although the rules and strategies of certain games are discussed in detail, neither does it offer sure-fire tips for success, although with a fuller understanding of a game the reader will undoubtedly become a better-informed, if not better, player. Rather, itis an affectionate and authoritative survey of one of the most familiar parts of our cultural history, which has until now been inexplicably neglected.
Ancient Egyptians at Play: board games across borders by ISBN: 9781474221184Publication Date: 2016-02-25The rich history of Egypt has provided famous examples of board games played in antiquity. Each of these games provides evidence of contact between Egypt and its neighbours. From pre-dynastic rule to Arab and Ottoman invasions, Egypt's past is visible on game boards. This volume starts by introducing the reader to board games as well as instruments of chance and goes on to trace the history and distribution of ancient Egyptian games, looking particularly at how they show contact with other cultures and civilizations. Game practices, which were also part of Egyptian rituals and divination, travelled throughout the eastern Mediterranean. This book explores the role of Egypt in accepting and disseminating games during its long history. Over the last few years, the extent and the modes of contact have become better understood through museum and archival research projects as well as surveys of archaeological sites in Egypt and its surrounding regions. The results allow new insight into ancient Egypt's international relations and the role of board games research in understanding its extent.Written by three authors known internationally for their expertise on this topic, this will be the first volume on Ancient Egyptian games of its kind and a much-needed contribution to the field of both Egyptology and board games studies.
The Oxford Guide to Card Games by ISBN: 0192141651Publication Date: 1990-11-08Imported from the Mamluks of Egypt, card games first hit Europe around 1371 and within ten years had spread like wildfire from Spain and Italy to France and Germany. By 1420, German and Swiss cardmakers were producing packs by the thousands (first by stencil, later by metal engraving) marked with a bewildering array of suits, including hounds, bears, parrots, roses, helmets, banners, and bells. Games proliferated as well, and by 1534, Rabelais could name 35 different card games in Chapter 22 of Gargantua. Today, of course, there are thousands of games, from the universally popular Poker and Contract Bridge, to national manias such as Swiss Jass, German Skat, and French Belote. Now, in The Oxford Guide to Card Games, internationally renowned game expert David Parlett provides a fascinating historical guide to cards in Europe and America. Unlike other books, this is not primarily a book of rules or hints on how to play better, but a unique survey of where the games originated, how they have developed over time, and what their rituals and etiquette tell us about the people who play them. Parlett discusses such ancient games as Karnoffel (German for "hernia"), in which the King could be captured by cards named Pope, Kaiser, Devil, and Karnoffel (this subversive ranking was decried by civic authorities and Karnoffel was even banned in Augsburg in 1446, but it was very popular among soldiers and workers). We learn that the term "Bower" in Euchre comes from the German word Bauer (Boer in Dutch), which means "farmer" or "Jack," and that Poker comes from the German word Pocher, which means "bash" or "pulverize" or "brag" (Poker is, as Parlett points out, ultimately a bragging game, in which players boast--or bet--that their hand is best). And we follow the rise and fall of such games as Piquet, which was once far and away the best loved game in Europe, and Canasta, which became a world-wide phenomenon in the 1950s, for a while rivaling Contract Bridge in popularity. The first book to explore the history of cards in the West, this attractively illustrated volume is both informative and entertaining. Whether your favorite game is Poker or Pinocle, Cribbage or Gin, Contract Bridge or Crazy Eights, you will find much here to fascinate and amuse.
Games and Game Playing in European Art and Literature, 16th-17th Centuries by ISBN: 9789463728119Publication Date: 2019-03-18This collection of essays examines the vogue for games and game playing as expressed in art and literature in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Focusing on games as a leitmotif of creative expression, these scholarly inquiries are framed as a response to two main questions: how were games used to convey special meanings in art and literature, and how did games speak to greater issues in European society? In chapters dealing with chess, playing cards, board games, dice, gambling, and outdoor and sportive games, essayists show how games were used by artists, writers, game makers and collectors, in the service of love and war, didactic and moralistic instruction, commercial enterprise, politics and diplomacy, and assertions of civic and personal identity. Offering innovative iconographical and literary interpretations, their analyses reveal how games"played, written about, illustrated and collected"functioned as metaphors for a host of broader cultural issues related to gender relations and feminine power, class distinctions and status, ethical and sexual comportment, philosophical and religious ideas, and conditions of the mind.
