Librarian for Media Studies, Gender Studies, & Philosophy
nicholae cline
they/them
Guide Contributors
We wish to acknowledge and thank the following people for their contributions to this guide:
- Jo Otremba, Arts & Humanities Library Assistant (Arts & Humanities)
- Sarah Bull, Part-Time Student Assistant (Media Services)
- Kathryn Edom, Part-Time Student Assistant (Media Services)
- Kate Naughton, Part-Time Student Assistant (Media Services)
- Joshua Peters, Part-Time Student Assistant (Media Services)
- Heather Sloan, Media & Map Services Assistant (Media Services)
- Monique Threatt, Department Head (Media Services)
Welcome & Introduction
Welcome to the Games & Gaming at Indiana University Libraries guide
This resource is meant to help introduce and orient users to all of the collections relevant to games and gaming at IU Libraries, support gaming-related programs at Indiana University, and facilitate research and teaching on games, gaming, game studies, and game design more broadly. This includes an overview of research resources relevant to game studies, game history, and game design; a summary of our electronic game, game console, and tabletop game collections; information about using our collections and the Media Services unit of the Libraries; and special features relevant to gaming, such as an introduction to gaming "generations," identity and representation in games, and a playlist of video game music from across time.
The subject specialists and collection managers for the gaming collections are nicholae cline & Monique Threatt. If you would like to contact them, please use the profile box located on the left-hand side of this page. If you would like to request a purchase for our collections, you can use this form. We also welcome potential donations of games and gaming-related items for our collections; please reach out to us if you would like to discuss a potential donation.
To navigate through this guide, you can use the links we've provided in this introduction or the navigation menu on the left-hand side of the guide.
The History of Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGS, often called pen-and-paper games) are games where players take on the part of one or more characters each: making decisions for the character, describing their actions and words, and often using dice to determine the outcome. A typical game is overseen by a game master who controls the non-player characters, sets up puzzles, and describes other challenges in the game world. Popular examples of the genre include Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Call of Cthulhu, but there are hundreds of others in active use around the world (see the tab "A Genre Flourishes").
The modern style of play traces its origins to the 1970s, but the history of TTRPGs encapsulates the war games of military education and planning, other board games, improvised theater, and the conventions of genre fiction. As a persistent and popular cultural phenomenon, it's also become the subject of much scholarship.
Introductions, General Theory
Getting started in role-playing games studies.
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Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground
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ISBN: 9780262048224Publication Date: 2023-10-10A richly illustrated encyclopedia of the history of role-playing games.The author explores how the hobby blossomed out of an unlikely pop culture phenomenon and became a dominant gaming form by the 2010s. This encyclopedia covers more than three hundred different RPGs that have been published since 1974. In a decade-by-decade breakdown, Horvath chronicles how RPGs have evolved in the time between their inception and the present day, offering a deep and gratifying glimpse into a hobby that has changed the way we think about games and play. -
The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies
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ISBN: 9781040029763Publication Date: 2024-06-27This handbook collects the state of research on role-playing games across disciplines, cultures, and media in a single volume. It traces the history of RPGs, from wargaming precursors to tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons to massively multiplayer online RPG franchises, like World of Warcraft. Individual chapters survey the perspectives of key disciplines, like performance studies, sociology, psychology, education, economics, game design, literary studies, and more. Each chapter includes definitions of key terms and recommended readings to help fans, students, and scholars new to RPG studies find their way into this new interdisciplinary field. -
The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games
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ISBN: 9780786444519Publication Date: 2010-07-15This work explores tabletop role playing games as a genre separate from computer role playing games. The relationship of TRPGs to other games is examined as well as the narrative and linguistic structures of the gaming session, and the ways that players and gamemasters work together to construct narratives. The text also explores wider cultural influences that surround tabletop gamers. -
The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems and Explore Identity
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ISBN: 9780786455553Publication Date: 2010-04-06This study takes an analytical approach to the world of role-playing games, providing a theoretical framework for understanding their psychological and sociological functions. Sometimes dismissed as escapist and potentially dangerous, role-playing actually encourages creativity, self-awareness, group cohesion and “out-of-the-box” thinking. The book also offers a detailed participant-observer ethnography on role-playing games, featuring insightful interviews with 19 participants of table-top, live action and virtual games. -
Storytelling in the Modern Board Game: Narrative Trends from the Late 1960s to Today
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ISBN: 9781476669519Publication Date: 2018-09-13Over the years, board games have evolved to include relatable characters, vivid settings and compelling, intricate plotlines. In turn, players have become more emotionally involved—taking on, in essence, the role of coauthors in an interactive narrative. Through the lens of game studies and narratology—traditional storytelling concepts applied to the gaming world—this book explores the synergy of board games, designers and players in story-oriented designs. -
Playing at the World, Volume 2: Three Pillars of Role-Playing Games
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ISBN: 9780262383103Publication Date: 2025A deep dive into the history of the setting, system, and characters of the earliest tabletop RPG groups and their influence on defining the genre. Peterson covers the medieval fantasy setting—the first pillar—and addresses why the first role-playing game evolved around fantasy and medieval settings as opposed to some other historical setting. In the second pillar, the author explores how the rules of wargames, from their roots in chess variants from eighteenth-century Germany, developed into those of role-playing games. Finally, the third pillar focuses on character, perhaps the most elusive of the three pillars, and investigates how precedents governed the introduction of characters to games more so than the original rule books.
Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the co-creators of D&D, met at the second Gen Con in 1969 when it was still located in Geneva, Wisconsin. The pair would bond not only over their love of fantasy fiction but over tactical miniature wargaming, which was the focus of the convention at the time. It was the combination of Gygax’s fantasy wargaming rules (Chainmail) and Arneson’s Blackmoor setting which sparked the metamorphosis of wargaming into roleplaying games.
War games have a much deeper history, being used not only as a pastime but for the training of military officers, and various rules have been written for every style of play, from deep tactical simulation to children’s entertainment.
Historical Games
Historical rulebooks that IU accounts may access or check out.
Strategos: A Series of American Games of War by Charles Adiel Lewis Totten, 1851-1908. [Hathi Trust.]
Publication Date: 1880
First published in 1880 for the US Army, Strategos was a training tool, beginning with introductory scenarios and working toward more complex ones. The game could be played on a board or on maps with miniatures and terrain elements.
Little Wars by H. G. WellsPublication Date: 1913.
Little Wars is a set of rules for miniature wargaming, written by English novelist H. G. Wells. The full title is reflective of its era, Little Wars: A Game for Boys from Twelve Years of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and for That More Intelligent Sort of Girl Who Likes Boys' Games and Books. Along with fairly simple rules for infantry and cavalry, the artillery rules involved using a toy gun to knock down enemy soldiers.
