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Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be

Metadata
TitleHistoriographies of Game Studies
SubtitleWhat It Has Been, What It Could Be
ContributorAlisha Karabinus(editor)
Carly A. Kocurek(editor)
Cody Mejeur(editor)
Emma Vossen(editor)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.53288/0441.1.00
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/historiographies-of-game-studies-what-it-has-been-what-it-could-be/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
CopyrightAlisha Karabinus, Carly A. Kocurek, Emma Vossen, Cody Mejeur
Publisherpunctum books
Publication placeEarth, Milky Way
Published on2025-07-25
ISBN978-1-68571-200-6 (Paperback)
978-1-68571-201-3 (PDF)
Long abstractHistoriographies of Game Studies offers a first-of-its-kind reflection on how game studies as an academic field has been shaped and sustained. Today, game studies is a thriving field with many dedicated national and international conferences, journals, professional societies, and a strong presence at conferences in disciplines like computer science, communication, media studies, theater, visual arts, popular culture, and others. But, when did game studies start? And what (and who) is at the core or center of game studies? Fields are defined as much by what they are not as by what they are, and their borderlands can be hotly contested spaces. In this anthology, scholars from across the field consider how the boundaries of game studies have been established, codified, contested, and protected, raising critical questions about who and what gets left out of the field. Over more than two dozen chapters and interviews with leading figures, including Espen Aarseth, Kishonna Gray, Henry Jenkins, Lisa Nakamura, Kentaro Matsumoto, Ken McAllister, and Janet Murray, the contributors offer a dazzling array of insightful provocations that address the formation, propagation, and cultivation of game studies, interrogating not only the field’s pasts but its potential futures and asking us to think deliberately about how academic fields are collectively built.
Print length780 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Dimensions127 x 45 x 203 mm | 5" x 1.76" x 8" (Paperback)
Weight957g | 33.76oz (Paperback)
LCCN2025936417
THEMA
  • KNTV
  • UGG
  • JBCC
BIC
  • UGG
  • JFC
BISAC
  • GAM013000
  • SOC002010
Keywords
  • game studies
  • media studies
  • historiography
  • academic institutions
  • play
  • communication
  • history
Contents

Frontmatter

(pp. 1–15)

    Introduction: What Game Studies Has Been, What It Could Be

    (pp. 17–44)
    • Emma Vossen
    • Alisha Karabinus
    • Carly A. Kocurek
    • Cody Mejeur

    The Past, Present, and Future of Game Studies: An Interview with Janet H. Murray

    (pp. 47–65)
    • Bianca Batti

    Young Scholars, and Old Debates: Why the Ludology Versus Narratology “Debate” Cannot Be Forgotten

    (pp. 67–93)
    • Emma Vossen

    Why Are You Being an Ass on the Internet? GamesNetwork, Communities, and History-Making

    (pp. 95–119)
    • Jennifer deWinter
    • Gillian Smith

    Definitions and Misunderstandings in Game Studies: An Interview with Espen Aarseth

    (pp. 121–145)
    • Cody Mejeur

    Redirecting Ludification: Dutch Game Studies and the Neoliberalization of Academia

    (pp. 147–170)
    • Dennis Jansen

    What Video Games Have Taught Us: Two Decades of Gaming and Learning

    (pp. 171–193)
    • Kirk M. Lundblade

    Video or Digital? Exploring the Use of Terminology and Connected Approaches in the History of Game Studies

    (pp. 195–225)
    • Jasper van Vught
    • Joris Veerbeek

    Of Parents and Siblings, Disciplines and Debates: Game Studies as Media Culture Studies and the Possibility of Schools of Thought

    (pp. 227–247)
    • Tobias Unterhuber

    Queering the Game Studies Canon: A Polemical Reading of Roger Caillois’s "Man, Play and Games"

    (pp. 251–272)
    • Bo Ruberg

    Ken S. McAllister: Innovation, Collaboration, Humanities? Yes!

    (pp. 273–290)
    • Judd Ethan Ruggill

    Re-Historicizing Game Studies with C.L.R. James

    (pp. 293–306)
    • Cameron Kunzelman
    • Michael Lutz

    A Story or a Machine? Revisiting the Work of Bohuslav Blažek, the Czechoslovak Pioneer of Game Studies

    (pp. 307–329)
    • Jaroslav Švelch

    On the Political Function of Triflers and Spoilsports in Game Studies

    (pp. 331–354)
    • Liam Mitchell

    My Mother Was a Jump Rope Rhyme: A Game Studies That Might Have Been

    (pp. 355–368)
    • Carly A. Kocurek

    Reflecting on the Evolution of Intersectional Game Studies: An Interview with Lisa Nakamura

    (pp. 369–388)
    • Sarah Christina Ganzon

    Unveiling the Path: Seeing and Doing Game Studies from a Sámi Perspective

    (pp. 389–409)
    • Outi Kaarina Laiti

    Anthropology, Play Studies, and the Entanglements of Game Studies: Two Roads Diverged in an Ivory Wood