Game Design
Game design is a field of study that focuses on the creation of games, both digital and non-digital. Game design involves various aspects of game production, such as conceptualizing, prototyping, testing, balancing, and polishing games, but also encompasses the artistic, narrative, and technical elements of games, such as graphics, sound, story, characters, gameplay, rules, interfaces, and platforms. Game design is an interdisciplinary field that draws from computer science, creative writing, graphic design, media studies, and other disciplines.
Advanced Game Design by ISBN: 9780134667607Publication Date: 2017-11-14In Advanced Game Design, pioneering game designer and instructor Michael Sellers situates game design practices in a strong theoretical framework of systems thinking, enabling designers to think more deeply and clearly about their work, so they can produce better, more engaging games for any device or platform. Sellers offers a deep unifying framework in which practical game design best practices and proven systems thinking theory reinforce each other, helping game designers understand what they are trying to accomplish and the best ways to achieve it. Drawing on 20+ years of experience designing games, launching game studios, and teaching game design, Sellers explains: What games are, and how systems thinking can help you think about them more clearly How to systematically promote engagement, interactivity, and fun What you can learn from MDA and other game design frameworks How to create gameplay and core loops How to design the entire player experience, and how to build game mechanics that work together to create that experience How to capture your game's "big idea" and Unique Selling Proposition How to establish high-level and background design and translate it into detailed design How to build, playtest, and iterate early prototypes How to build your game design career in a field that keeps changing at breakneck speed
Game Design by ISBN: 9781624312748Publication Date: 2013-08-01From simple board games to the latest in video game technology makers are hard at work designing fun new ways to play. Readers will discover new processes, integrate visual information with text, and and learn technical word meanings as they find out how games are designed and what makes a good game. They will also learn how to plan and create games of their own.
Atari Design: impressions on coin-operated video game machines by ISBN: 9781474284547Publication Date: 2020-12-02Drawing from deep archival research and extensive interviews, Atari Design is a rich, historical study of how Atari's industrial and graphic designers contributed to the development of the video game machine. Innovative game design played a key role in the growth of Atari - from Pong to Asteroids and beyond - but fun, challenging and exciting game play was not unique to the famous Silicon Valley company. What set it apart from its competitors was innovation in the coin-op machine's cabinet. Atari did not just make games, it designed products for environments. With "tasteful packaging", Atari exceeded traditional locations like bars, amusement parks and arcades, developing the look and feel of their game cabinets for new locations such as fast food restaurants, department stores, country clubs, university unions, and airports, making game-play a ubiquitous social and cultural experience. By actively shaping the interaction between user and machine, overcoming styling limitations and generating a distinct corporate identity, Atari designed products that impacted the everyday visual and material culture of the late 20th century. Design was never an afterthought at Atari.
Databases
- Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text
Full-text and bibliographic coverage from scholarly and popular sources, spanning the entire spectrum of film and television studies.
- MEF Media Studies & Communication Collection
Streaming full-length documentaries from Media Education Foundation. Films cover critical thinking on the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media, with a special focus on representations of gender and race.
A transdisciplinary sample of scholarly articles relevant to the study of games and gaming. For more resources, make use of our recommended journals (in the previous tab of this section) or any of the media studies databases listed on our Media Studies Research Guide.
Game Studies
- Ruberg, Bo. “Trans Game Studies.” JCMS: Journal of Cinema & Media Studies, vol. 61, no. 2, Winter 2022, pp. 1–7.
- Gekker, Alex. “Against Game Studies.” Media and Communication, vol. 9, no. 1, Jan. 2021.
- Asimos, Vivian. “Playing the Myth: Video Games as Contemporary Mythology.” Implicit Religion, vol. 21, no. 1, 2018, pp. 93–111.
- Court, Justin. “Transnational Politics in Video Games: The Case of German Military Intervention in ‘Spec Ops: The Line.’” German Politics & Society, vol. 39, no. 4, Winter 2021, pp. 112–29.
- Schlote, Elke, and Andrin Major. “Playing with Mental Issues - Entertaining Video Games as a Means for Mental Health Education?” Digital Culture & Education, vol. 13, no. 2, July 2021, pp. 94–110.
- Smirni, Daniela, et al. “The Playing Brain. The Impact of Video Games on Cognition and Behavior in Pediatric Age at the Time of Lockdown: A Systematic Review.” Pediatric Reports, vol. 13, no. 3, Sept. 2021, pp. 401–15.
- Rautalahti, Heidi. “Non-Religious Players Asking Big Questions: Video Game Worlds Affording Affinities of Meaningful Encounters.” Journal of Religion & Popular Culture, vol. 33, no. 2, Summer 2021, pp. 69–88.