Histories of War Gaming
Recent scholarship of the history of the genre and the shift to modern RPGs.
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War Games: A History of War on Paper
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ISBN: 9780262016971Publication Date: 2012-03-16For centuries, both mathematical and military thinkers have used game-like scenarios to test their visions of mastering a complex world through symbolic operations. Mathematics and military strategy converged in World War II when mathematicians designed fields of operation. This book examines the theory and practice of war games through history, from the medieval game boards, captured on parchment, to the paper map exercises of the Third Reich. The author considers how and why mathematical and military thinkers created simulations of one of the most unpredictable human activities on earth -
Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes
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ISBN: 9781107036956Publication Date: 2013-04-04Starting with the combat of David versus Goliath, passing through the gladiatorial games, tournaments, trials by battle, duels, and board games such as chess, all the way to the latest simulations and computer games, this book traces the rich history of the subject. As it does so, it provides new and occasionally surprising insights into human nature. -
The Elusive Shift
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ISBN: 9780262544900Publication Date: 2022-03-29Dungeons & Dragons is now popularly considered to be the first role-playing game, but the original edition was marketed as a wargame. The Elusive Shift describes how players and scholars in the community began to apply the term “role-playing” to similar games—and by doing so, established a new genre. Peterson examines key essays by D&D early adopters, rescuing from obscurity many first published in now-defunct fanzines. He traces the evolution of how role-playing was theorized, as writers attempted to frame problems, define terms, and engage with prior literature. He describes the twin cultures of wargames and science fiction fandom that influence the first role-players.
Videos
- Jon Peterson on The Elusive Shift / Wandering DMs [YouTube]. An interview with the author of the book described above. Peterson discusses his core findings and his research process. The video includes a segment on the role of libraries and archives with mention of some of the persistent gaps in academic collections.
- The man who invented roleplaying games / Questing Beast [YouTube]. The story of David Wesley, creator of the experimental simulation game Braunstein, and how one unusual overflow session inadvertently inspired Dave Arneson and led to the creation of fantasy roleplaying games.
In 2024 the creators and players of Dungeons & Dragons celebrated 50 years since the original edition was released. Designers Gary Gygax and Dave Aarneson could never have known how their creation would inspire countless hours of fun and creativity and create an entirely new publishing market and game genre. Business difficulties were apparent from the start and would continue to plague the game’s owners across multiple editions and three parent companies.
Though it has many competitors today, the game has remained popular in RPG communities since its first edition. Scholars have made use of this continuity to explore the changing demographics of RPG players, the relationships players have with their characters, how tables adapt rules, how moder fantasy interprets the past, and many other questions of interest in game studies, sociology, psychology, and history.
Recent Histories
Contemporary histories of D&D from IU's collections.
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Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons
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ISBN: 9780262547604Publication Date: 2024-05-14This collection celebrates and reflects on important parts of the game's past, present, and future. Each chapter in Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons draws on fascinating research and insight from expert scholars in the field, including Gary Alan Fine, whose 1983 book Shared Fantasy remains a canonical text in game studies. The chapters cover a diverse range of topics from D&D's adoption in local contexts and classrooms and by queer communities to speculative interpretations of what D&D might look like in one hundred years. -
Playing at the World, 2E, Volume 1
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ISBN: 9780262548779Publication Date: 2024-07-30The first volume of two, this book details the invention of Dungeons & Dragons. The author distills the story of how the wargaming clubs and fanzines circulating around the upper Midwest in the 1970s culminated in Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's seminal role-playing game, D & D. It augments the research of the original editions with new insights into the crucial period in 1972-3 when D & D began to take shape. Drawing from primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists, Playing at the World explores the origins of wargames and roleplaying through the history of conflict simulations and the eccentric characters who drove the creation of a signature cultural innovation in the late twentieth century. Filled with unparalleled archival research (from obscure fanzines to letters, drafts, and other ephemera), this new edition of Playing at the World is an indispensable guide to the original RPG. -
Game Wizards
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ISBN: 9780262542951Publication Date: 2021-10-12Discover the colorful history of the table-top RPG phenomenon, Dungeons & Dragons, as a D&D expert examines its surprising successes, setbacks, and controversies. When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success-and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. -
Slaying the Dragon
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ISBN: 9781250278043Publication Date: 2022-07-19How TSR, the company that developed the first two editions of D&D, was driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions, and then saved by their bitterest rival. Unearthed from Ben Riggs’s own adventurous campaign of in-depth research, interviews with major designers, artists, and authors, Slaying the Dragon goes behind the scenes of the Lake Geneva headquarters where managers and executives sabotaged their own success by alienating their top talent, accruing a mountain of debt, and agreeing to deals which, by the end, made them into a publishing company unable to publish so much as a postcard. -
The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games
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ISBN: 9780786458950Publication Date: 2010-11-30Tracing the evolution of fantasy gaming from its origins in tabletop war and collectible card games to contemporary web-based live action and massive multi-player games, this book examines the archetypes and concepts within the fantasy gaming genre alongside the roles and functions of the game players themselves. Other topics include: how The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings helped shape fantasy gaming through Tolkien’s obsessive attention to detail and virtual world building; the origins of gamebooks and interactive fiction; and the evolution of online gaming. -
Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy
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ISBN: 9781118397640Publication Date: 2014-08-05Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy probes the rich terrain of philosophically compelling concepts and ideas that underlie the game. A series of accessible essays reveals what the imaginary worlds of D&D can teach us about ethics, morality, metaphysics and more. Illustrates a wide variety of philosophical concepts and ideas that arise in Dungeons & Dragons gameplay and presents them in an accessible and entertaining manner.
In August 1979, a 16-year old Michigan State computer science prodigy named James Dallas Egbert III went missing after writing a suicide note. A private detective hired by his family began a national media campaign against a new game, Dungeons & Dragons, which he alleged had caused the teenager to lose all sense of reality. Egbert, who was struggling with both depression and his sexuality, had in fact traveled to New Orleans and would reappear a month later. The next year, Egbert dropped out of MSU, moved back home to Ohio, and committed suicide. In the coming decade, the story of the tragedy would make regular rounds through churches and police departments as part of a conspiracy which alleged that satanic cults had infiltrated daycares, schools, and mass media to recruit, abuse, or sacrifice thousands of children every year.
The sensationalism around Egbert’s story and the publicity afforded by the conspiracy also caused sales of D&D to rapidly increase from 1979 into the early 1980s and may have helped spark interest in RPGs in general. The panic would link role-playing with occult topics, cults, and drugs in the minds of the public for decades to follow.