    (pp. 411–430)
    • Laya Liebeseller
    • Josh Rivers

    Autoethnographic Denial: The Disavowal of Game Studies’ Most Fundamental Methodology and the Struggle for Its Realization

    (pp. 433–466)
    • Stephanie C. Jennings

    Down on Luck: Examining the Pervasive Merit-Based Logics in Game Studies

    (pp. 467–490)
    • Michael Anthony DeAnda

    The Separation of Analog and Digital Game Studies

    (pp. 491–510)
    • Evan Torner

    Navigating Public History and Game Preservation: In Conversation with the Computerspielemuseum

    (pp. 511–523)
    • Racquel M. Gonzales

    Archiving Play, Archiving Histories: Preserving Games Hardware, Software, and Experience

    (pp. 525–545)
    • Lee W. Hibbard

    Ludic Dissertations: “Level 101” and Video Games as Playable Scholarship

    (pp. 547–567)
    • Justin Wigard

    Navigating a Complex Space: An Interview with Henry Jenkins

    (pp. 579–608)
    • betsy brey

    Is It All Just Cultural Studies? One Scholar’s Journey into Media and Game Studies

    (pp. 609–630)
    • Adrienne Shaw

    Turns in Game Studies: An Interview with Kishonna L. Gray

    (pp. 631–652)
    • victoria l. braegger

    Confessions of a Game Studies Insider: “Our” Field Needs to Do Better

    (pp. 653–670)
    • Christopher A. Paul

    “Publish in English or It’s Game Over”: On English Linguistic Monopoly in Game Studies

    (pp. 671–696)
    • Samuel Poirier-Poulin

    The Influence of Aesthetics and Semiotics on Game Research in Japan: An Interview with Matsumoto Kentaro

    (pp. 697–715)
    • Douglas Schules

    “There’s Nothing Written about It”: Disciplinarity, Regionality, and the Ghosts Haunting Game Studies

    (pp. 717–734)
    • Alison Harvey

    Definitions, Boundaries, and Issues Week: An Analysis of University Games Courses

    (pp. 735–760)
    • Alisha Karabinus

    Contributor Biographies

    (pp. 761–774)
      Contributors

      Alisha Karabinus

      (editor)
      Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Studies at Grand Valley State University
      https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6755-206X

      Alisha Karabinus (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Studies at Grand Valley State University. She researches intersections between games and rhetoric.

      Carly A. Kocurek

      (editor)
      Professor of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at Illinois Institute of Technology
      https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2901-1737

      Carly A. Kocurek (she/her) is Professor of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She researches the cultural history of video games with an emphasis on gender identity. Her books include Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (Bloomsbury, 2017), and, with Matthew Thomas Payne, Ultima and Worldbuilding in the Computer Role-Playing Game (Amherst, 2024). She is researching the history and impact of the games for girls movement as part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation. Her articles have appeared in outlets including The American Journal of Play, Feminist Media Histories, Game Studies, Velvet Light Trap, and others.

      Cody Mejeur

      (editor)
      Assistant Professor of Game Studies at University at Buffalo, State University of New York
      https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1629-1722

      Cody Mejeur (they/them) is Assistant Professor of Game Studies at University at Buffalo, SUNY. Their work uses games to theorize narrative as an embodied and playful process that constructs how we understand ourselves, our realities, and our differences. They have published on games pedagogy, gender and queerness in games, and video game narratives and player experiences, and they are currently the game director for Trans Folks Walking, a narrative game about trans experiences. They are Director of the Amatryx Gaming Lab & Studio at UB and work with the LGBTQ Video Game Archive on preserving and visualizing LGBTQ representation. They are an executive council member for the International Society for the Study of Narrative and they served as Diversity Officer for the Digital Games Research Association.

      Emma Vossen

      (editor)
      Assistant Professor of Game Studies at Brock University
      https://orcid.org/0009-0001-3947-5877

      Emma Vossen (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Game Studies in the Department of Digital Humanities at Brock University, Canada. Her work focuses on the intersections of politics, identity, and technology, particularly in the context of digital games. She has been an outspoken and ongoing voice in the discussion around online radicalization, digital violence, and contemporary fascism since 2013. Many publications, including ABC News, CBC News, NBC News, Wired, Maclean's Magazine, The Washington Post, University Affairs Magazine, Toxic Avenger Magazine, and Electronic Gaming Monthly, have interviewed her about her work. In 2016, CBC Ideas produced "The Dangerous Game: Gamergate and the 'Alt-Right,'" a 40-minute radio documentary about her dissertation research, which was broadcast nationally. Vossen is an award-winning public speaker and the co-author and co-editor of the books Feminism in Play (Palgrace Macmillan, 2018) and the former editor-in-chief of First Person Scholar.

      References