Game studies
View article
Playing the visibility game: How digital influencers and algorithms negotiate influence on Instagram Open
Algorithms are said to affect social realities, often in unseen ways. This article explores conscious, instrumental interactions with algorithms, as a window into the complexities and extent of algorithmic power. Through a thematic analysi…
View article
Screen Violence and Youth Behavior Open
Violence in screen entertainment media (ie, television, film, video games, and the Internet), defined as depictions of characters (or players) trying to physically harm other characters (or players), is ubiquitous. The Workgroup on Media V…
View article
Game Studies’ Material Turn Open
This article argues that among the burgeoning approaches to game studies there is a crucial re-imagining of digital games in their material contexts across different scales and registers: the machine, the body and the situations of play. T…
View article
Digital Games Research: A Survey Study on an Emerging Field and Its Prevalent Debates Open
Digital games have become a popular form of media entertainment. However, it remains unclear whether a canon of accepted knowledge and research practices has emerged that may define an independent field of research. This study is a collabo…
View article
Digital Game Dynamics Preferences and Player Types Open
In this study, we examine digital game preferences by identifying game dynamics, i.e. player–game interaction modes, of 700 contemporary digital games, and players' (N = 1717) desire to play games with specific types of dynamics. Based on …
View article
(Re-)Orienting the Video Game Avatar Open
This article explores the cultural appropriation of the term avatar by Western tech culture and what this implies for scholarship of digital games, virtual worlds, social media, and digital cultures. The term has roots in the religious tra…
View article
The Pyrrhic Victory of Game Studies Open
Although game studies are widely viewed as an interdisciplinary field, it is unclear how interdisciplinary they actually are. In response, this article reads scientometric data and game studies editorials, handbooks, and introductions thro…
View article
The economics of free Open
The gaming industry has seen dramatic change and expansion with the emergence of ‘casual’ games that promote shorter periods of gameplay. Free to download, but structured around micropayments, these games raise the complex relationship bet…
View article
What We Know About Games Open
This article proposes a reflexive approach on the scientific production in the field of game studies in recent years. It relies on a sociology of science perspective to answer the question: What are game studies really about? Relying on sc…
View article
Conceptual Ambiguity Surrounding Gamification and Serious Games in Health Care: Literature Review and Development of Game-Based Intervention Reporting Guidelines (GAMING) Open
Background In health care, the use of game-based interventions to increase motivation, engagement, and overall sustainability of health behaviors is steadily becoming more common. The most prevalent types of game-based interventions in hea…
View article
When passion isn’t enough: gender, affect and credibility in digital games design Open
Recent controversies around identity and diversity in digital games culture indicate the heightened affective terrain for participants within this creative industry. While work in digital games production has been characterized as a form o…
View article
Academics at play: Why the “publication game” is more than a metaphor Open
It is increasingly common to describe academic research as a “publication game,” a metaphor that connotes instrumental strategies for publishing in highly rated journals. However, we suggest that the use of this metaphor is problematic. In…
View article
Battle pass capitalism Open
This article investigates the origin, circulation and consumption of a new commodity – the “battle pass” – in the complex ludic economies of contemporary digital games. The article dives deep into the history and political economy of battl…
View article
Epic, Steam, and the role of skin-betting in game (platform) economies Open
In this article, we discuss how and why virtual items known as “skins” travel beyond games and into wider online ecosystems where they become tokens in gambling games. We argue that betting with skins purchased on the Steam platform contri…
View article
The metaverse, but not the way you think: game engines and automation beyond game development Open
The production of videogames routinely uses automated techniques to generate content, rig animations, map light, and script behaviors. The automation of programming and artistic functions is increasingly baked into game engines that work w…
View article
Settler Colonialism in the Digital Age: Clash of Clans, Territoriality, and the Erasure of the Native Open
In the past ten years, two seemingly unconnected fields of study have risen to prominence. Patrick Wolfe’s 2006 theorization of settler colonialism called for the development of a distinct set of literature and analytical tools to analyze …
View article
“The Entrepreneurial Gamer”: Regendering the Order of Play Open
The designation “gamer” is structurally bound to networked economies of digital play that are rewarded fiscally, socially, and publically, an order of play that is proving difficult to overturn. That girls and women have enjoyed at best ma…
View article
The identity curation game: digital inequality, identity work, and emotion management Open
The research examines an understudied facet of digital inequality: how digital inequality impacts identity work and emotion management. The analysis reveals how unequal access to digital resources shapes how well youths are able to play wh…
View article
Against Game Studies Open
The article explores the limitations of the current scholarly game studies (GS) field. Its central presuppositions are (1) that there are certain attributes broadly understood as “GS” by those writing in or adjacent to the field; (2) that …
View article
Running Head: Video Game Nostalgia and Retro Gaming Open
This article conceptually integrates research on the experience of nostalgia—defined as a predominantly positive, social, and past-oriented emotion—into the fold of video game research. We emphasize the role of nostalgia as an explanation …
View article
Playing Cultural Memory: Framing History in <i>Call of Duty: Black Ops</i> and <i>Czechoslovakia 38-89: Assassination</i> Open
The present article brings game studies into dialogue with cultural memory studies and argues for the significance of computer games for historical discourse and memory politics. Drawing upon the works of Robert Rosenstone and Astrid Erll,…
View article
Need for Perspective Open
This special issue of Games and Culture aims to engage in dialogue between different traditions of doing games research and to stimulate reflective responses about the overall state of the field.
View article
Future Gaming: Creative Interventions in Video Game Culture Open
This book is not about the future of video games. It is not an attempt to predict the moods of the market, the changing profile of gamers, the benevolence or malevolence of the medium. This book is about those predictions. It is about the …
View article
Reconsidering passivity and activity in children’s digital play Open
The discussion around children’s digital game culture has resulted in two contradictory images of children: the passive, antisocial children uncritically and mechanically consuming digital game content and the active, social children creat…
View article
Game Design as STS Research Open
Game design offers a powerful pedagogical paradigm for engaging students in thinking and researching sociotechnical systems. Using the example of designing a game around fracking, this paper describes how game design grapples with emergent…
View article
Hybridity, Reflexivity and Mapping: A Collaborative Ethnography of Postcolonial Gameplay Open
To date, game studies has largely undertheorized the co-production of postcolonial stories, exploration, and mapping in games. Furthermore, as has been noted before (Carr, 2006), the work that has been done on postcolonialism and play so f…
View article
"One of the baddies all along" Open
Reflection has become a core interest for game designers. However, empirical research into the kinds and causes for reflection within games is scarce. We therefore conducted an online questionnaire where participants (n=101) openly reporte…
View article
Productive play: The shift from responsible consumption to responsible production Open
Regulatory approaches to games are organized by boundaries between game/not-game, game/gambling game, skilled/unskilled play, consumption/production. Perhaps more importantly, moral justifications for regulating gambling (and condemning di…
View article
Is it in the Game? Reconsidering Play Spaces, Game Definitions, Theming, and Sports Videogames Open
From the very first days of digital gaming, sport-themed videogames have been a constant and ever-popular presence. However, compared with many other genres of games, sports-themed videogames have remained relatively underresearched. Using…
View article
Artificial Intelligence–Driven Serious Games in Health Care: Scoping Review Open
Background Artificial intelligence (AI)–driven serious games have been used in health care to offer a customizable and immersive experience. Summarizing the features of the current AI-driven serious games is very important to explore how t…