[Content warning for the view below: mentions of suicide, child abuse.]
Products of the Panic
Books that were written during the height of the panic or in its immediate wake.
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Mazes and Monsters
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ISBN: 0440055369Publication Date: 1981-09-01Published in 1981, this “ripped from the headlines” novel is about four university friends who are obsessed with a fantasy role-playing game and delve into the darkest parts of their minds.
(Also made into a TV movie starring Tom Hanks!) -
Shared Fantasy
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ISBN: 9780226249445Publication Date: 2002-08-14First published in 1983, this classic study still provides one of the most acute descriptions available of an often misunderstood subculture: that of fantasy role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Alan Fine immerses himself in several different gaming systems, offering insightful details on the nature of the games and the patterns of interaction among players—as well as their reasons for playing. -
Satanic Panic
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ISBN: 0812691911Publication Date: 1993-05-01Written in 1993 by a sociologist as a direct address to the communities who were most likely to fall into conspiratorial thinking around the topic of “Satanism.” An attempt to explain, in clear language, the origins of the panic and the causes of its spread.
Contemporary Reflections
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Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds
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ISBN: 9780520284913Publication Date: 2015-02-12The 1980s saw the peak of a moral panic over fantasy role-playing games. A coalition of moral entrepreneurs that included representatives from the Christian Right, the field of psychology, and law enforcement claimed that these games were not only psychologically dangerous but an occult religion masquerading as a game. Writing from the point of view of a religious scholar, Laycock argues that the claims of the moral entrepreneurs, in which they presented themselves as heroes battling a dark conspiracy, often resembled the very games of imagination they condemned as evil. Interpreted in this way, the panic yields new insights about how humans play and together construct and maintain meaningful worlds. -
American Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970-2000
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ISBN: 9783030836351Publication Date: 2021-10-28This book examines the “satanic panic” of the 1980s as an essential part of the growing relationship between tabloid media and American conservative politics. It argues that widespread fears of Satanism in a range of cultural institutions was indispensable to the development and success of both infotainment, or tabloid content on television, and the rise of the New Right, a conservative political movement that was heavily guided by a growing coalition of influential televangelists.
Other Media
- D&D: Lessons from a Media Panic / Mirror/Mirror Productions [Streaming video]. A short educational video produced by Mirror/Mirror Productions about the origins of the panic and the scholarly response.
- The Devil You Know: Episode 5, "Moral (Panic) Entrepreneurship." [Podcast]. Part of an ongoing series on the panic hosted by Sarah Marshall about the broader social context of the satanic panic, its causes, and its effects on communities. This episode discusses how law enforcement and psychology professionals manipulated the panic for their personal benefit.
- The 3 Waves of the RPG Moral Panic. [Streaming video]. Tabletop YouTuber Seth Skorkowsky discusses the moral panics that have surrounded RPGs, with traces back to fears of brainwashing and cults beginning in the 1950s-60s..
Although Dungeons & Dragons has become a household name and represents the majority of scholarly work on RPGs, the genre that it initiated swiftly became a diverse field that's passed through many peaks and troughs over the decades.
The following games from IU's collections are only a small sampling of the world of RPGs:
See this guide for details on collection use policies on games with boards and other materials.
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Wanderhome
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ISBN: 9781954097032Publication Date: 2021-06-01Wanderhome is a pastoral fantasy role-playing game about traveling animal-folk, the world they inhabit, and the way the seasons change. It is a game filled with grassy fields, mossy shrines, herds of chubby bumblebees, opossums in sundresses, salamanders with suspenders, starry night skies, and the most beautiful sunsets you can imagine. -
Coyote & Crow
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ISBN: 9781736442906Publication Date: 2022-02-23Coyote & Crow is a tabletop role playing game set in an alternate future where colonization of the Americas never occurred. Players take on the roles of characters imbued with the powers of the Adahnehdi and can explore an incredible world of science fiction and fantasy. The game was written and developed by a team of Native Americans. -
Dungeon World
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ISBN: 9780988639409Publication Date: 2012-12-04Dungeon World is a high-action roleplaying game of fantasy adventure. Players explore a land of magic and danger in the roles of adventurers searching for fame, gold, and glory. Dungeon World's rules are easy to learn and were written to drive the action forward. A missed roll is never a dead end as failure introduces new complexities and complications. The game was designed to hacked and remixed with original content table-to-table, including new races, classes, and monsters -
Blue Rose: the AGE RPG of Romantic Fantasy
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ISBN: 9781934547748Publication Date: 2017-05-16A decade ago Blue Rose shook up the RPG scene with its vision of romantic fantasy and inclusive gaming. Now the world of Aldea returns in a new edition using the Adventure Game Engine (AGE), the popular rules that power the Fantasy AGE and Dragon Age RPGs. This beautiful, full-color book contains everything needed to create and tell stories of heroic envoys of the Sovereign's Finest as they protect their homeland of Aldis from threats like the shadowy Kingdom of Kern and the fanatical Theocracy of Jarzon, as well as monsters and artifacts from the cruel reign of the Sorcerer Kings. Aided by the rhydan--their psychic animal allies--the champions of the Kingdom of the Blue Rose safeguard the light of the world against the power of Shadow. Will you answer the Sovereign's call? -
Good Society: A Jane Austen RPG
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ISBN: 9780648150527Publication Date: 2018-10-01Good Society is a tabletop role-playing game based upon the Regency era novels of Jane Austen. It was created by the two-woman Australian indie role-playing game design team. In addition to role-playing romance, the game mechanics take inspiration from the time period with rules for spreading rumors and writing letters. It can be played with or without a gamemaster. -
Numenera Destiny
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ISBN: 9781939979780Publication Date: 2018-07-31Set a billion years in our future, Numenera is a tabletop roleplaying game about exploration and discovery. The people of the Ninth World suffer through a dark age, an era of isolation and struggle in the shadow of the ancient wonders crafted by civilizations millennia gone. The game is a blend of narrative-first style with the "crunchy" mechanics of math-heavy games. -
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Blades in the Dark
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ISBN: 9781613171325Publication Date: 2017Blades in the Dark is a tabletop role-playing game about where the players become a crew of daring scoundrels seeking their fortunes on the haunted streets of an industrial-fantasy city. The game includes unique planning and flashback rules devised specially for heists and occult mysteries. -
Bluebeard's Bride: A Horror Tabletop RPG
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ISBN: 9781988943077Publication Date: 2017Bluebeard's Bride is a gothic horror game where the players take on different aspects of a single character, the titular bride. Based on the "Bluebeard" folktale, the game explores themes of feminism and misogyny as the bride explores the castle and uncovers secrets about her new husband and her own psyche.
