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2012, The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies (Media Studies Futures is volume 6)
The digital game industry has been evolving at a phenomenal rate, and can no longer consider console games and the Western market as its primary areas of focus. Social games, casual games, virtual worlds, indie games, and online games all expand the boundaries of what we count as games. Likewise, markets such as China and Korea and game development companies in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe are challenging the dominance of western and Japanese firms. How is game studies responding to such changes? Likewise, how is the field coalescing, now that there are dedicated journals, book series, conferences and academic programs spread around the globe? This chapter explores how game studies has moved from ‘indie start up’ to mid-career in its own growth trajectory of the last decade. It will survey how scholarship has evolved, what approaches have intentionally (or not) become dominant, and what ideologies have emerged about the ‘proper’ way to do game studies research. It will conclude with challenges to the field, pointing to areas that have been overlooked, problems that remain, and the continuing question of the possibilities (and pitfalls) of making game studies research useful for popular and industry audiences in addition to regular scholarly attention.
Games and Culture, 2006
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."
Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2022
As members of the Critical Approaches to Technology and the Social (CATS) Lab at UC Irvine, we are particularly motivated by this special issue’s call to action. As a collective of interdisciplinary students at various stages in relevant degrees, we are the future of game studies. As such, this question strikes us not as one for speculation, but as a space to commit a set of shared values necessary for game studies to have a future—one that is more equitable, more sustainable, and more transparent. We argue that working towards this future will require an increased commitment to critiquing the relationship between industry and game-making practice; examining the sociopolitical landscape of both game culture and the world; and an attention to the institution of the university itself. Imagining the future in this way is a necessary practice, and a core component to scholarly critique. When we imagine the future, we can work both towards and against it. We do this work as researchers, but also as streamers, makers, critics, and players, each of whom brings our perspective to this special issue to articulate our vision of a critical game studies that strives for equity, sustainability, and self-reflexivity.
Gaming and Gamers in Times of Pandemic, 2024
The COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented government responses to this pandemic have impacted virtually every aspect of people’s lives. This edited collection brings in multiple scholarly perspectives to examine the impact of the pandemic and resulting government policies, on one particular cultural sphere: games. In the pandemics’ initial months, many industry reports noted the unexpected positive impact on online digital game sales. Subsequently, however, the deleterious impact of the lockdowns on game production and related practices also came to light. Developers and players had to rapidly adjust to remote work and play. Many large-scale industry events were canceled, postponed, downsized, or virtualized. This book’s eleven chapters divided into three sections aim to examine and discuss these changes. The first and the longest section groups together those chapters that relay stories of games, gaming, and game developers during the pandemic. Subsequently, the second section explores some instances of how the initial impact of the pandemic has become permanent, with effects to be felt for years to come. Finally, the third section brings together explorations of the lessons drawn from the pandemic. Consequently, this third section is more about noticing some possible changes, but also noting those that have failed to materialize. Overall, the book’s message is that the pandemic affected game players, game developers, game journalists, and game scholars alike in many different ways. Some effects are temporary; others are here to stay. All deserve to be studied, and this book contributes to this growing field of research.
2006
The range of different digital games and the geographical and cultural range of game playing has expanded greatly during their years of adoption. Initially isolated into research laboratories and universities, digital games are currently within the reach of billions of people–in the form of mobile phone games, if not as computer games or video games for various arcade and home consoles.
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