- Zheng, Xianliang, et al. “Online Violent Video Games and Online Aggressive Behavior among Chinese College Students: The Role of Anger Rumination and Self-Control.” Aggressive Behavior, vol. 47, no. 5, Sept. 2021, pp. 514–20.
- Davis, Jessica Hoffmann. “Unsung Heroes: Reconceptualizing a Video Game as a Work of Art.” Visual Inquiry: Learning & Teaching Art, vol. 10, no. 1, Mar. 2021, pp. 141–47.
- Denning, Andrew. “Deep Play? Video Games and the Historical Imaginary.” American Historical Review, vol. 126, no. 1, Mar. 2021, pp. 180–98.
Game History
- Mkondiwa, Maxwell. “Mancala Board Games and Origins of Entrepreneurship in Africa.” PLoS ONE, vol. 15, no. 10, Oct. 2020, pp. 1–23.
- Hoy, Benjamin. “Cardboard Indians: Playing History in the American West.” Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 3, Sept. 2018, pp. 299–324.
- Carroll, Siobhan. “‘Play You Must:’ Villette and the Nineteenth-Century Board Game.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 39, no. 1, Feb. 2017, pp. 33–47.
- Grossman, Haim. “War as Child’s Play: Patriotic Games in the British Mandate and Israel.” Israel Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, Spring 2004, pp. 1–30.
- Adams, David Wallace, and Victor Edmonds. “Making Your Move: The Educational Significance of the American Board Game, 1832 to 1904.” History of Education Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 4, Dec. 1977, pp. 359–83.
- Guins, Raiford. “New…Now?: Or Why a Design History of Coin-Op Video Game Machines.” American Journal of Play, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 20–51.
- Spring, Dawn. “Gaming History: Computer and Video Games as Historical Scholarship.” Rethinking History, vol. 19, no. 2, June 2015, pp. 207–21.
- Therrien, C. (. 1. )., et al. “Toward a Visualization of Video Game Cultural History: Grasping the French Touch.” Games and Culture, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 92–115.
- Ramirez, Reyes. “An Incomplete, Personal History of Isolation Through Video Games.” Indiana Review, vol. 42, no. 1, Summer 2020, pp. 41–52.
- Kocurek, Carly. “Ronnie, Millie, Lila--Women’s History for Games: A Manifesto and a Way Forward.” American Journal of Play, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 52–70.
Game Design
- Lesmes, Clemencia Zapata, et al. “Design and Production of Educational Video Games for the Inclusion of Deaf Children.” Procedia Computer Science, vol. 198, Feb. 2022, pp. 626–31.
- Gee, James Paul, and Amy Price. “Game-Design Teaching and Learning.” Strategies (08924562), vol. 34, no. 3, May 2021, pp. 35–38.
- Mansilla, Juan C., et al. “Transmedial Worlds with Social Impact: Exploring Intergenerational Learning in Collaborative Video Game Design.” Journal of Childhood Studies, vol. 44, no. 5, Dec. 2019, pp. 103–10.
- Chang, Alenda Y. “Rambunctious Games: A Manifesto for Environmental Game Design.” Art Journal, vol. 79, no. 2, Summer 2020, pp. 68–75.
- Edward Shin, and Jang Hyun Kim. “The Metaverse and Video Games: Merging Media to Improve Soft Skills Training.” Journal of Korean Society for Internet Information, vol. 23, no. 1, Feb. 2022, pp. 69–76.
- LaPensée, Elizabeth. “When Rivers Were Trails: Cultural Expression in an Indigenous Video Game.” International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 27, no. 3, Mar. 2021, pp. 281–95.
- Hewett, Katherine J. E., et al. “The Acquisition of 21 St -Century Skills Through Video Games: Minecraft Design Process Models and Their Web of Class Roles.” Simulation & Gaming, vol. 51, no. 3, June 2020, pp. 336–64.
- Roper, Tessa, et al. “Collaborative Virtual Environment to Facilitate Game Design Evaluation with Children with ASC.” International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 35, no. 8, Aug. 2019, pp. 692–705.
- DeAnda, Michael Anthony, and Carly A. Kocurek. “Game Design as Technical Communication: Articulating Game Design Through Textbooks.” Technical Communication Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 3, July 2016, pp. 202–10.
- Akcaoglu, Mete, and Lucy Santos Green. “Teaching Systems Thinking through Game Design.” Educational Technology Research & Development, vol. 67, no. 1, Feb. 2019, pp. 1–19.