The Quiet Year by Avery AlderPublished: 2019, Buried Without Ceremony.
A collaborative, story-focused map-drawing game with a post-apocalyptic setting. The players represent not individuals, but parts of a community that has just barely survived a crushing winter. The game lasts 52 turns, each turn representing one week in the community's year to prepare for the next winter.
Open License Rules
Since 2000 some game publishers have released their core rules for free online. These basic rules include everything needed for play, allowing tables to try out the new rules at low cost. The companies usually continue to charge for other products like adventure modules, expansion books, and accessories like cards and dice.
In 2014 a comedy advice podcast shared a bonus episode of the cast playing D&D with their father; within a few years, that episode had become a regular series with spin-off media and pages of fan art. In 2015 eight voice actors were invited by the Geek and Sundry YouTube channel to begin live-streaming their D&D game. Three campaigns later, they’ve not only inspired record sales of the 5th edition of D&D, their own publishing company has hired the creators of that edition. In the decade since, RPG players have started countless podcasts and video channels to share their worlds, using many different game systems and ranging in theme from experimental storytelling to comedy.
Whether streamed on Twitch or recorded and edited for a podcast, actual play has become an important feature of the RPG landscape. It’s used as a marketing opportunity for new games and a way for players to explore different systems and play-styles. It’s also become a hot topic for scholars with its hours of recorded play available for study and many rich fandoms.
Books at IU
Recent collections from scholars of actual play and live-streaming.
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Watch Us Roll: Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop Role-Playing Games
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ISBN: 9781476677620Publication Date: 2021-08-13Streaming has allowed the playing of games to become a digestible, consumable text for individuals to watch, enjoy, learn from, and analyze. Bridging the gap between the analog and the digital, actual play is changing and challenging our expectations of tabletop role-playing and providing a space for new scholarship. This edited collection examines this phenomenon from a variety of different disciplinary approaches. Authors explore how to define actual play, how fans interact with and affect the narrative and gameplay of actual play, the diversity of gamers (or lack thereof) within actual play media, and how audiences can use actual play media for more than mere entertainment -
Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age: Essays on Transmedia Storytelling, Tabletop RPGs and Fandom
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ISBN: 9781476676869Publication Date: 2021-03-08Millions tune in to watch and listen to RPG players on podcasts and streaming platforms, while virtual tabletops connect online players. This collection explores the boundaries of virtual tabletops and how users engage with a variety of technology to further role-playing. Authors map the growing diversity of the TRPG fandom and detail how players interact with RPG-related podcasts.
Scholarly Articles
- Actual Play as Actual Art : a special issue of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.
Introduction by the editors: Alberto, M.K., & Friedman, E.C. (2025). In Focus Introduction: Actual Play as Actual Art. JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 64(2), 150-155. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cj.2025.a951190. - ‘Reset the counter, guys!’: A thematic analysis of fan discourse about female players on Dungeons & Dragons actual play web series.
Allen, M. L. (2024). ‘Reset the counter, guys!’: A thematic analysis of fan discourse about female players on Dungeons & Dragons actual play web series. The Journal of Fandom Studies, 12(2-3), 159-178. https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs_00097_1 - Inclusivity and diversity in ‘Actual Play’: Studying The Adventure Zone.
Stanton, R., & Johnson, M. R. (2023). Inclusivity and diversity in ‘Actual Play’: Studying The Adventure Zone. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 15(3), 229 - 245.https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw_00080_1 - Mapping an online production network: The field of ‘actual play’ media.
Chalk, A. (2022). Mapping an online production network: The field of ‘actual play’ media. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 29(2), 449-466. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221103987 - Storytelling with Dialogue: A Critical Role Dungeons and Dragons Dataset
Rameshkumar, R., & Bailey, P. (2020). Storytelling with Dialogue: A Critical Role Dungeons and Dragons Dataset. In Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 5121–5134, Online. Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2020.acl-main.459
Other Media
- Roundtable: Teaching Games Through Actual Play (2025). This episode of the podcast Talk of the Table addresses the question of how actual play productions can be used to teach games and gameplay or to interrogate the rules of a game through play.
RPGs are collaborative games of storytelling, so it’s not surprising to learn that a number of authors and filmmakers have an interest in them. These are a few works about or inspired by RPGs.
Dungeons & Dragons. Honor Among Thieves dir. Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley [Film, DVD]. The second attempt at a live-action D&D film, filled with many obvious and hidden references to the game. A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair dir. Jane Schoenbrun [Film, Streaming]. “Set in the world of creepypasta lore and online ‘challenges,’ We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is a slow-burn horror drama that feels, at once, like a combination of elements from several recent movies, and yet a wholly original creation. It follows a young teenage girl, Casey (Anna Cobb), who gets sucked into an online role-playing game, replete with its own winding mythology, in the pursuit of some unspoken transformation. However, despite a premise that feels supernatural at the outset, the story is much more about loneliness and disconnect in the internet age. More introspective than explosive, it’s also one of the moodiest and most atmospheric coming-of-age films to emerge from the recent American independent scene.” – Siddhant Adlakha, IGN
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Wolf in White Van
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ISBN: 9780374292089Publication Date: 2014-09-16Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of 17, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. As the creator of Trace Italian - a text-based, roleplaying game played through the mail - Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America. Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.
Onward dir. Dan Scanlon [Film, DVD]. An animated film inspired by fantasy TTRPG tropes and settings. Teenage elf brothers Ian and Barley embark on a magical quest to spend one more day with their late father. Like any good adventure, their journey is filled with cryptic maps, impossible obstacles and unimaginable discoveries.
Stranger Things created by The Duffer Brothers [TV series, streaming]. The show’s main characters use their understanding of D&D lore to parse the supernatural forces that beset their fictional Indiana town in the 1980s. As they search for answers, the children unravel a series of extraordinary mysteries and government conspiracies.
As a wide-ranging cultural phenomenon, RPGs have been studied from many angles beyond game studies. Social scientists who study RPGs have found a microcosm of society in how rules, imagination, and collaboration are all integrated into the experience. Therapists and educators alike have found role-playing an effective tool for imagining creative solutions and for seeing a situation from multiple new angles.
Scholarly Studies on Role-Players
- The New Laboratory of Dreams: Role-playing Games as Resistance.
Cross, K.A. (2012). The New Laboratory of Dreams: Role-playing Games as Resistance. WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 40(3-4), 70-88. https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2013.0026 - Dungeons and Dragons: Gender, Race, and Power in the Fantasy and Storytelling Space.
