Game Studies, Culture, Play, and Practice

2006

Abstract Games are an extremely valuable context for the study of cognition as inter (action) in the social and material world. They provide a representational trace of both individual and collective activity and how it changes over time, enabling the researcher to unpack the bidirectional influence of self and society.

G|A|M|E Games as Art, Media, Entertainment, 2020

This article explores the early history (and even some prehistory) of game studies from a perspective that is informed by an analysis of claimed opposition between "objective" and "politically committed" research. There is a well-documented and long intellectual history of fundamental disagreements that have set apart the various idealist, rationalist, positivist, empiricist, and constructivist orientations in academia, for example. However, the contemporary climate of "culture wars" has surrounded such disputes with a novel, o en toxic framing that aggravates confrontations and erodes possibilities for reaching agreement. This article tracks the charged prehistory of contemporary game studies on one hand into the rise of poststructuralism and the "theory wars" of 1970s and 1980s, and then moves to discuss the heritage of literary studies for game studies. The special emphasis is put on formalism as a strategy of manufacturing authority

2006

Abstract Game studies entering academia means that games are finally positioned at the heart of a dedicated field of learning. There is a tension however as the need and demand for game studies has faced the opposing, structural forces that slowdown the development. It is hard to ignore the cultural significance of digital games and play, particularly as numerous game play experiences underlie personal relations and histories within an ICT-Penetrated society.

2013

We also acknowledge that literature is only one constituent of Western culture; that non-western cultures are comprised of various components, including literature and media; that media and literature are but components of global culture; and that the terms 'western' and 'non-western' reify the Orientalism identified by Edward Said (1978). Finally, we note that digital games are not literature, but we find much promise in their consideration as popular global fiction.

Play, digital culture, and learning, 2008

Review by Marjaana Kangas: "This extremely interesting book brings together many important views of the digital cultures of children and young people to enable a better understanding of the new forms of literacy and agency that have emerged in the digital age. Using research-based evidence, the book considers how children and young people participate in today’s multifaceted digital culture, which allows them to engage in a variety of playful and creative forms of activity.Today,young people interact with new media both as consumers and producers and participators; they are on-line bloggers, digital text makers and users,and communicators and gamers in various local and global digital forums and communities. The book presents several illuminative cases that reveal how diverse, complex and interactive media can be and what kind of affordances this context creates both for young people’s culture and their development. The fundamental aim of the book is to suggest ways that notions of play and creativity might inform analyses of digital cultures. The book also aims to provide examples of these kinds of analyses, and to engage with the continuing debates about child and youth participation within digital cultures". https://www.academia.edu/516877/Book_Review_Play_Creativity_and_Digital_Cultures_2011_

2014

This conversation began as a salon that was convened in February 2014, just after the 35th annual conference of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA). The theme for the salon was localism, with a principal focus on how the field of game studies is arrayed across countries, institutions, and time. The participants spanned the experiential spectrum from post doctoral researcher to dean, and represented three of the most developed regions in game studies and the industry it analyzes: Europe (Germany), Australia, and the US. The questions were prepared in advance by Ken McAllister and Judd Ruggill, who moderated as well as participated in the salon.

Cross-Cultural Research, 1998

In their classic cross-cultural study "Games in Culture," Roberts, Arth, and Bush (1959) delineated a three-category classification for games (i.e., physical skill, strategy, and chance) as well as a definition of games. Both the classification system and the definition have become anthropological standards. Roberts et al. also found that several variables correlated with the presence-absence of different game types. However, the sample that Roberts et al. used was relatively small (50 societies) and nonstandard. The purpose of this study is to replicate the Roberts et al. study using codes for games for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. In addition, minor extensions of the results found by Roberts et al. are presented.

Academia Letters, 2021

Since its appearance around the late 1990s and early 2000s, "Game Studies" has pretty much come to mean the study of video games. At the same time, the term "Game Theory" has become ambiguous and context-dependent, meaning either theorizing about video games, or its older, original meaning referring to the mathematical modeling of rational decision-making and strategic interactions, as found in the work of mathematicians like John Von Neumann and John Nash. Certainly, there is good reason to suggest that the mathematical Game Theory should also be a part of anything we call "Game Studies", as well as the study of the wide variety of games that exist beyond video games; and it is precisely this landscape that I wish to briefly survey here. How did video games come to dominate the term "Game Studies"? In the early days the study of video games was establishing its legitimacy and seeking to become distinct from other disciplines like Film Studies. It shared many things in common with Film Studies, particularly from the late 1990s onward, when video games increasingly began adopting cinematic conventions, such as photorealistic graphics, three-dimensional worlds displayed on-screen, cut-scenes, opening title sequences and end credits sequences, and so forth; the high-profile games of the time seemed to aspire to become more cinematic, rather than become more like board games, card games, or other kinds of games. Around the same time, video game scholarship turned to the theorists of Play, namely Johann Huizinga, Roger Caillois, and Brian Sutton-Smith. Much of their writings applied to games of all kinds, and sometimes even more broadly to gamelike situations; but their work was easily adapted to the study of video games. Within the study of video games, there was also a variety of ways to refer to the subject of study; not only was there "video games" and "videogames" (considering them a peripheral technology like videotape or videodiscs), there was also "electronic games", "computer games", and "digital games"; with "electronic games" broad enough to include LED-based

2012

This paper presents findings of a project examining the construction of game studies in British Higher education. The study of computer games is now a legitimate part of the undergraduate portfolio in a number of academic fields (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2008; Mäyrä, 2008). Previous accounts of games studies have examined how the subject has evolved through a number of conferences, the publication of certain key texts and the formation of academic associations (Eskelinen, 2004). This history has described a tension between how games studies emerged from a number of other disciplines such as computer science, film and literary studies and how these subjects were seeking to ‘colonize’ games studies (Aarseth, 2001). Other commentary has described a key debate between the advocates of narrative and ludic qualities of games (Frasca, 2003) This paper presents findings of a project that uses an alternate approach. The approach adopted here is founded upon the proposal that an academic discipline is constructed and articulated not only in research but through its articulation in text books. Academic fields are constructed in both research activity and teaching material. As such this research presents descriptive rather than normative information on the field; this paper relates what is taught in the field of games studies rather than what should be taught according to particular theoretical positions. Presented here are the results from a bibliographic examination of key text used in the teaching of games studies to undergraduates. Results indicate that: while there are a number of topics that are considered integral to the field of games studies there is a lack of agreement over a number of other topics; that certain debates that took place in the initial period of games studies have had a lasting effect; that gender is a relatively small if not marginalised area of study A number of points of interest for future research and the study of games are raised.

The Game Culture Reader, 2013

In their Introduction the authors eschew the three dominate video game topics of violence, sexism, and addiction and maintain that these overemphasize an agentive media consumption practice while obscuring other topics, namely video game production and distribution practices. Thompson and Ouellette call for preserving the complexity of the medium and its study, claiming that Game Studies must "reject the dominant, apolitical discourse that would consign digital games to irrelevant spheres of harmless child play or invidious mass entertainment."