Yessler, R., & Craig, B. (2024). Dungeons and Dragons: Gender, Race, and Power in the Fantasy and Storytelling Space. GeoHumanities, 10(2), 463–471. https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2024.2352528 - Privilege, Power, and Dungeons & Dragons: How Systems Shape Racial and Gender Identities in Tabletop Role-Playing Games
Garcia, A. (2017). Privilege, Power, and Dungeons & Dragons: How Systems Shape Racial and Gender Identities in Tabletop Role-Playing Games. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 24(3), 232–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2017.1293691 - The Invisible Rules of Role-Playing The Social Framework of Role-Playing Process.
Montola, M. (2008). The Invisible Rules of Role-Playing The Social Framework of Role-Playing Process. International Journal of Role-Playing, (1), 22–36. https://doi.org/10.33063/ijrp.vi1.184 - “Monstrous Adventurers”: The Racecraft of the Dungeons and Dragons Imaginary
Carpenter, B. J. J. (2023). “Monstrous Adventurers”: The Racecraft of the Dungeons and Dragons Imaginary. Howard Journal of Communications, 35(1), 15–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/10646175.2023.2238194 - Blessed Are the Legend-Makers: Experimentation as Edification in Dungeons & Dragons.
Hollander, A. T. (2021). Blessed Are the Legend-Makers: Experimentation as Edification in Dungeons & Dragons. Political Theology, 22(4), 316–331. https://doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2021.1890933. - The Many Faces of Role-Playing Games.
Hitchens, M., & Drachen, A. (2008). The Many Faces of Role-Playing Games. International Journal of Role-Playing, (1), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.33063/ijrp.vi1.185
Education, Psychology & Social Work
- Role-Playing Games and Well-Being.
Lehto, K. (2021). Role-Playing Games and Well-Being. International Journal of Role-Playing, (11), 72–93. https://doi.org/10.33063/ijrp.vi11.284 - Dungeons and Dragons as a Tool for Developing Student Self-reflection Skills.
Clarke, S., Arnab, S., Morini, L., Heywood, L. (2019). Dungeons and Dragons as a Tool for Developing Student Self-reflection Skills. In: Gentile, M., Allegra, M., Söbke, H. (eds) Games and Learning Alliance. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11548-7_10 - The Transformative Potential of Role-Playing Games: From Play Skills to Human Skills.
Daniau, S. (2016). The Transformative Potential of Role-Playing Games—: From Play Skills to Human Skills. Simulation & Gaming, 47(4), 423-444. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878116650765 - A critical hit: Dungeons and Dragons as a buff for autistic people.
Atherton, G., Hathaway, R., Visuri, I., & Cross, L. (2024). A critical hit: Dungeons and Dragons as a buff for autistic people. Autism, 29(2), 382-394. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613241275260 - Using Dungeons and Dragons to Integrate Curricula in an Elementary Classroom.
Carter, A. (2011). Using Dungeons and Dragons to Integrate Curricula in an Elementary Classroom. In: Ma, M., Oikonomou, A., Jain, L. (eds) Serious Games and Edutainment Applications. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2161-9_17 - Let Your Clients Fight Dragons: A Rapid Evidence Assessment regarding the Therapeutic Utility of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’.
Henrich, S., & Worthington, R. (2021). Let Your Clients Fight Dragons: A Rapid Evidence Assessment regarding the Therapeutic Utility of ‘Dungeons & Dragons.’ Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 18(3), 383–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/15401383.2021.1987367
Journals
- International Journal of Role-Playing
- Analog Games Studies. The editors also maintain a reading list on many topics in gaming studies.
Non-Scholarly Resources
- 3 Black Halflings [Podcast] Part actual play, part conversation. This role-playing games podcast often crosses over into games criticism with an emphasis on African diaspora perspectives.
- Adventuring Academy [Video]. From the makers of the Dimension 20 actual play, a series of in-depth interviews with role-players on the mechanics and philosophy of tabletop gaming.
- Talk of the Table [Podcast]. A podcast on tabletop role-playing games with a higher-level conservation than most advice-driven shows.
Featured | Music in Games
Music has long been an integral part of the experience of games, with sound being just as important a design element as the visual. In many cases, the composers of video game soundtracks have become well-known for their beautiful work, from Koji Kondo's formative contributions to early Nintendo games to the haunting compositions of Akira Yamaoka for the Silent Hill series. Moreover, it was announced in 2022 that video game scores will be celebrated in their own category for the first time at the Grammy's in 2023, joining the BAFTA's in acknowledging and further cementing the significance and legacy of music in games.
In this feature and playlist, we want to highlight some of the most memorable musical moments and soundtracks across video game history, from the bleeps and bloops of Super Mario Bros to the orchestral beauty of games like Journey and Kentucky Route Zero. To learn more, consult some of the resources and lists we used to create this overview below, as well as books from our collection relevant to game music in the second tab of this feature.
- "A History of Video Game Music" (GameSpot)
- "Composing Classics: A History of Video Game Music" (National Museum of Play)
- "A Brief History of Video Game Music" (video, Library of Congress)
- "The Evolution of Video Game Music" (video, Fake Life Lore)
- Pixelated Audio (Podcast)
- "The Evolution of Video Game Music" (All Things Considered, NPR)
- "Video Games Inspire a Generation of Classical Music Fans" (Wired)
- "How Music Shapes the Way We Play Video Games" (Mashable)
- "Video Game Music" (Wikipedia)
- "The 100 Best Video Game Soundtracks of All Time" (FACT)
- "The 25 Best Video Game Soundtracks of All Time" (Happy)
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Understanding Video Game Music
by
ISBN: 9781107116870Publication Date: 2016-09-08Understanding Video Game Music develops a musicology of video game music by providing methods and concepts for understanding music in this medium. From the practicalities of investigating the video game as a musical source to the critical perspectives on game music - using examples including Final Fantasy VII, Monkey Island 2, SSX Tricky and Silent Hill - these explorations not only illuminate aspects of game music, but also provide conceptual ideas valuable for future analysis. Music is not a redundant echo of other textual levels of the game, but central to the experience of interacting with video games. As the author likes to describe it, this book is about music for racing a rally car, music for evading zombies, music for dancing, music for solving puzzles, music for saving the Earth from aliens, music for managing a city, music for being a hero; in short, it is about music for playing. -
The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music
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ISBN: 9781108473026Publication Date: 2021-04-29Video game music has been permeating popular culture for over forty years. Now, reaching billions of listeners, game music encompasses a diverse spectrum of musical materials and practices. This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of video game music by a diverse group of scholars and industry professionals. The chapters and summaries consolidate existing knowledge and present tools for readers to engage with the music in new ways. Many popular games are analysed, including Super Mario Galaxy, Bastion, The Last of Us, Kentucky Route Zero and the Katamari, Gran Turismo and Tales series. Topics include chiptunes, compositional processes, localization, history and game music concerts. The book also engages with other disciplines such as psychology, music analysis, business strategy and critical theory, and will prove an equally valuable resource for readers active in the industry, composers or designers, and music students and scholars. -
Ludomusicology: approaches to video game music
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ISBN: 9781781791974Publication Date: 2016-09-01The last half-decade has seen the rapid and expansive development of video game music studies. As with any new area of study, this significant sub-discipline is still tackling fundamental questions concerning how video game music should be approached. In this volume, experts in game music provide their responses to these issues. This book suggests a variety of new approaches to the study of game music. In the course of developing ways of conceptualizing and analyzing game music it explicitly considers other critical issues including the distinction between game play and music play, how notions of diegesis are complicated by video game interactivity, the importance of cinema aesthetics in game music, the technicalities of game music production and the relationships between game music and art music traditions. This collection is accessible, yet theoretically substantial and complex. It draws upon a diverse array of perspectives and presents new research which will have a significant impact upon the way that game music is studied. The volume represents a major development in game musicology and will be indispensable for both academic researchers and students of game music. -
Game Sound: an introduction to the history, theory, and practice of video game music and sound design
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ISBN: 9780262033787Publication Date: 2008-08-08An examination of the many complex aspects of game audio, from the perspectives of both sound design and music composition. A distinguishing feature of video games is their interactivity, and sound plays an important role in this: a player's actions can trigger dialogue, sound effects, ambient sound, and music. And yet game sound has been neglected in the growing literature on game studies. This book fills that gap, introducing readers to the many complex aspects of game audio, from its development in early games to theoretical discussions of immersion and realism. In Game Sound, Karen Collins draws on a range of sources--including composers, sound designers, voice-over actors and other industry professionals, Internet articles, fan sites, industry conferences, magazines, patent documents, and, of course, the games themselves--to offer a broad overview of the history, theory, and production practice of video game audio. Game Sound has two underlying themes: how and why games are different from or similar to film or other linear audiovisual media; and technology and the constraints it has placed on the production of game audio. Collins focuses first on the historical development of game audio, from penny arcades through the rise of home games and the recent rapid developments in the industry. She then examines the production process for a contemporary game at a large game company, discussing the roles of composers, sound designers, voice talent, and audio programmers; considers the growing presence of licensed intellectual property (particularly popular music and films) in games; and explores the function of audio in games in theoretical terms. Finally, she discusses the difficulties posed by nonlinearity and interactivity for the composer of game music. -
Unlimited Replays: video games and classical music
by
ISBN: 9780190265250Publication Date: 2018-05-01Classical music is everywhere in video games. Works by composers like Bach and Mozart fill the soundtracks of games ranging from arcade classics, to indie titles, to major franchises like BioShock, Civilization, and Fallout. Children can learn about classical works and their histories from interactive iPad games. World-renowned classical orchestras frequently perform concerts of game music to sold-out audiences. But what do such combinations of art and entertainment reveal about the cultural value we place on these media? Can classical music ever be video game music, and can game music ever be classical? Delving into the shifting and often contradictory cultural definitions that emerge when classical music meets video games, Unlimited Replays offers a new perspective on the possibilities and challenges of trying to distinguish between art and pop culture in contemporary society. -
Sound Play: video games and the musical imagination
by
ISBN: 9780199969968Publication Date: 2014-04-03Video games open portals to fantastical worlds where imaginative play and enchantment prevail. These virtual settings afford us considerable freedom to act out with relative impunity. Or do they? Sound Play explores the aesthetic, ethical, and sociopolitical stakes of people's creative engagements with gaming's audio phenomena-from sonorous violence to synthesized operas, from democratic music-making to vocal sexual harassment. William Cheng shows how video games empower their designers, composers, players, critics, and scholars to tinker (often transgressively) with practices and discourses of music, noise, speech, and silence. Faced with collisions between utopian and alarmist stereotypes of video games, Sound Play synthesizes insights across musicology, sociology, anthropology, communications, literary theory, philosophy, and additional disciplines. With case studies spanning Final Fantasy VI, Silent Hill, Fallout 3, The Lord of the Rings Online, and Team Fortress 2, this book insists that what we do in there-in the safe, sound spaces of games-can ultimately teach us a great deal about who we are and what we value (musically, culturally, humanly) out here. Foreword by Richard Leppert Video Games Live cover image printed with permission from Tommy Tallarico
Featured | Transgender Worldmaking in Video Games
Videogames and gaming in general has often created spaces where people can escape, join a new community, and redefine reality - even if only for a couple hours. As such, videogames have become a wonderful resource for gender diverse and transgender people as they can log in and change how they appear in a world that they control. This feature shares the concept of transgender video game worldmaking and character building as well as spotlighting several games that transgender and gender diverse people created in order to process the stresses and pressures of gender norms in everyday life.
Further Readings
- Why do games still struggle with trans inclusion? by Emma Flint - Wired
- The State of Trans Representation in Video Games by Lilly Contino - Game Developer
- How Gamers Use Video Games to Explore Their Gender Identity by Andrew Fishman - Psychology Today
- 'In the game, I knew myself as Hannah': the trans gamers finding freedom on Roblox by Tom Faber - The Guardian
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Dys4ia
by
Publication Date: 2012Dys4ia is an autobiographical Adobe Flash video game about the artist Anna Anthropy’s decision to start hormone replacement therapy. It is a journal of six months of her life told through abstract mini-games. Each mini-game deals with a different emotional stage of her hormone therapy, and conveys her frustrations and accomplishments through innovative game mechanics and lo-fi graphics. Dys4ia is available to play for free, with the download of an adobe flash chrome extension. -
Transgalactica: A Tune Your Own Adventure
by
Publication Date: 2018In this game, you are a trans person hurtling through space and listening to a radio. Follow the trail of broadcasts from T.R.A.N.S -- the Trans Radio Artists' Network in Space to find them and join them. This game is available to play for free - click the link above! -
GENDERWRECKED
by
Publication Date: 2018GENDERWRECKED is a post-apocalyptic genderpunk visual novel about traveling broken lands and kissing/fighting/talking to monsters in an attempt to learn the true meaning of a mysterious force called GENDER. This game is available for downloadable play on Windows, macOS, and Linux for $6.99. A Demo of the game is available for free. -
Mainichi
by
Publication Date: 2012A short, rpg- style game about navigating daily life as a black trans woman. The game can be downloaded and played for free from Brice’s website: http://www.mattie brice.com/mainichi. -
Second Puberty
by
Second Puberty is an album/collection of seven short games, created over the course of two years, about various feelings surrounding medically transitioning and dealing with isolation during a pandemic. Second Puberty is available to play for free on Squinky's website: https://squinky.itch.io/second-puberty -
One Night, Hot Springs
by
Publication Date: 2018Haru is invited by her old friend Manami to spend a night at the hot springs. All Haru wants to do is enjoy the hot springs like everyone else, but she doesn't want to cause any trouble... One Night, Hot Springs is a visual novel. Play as Haru, a young transgender woman, and join her at the hot springs in Japan. This game is available to play for free with a steam account. -
Celeste by
Publication Date: 2018Help Madeline survive her inner demons on her journey to the top of Celeste Mountain, in this super-tight, hand-crafted platformer from the creators of multiplayer classic TowerFall. Celeste is available for purchase to play through Steam. -
Heaven Will Be Mine
by
Publication Date: 2018Heaven Will Be Mine is a queer science fiction mecha visual novel from the creators of queer cult horror visual novel We Know The Devil, about joyriding mecha, kissing your enemies, and fighting gravity’s pull. Follow three women piloting giant robots in the last days of an alternate 1980s space program fighting for humanity’s future—or ditching their jobs to make out with each other instead. Heaven Will Be Mine is available for purchase to play through Steam. -
If Found... by
Publication Date: 2020On December 31st 1993 in the crumbling ruins of a mansion on Achill Island, Kasio destroys her diary. It tells the story of her return home to the West of Ireland, her conflict with her family, the friends she makes, and the challenges she goes through. If Found... is available for purchase to play through Steam.
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The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games
by
ISBN: 9781478005919Publication Date: 2020-03-20In The Queer Games Avant-Garde, Bo Ruberg presents twenty interviews with twenty-two queer video game developers whose radical, experimental, vibrant, and deeply queer work is driving a momentous shift in the medium of video games. Speaking with insight and candor about their creative practices as well as their politics and passions, these influential and innovative game makers tell stories about their lives and inspirations, the challenges they face, and the ways they understand their places within the wider terrain of video game culture. Their insights go beyond typical conversations about LGBTQ representation in video games or how to improve "diversity" in digital media. Instead, they explore queer game-making practices, the politics of queer independent video games, how queerness can be expressed as an aesthetic practice, the influence of feminist art on their work, and the future of queer video games and technology. These engaging conversations offer a portrait of an influential community that is subverting and redefining the medium of video games by placing queerness front and center. -
Gaming Utopia: Ludic Worlds in Art, Design, and Media
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ISBN: 9780253054487Publication Date: 2021-04-06In Gaming Utopia: Ludic Worlds in Art, Design, and Media, Claudia Costa Pederson analyzes modernist avant-garde and contemporary video games to challenge the idea that gaming is an exclusively white, heterosexual, male, corporatized leisure activity and reenvisions it as a catalyst for social change. By looking at over fifty projects that together span a century and the world, Pederson explores the capacity for sociopolitical commentary in virtual and digital realms and highlights contributions to the history of gaming by women, queer, and transnational artists. The result is a critical tool for understanding video games as imaginative forms of living that offer alternatives to our current reality. With an interdisciplinary approach, Gaming Utopia emphasizes how game design, creation, and play can become political forms of social protest and examines the ways that games as art open doors to a more just and peaceful world. -
Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games
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ISBN: 9780253025739Publication Date: 2017-07-03Recent years have seen an increase in public attention to identity and representation in video games, including journalists and bloggers holding the digital game industry accountable for the discrimination routinely endured by female gamers, queer gamers, and gamers of color. Video game developers are responding to these critiques, but scholarly discussion of representation in games has lagged far behind. Gaming Representation examines portrayals of race, gender, and sexuality in a range of games, from casuals like Diner Dash, to indies like Journey and The Binding of Isaac, to mainstream games from the Grand Theft Auto, BioShock, Spec Ops, The Last of Us, and Max Payne franchises. Arguing that representation and identity function as systems in games that share a stronger connection to code and platforms than it may first appear, the contributors to this volume push gaming scholarship to new levels of inquiry, theorizing, and imagination. -
Rated M for Mature: Sex and Sexuality in Video Games
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ISBN: 9781628925760Publication Date: 2015-10-22The word sex has many implications when it is used in connection with video games. As game studies scholars have argued, games are player-driven experiences. Players must participate in processes of play to move the game forward. The addition of content that incorporates sex and/or sexuality adds complexity that other media do not share. Rated M for Mature further develops our understanding of the practices and activities of video games, specifically focusing on the intersection of games with sexual content. From the supposed scandal of "Hot Coffee" to the emergence of same-sex romance options in RPGs, the collection explores the concepts of sex and sexuality in the area of video games. -
Manifestations of Queerness in Video Games
by
ISBN: 0367900645Publication Date: 2022-07-29Taking the reader on a journey through queer manifestations in games, this book advocates for video games as a rich, political and cultural medium, which provides us with tools to navigate the future of gaming. Situated at the intersection of New Media, Game, Cultural and Queer Studies, the book navigates diverse interspecies relationships, queer villains from the past, Pokémon memes on border politics, flânerie in post-industrial cities and one-sided erotic fights. It provides new critical engagements with the works of Jose Esteban Muñoz, Bo Ruberg, Guy Debord and Jack Halberstam, examining queer representation, gaming subcultures and dissident play practices. Making the bold claim that video games might be the queerest medium today, this book provides organic, self-reflective and, ultimately, thought-provoking thinking in which both games and gamers are queered. This book will be of interest to scholars researching game studies, sex, gender and sexuality in new media, but also readers interested in literature, digital media, society, participatory culture and queer studies. -
Queerness in Play
by
ISBN: 9783319905419Publication Date: 2018-11-06Queerness in Play examines the many ways queerness of all kinds--from queer as 'LGBT' to other, less well-covered aspects of the queer spectrum--intersects with games and the social contexts of play. The current unprecedented visibility of queer creators and content comes at a high tide of resistance to the inclusion of those outside a long-imagined cisgender, heterosexual, white male norm. By critically engaging the ways games--as a culture, an industry, and a medium--help reproduce limiting binary formations of gender and sexuality, Queerness in Play contributes to the growing body of scholarship promoting more inclusive understandings of identity, sexuality, and games. -
Video Games Have Always Been Queer
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ISBN: 9781479843749Publication Date: 2019-03-19Argues for the queer potential of video games While popular discussions about queerness in video games often focus on big-name, mainstream games that feature LGBTQ characters, like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, Bo Ruberg pushes the concept of queerness in games beyond a matter of representation, exploring how video games can be played, interpreted, and designed queerly, whether or not they include overtly LGBTQ content. Video Games Have Always Been Queer argues that the medium of video games itself can--and should--be read queerly. In the first book dedicated to bridging game studies and queer theory, Ruberg resists the common, reductive narrative that games are only now becoming more diverse. Revealing what reading D. A. Miller can bring to the popular 2007 video game Portal, or what Eve Sedgwick offers Pong, Ruberg models the ways game worlds offer players the opportunity to explore queer experience, affect, and desire. As players attempt to 'pass' in Octodad or explore the pleasure of failure in Burnout: Revenge, Ruberg asserts that, even within a dominant gaming culture that has proved to be openly hostile to those perceived as different, queer people have always belonged in video games--because video games have, in fact, always been queer. -
Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture
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ISBN: 9780816693153Publication Date: 2015-01-01Video games have long been seen as the exclusive territory of young, heterosexual white males. In a media landscape dominated by such gamers, players who do not fit this mold, including women, people of color, and LGBT people, are often brutalized in forums and in public channels in online play. Discussion of representation of such groups in games has frequently been limited and cursory. In contrast, Gaming at the Edge builds on feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories of identity and draws on qualitative audience research methods to make sense of how representation comes to matter. In Gaming at the Edge, Adrienne Shaw argues that video game players experience race, gender, and sexuality concurrently. She asks: How do players identify with characters? How do they separate identification and interactivity? What is the role of fantasy in representation? What is the importance of understanding market logic? In addressing these questions Shaw reveals how representation comes to matter to participants and offers a perceptive consideration of the high stakes in politics of representation debates. Putting forth a framework for talking about representation, difference, and diversity in an era in which user-generated content, individualized media consumption, and the blurring of producer/consumer roles has lessened the utility of traditional models of media representation analysis, Shaw finds new insight on the edge of media consumption with the invisible, marginalized gamers who are surprising in both their numbers and their influence in mainstream gamer culture. -
Gender and Sexuality in Online Game Cultures: Passionate Play
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ISBN: 9780415897662Publication Date: 2011-12-21How do gender and sexuality come to matter in online game cultures? Why is it important to explore "straight" versus "queer" contexts of play? And what does it mean to play together with others over time, as co-players and researchers? Gender and Sexuality in Online Game Cultures is a book about female players and their passionate encounters with the online game World of Warcraft and its player cultures. It takes seriously women's passions in games, and as such draws attention to questions of pleasure in and desire for technology. The authors use a unique approach of what they term a "twin ethnography" that develops two parallel stories. Sveningsson studies "straight" game culture, and makes explicit that which is of the norm by exploring the experiences of female gamers in a male-dominated gaming context. Sundén investigates "queer" game culture through the queer potentials of mainstream World of Warcraft culture, as well as through the case of a guild explicitly defined as LGBT. Academic research on game culture is flourishing, yet feminist accounts of gender and sexuality in games are still in the making. Drawing on feminist notions of performance, performativity and positionality, as well as the recent turn to affect and phenomenology within cultural theory, the authors develop queer, feminist studies of online player cultures in ways that are situated and embodied. -
Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Dropouts, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form
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ISBN: 9781609803728Publication Date: 2012-03-20Part critical essay, part manifesto, part DIY guide and altogether unprecedented, Anna Anthropy's Rise of the Videogame Zinesters shows why the multi-billion dollar videogame industry needs to change - and how a new generation of artists can change it. In this first intergalactic offensive against corporate systems of production, condescending media coverage and pervasive 'gamer' culture, Anthropy takes a look at the new artists who are beginning to build an alternative body of work. A unique guide for anyone who wants to join the coming revolution of videogames. -
#Trans: An Anthology about Transgender and Nonbinary Identity Online
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ISBN: 9781543175882Publication Date: 2017-02-16#Trans is an essay collection featuring the works of twenty transgender and nonbinary writers as they share their experiences with online communities, video games, and dating apps--among other technologies. Each author's experience of their identity breaks away from the typical transgender narrative that is predominantly hung up on surgery and medical intervention. While that aspect is still a part of the story for some of these writers, surgery has never been the sole inspiration which pushes these writers forward. Whether it was the love of a particular movie, the desire to share a feeling on social media, or a song they couldn't get out of their heads, these twenty writers' experiences of their identity have been shaped by media, technology, and the internet. And now, #Trans is ready to share with all of you.Authors include YouTuber Skylar Kergil, academic Evelyn Deshane, Latinx writer Ariel Estrella, micro-memoirist Erika D. Price, anthropologist Harlow Figa, poet mud howard, LGBTQ romance author J.K. Pendragon, and many more.
- Rivera, Sien. 2022. “From Battleground to Playground: The Video Game Avatar as Transitional Phenomenon for a Transgender Patient.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 70 (3): 485–510. doi:10.1177/00030651221104487
- Kosciesza, A.J. 2023. “The Moral Service of Trans NPCs: Examining the Roles of Transgender Non-Player Characters in Role-Playing Video Games.” Games and Culture 18 (2): 189-208–208. doi:10.1177/15554120221088118.
- McKenna, J.L., C.R. Williams, K. McGregor, E.R. Boskey, and Y.-C. Wang. 2022. ““You Can’t Be Deadnamed in a Video Game”: Transgender and Gender Diverse Adolescents’ Use of Video Game Avatar Creation for Gender-Affirmation and Exploration.” Journal of LGBT Youth, January. doi:10.1080/19361653.2022.2144583.
- Thach, Hibby. 2021. “A Cross-Game Look at Transgender Representation in Video Games.” Press Start 7 (1): 19–44. http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/187
- Shaw, A. 2009. “Putting the Gay in Games: Cultural Production and GLBT Content in Video Games.” Games and Culture 4 (3): 228-253–253. doi:10.1177/1555412009339729.
- Heritage, Frazer. 2022. “Politics, Pronouns and the Players: Examining How Videogame Players React to the Inclusion of a Transgender Character in World of Warcraft.” Gender & Language 16 (1): 26–51. doi:10.1558/genl.20250.
- Tarik Sabry. 2017. “Talking to Gaymers: Questioning Identity, Community and Media Representation.” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 9 (1). doi:10.16997/wpcc.150.
- Ruberg, Bo, Chris J. Young, and Greig de Peuter. 2019. “The Precarious Labor of Queer Indie Game-Making: Who Benefits from Making Video Games ‘Better’?” Television & New Media 20 (8): 778–88. doi:10.1177/1527476419851090.
- Hester, Jennessa. 2023. “Nintendo Switch-Ing Genders: Bowsette and the Potentiality of Transgender Video Game Mechanics.” Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation, March, 1–15. doi:10.1080/01973762.2023.2184234.