| Title | Confessions of a Game Studies Insider |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | “Our” Field Needs to Do Better |
| Contributor | Christopher A. Paul(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.53288/0441.1.29 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/historiographies-of-game-studies-what-it-has-been-what-it-could-be/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Christopher A. Paul |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2025-07-25 |
| Long abstract | I am extraordinarily lucky to be able to study games as a key part of my job. And the level of security I have in that job presents me with an obligation to write and speak about the limitations in our field and the harm our systems and structures have done to the people trying to study games and the knowledge our field could have produced. The pool of games that have been the focus of most studies are limited. The ways of examining games is expanding, but is still dominated by a narrow group of analytical modes and approaches. The field, with few exceptions is overwhelmingly white. The types of players examined are limited, especially in considerations of age, as the old and young are left out of most analysis. All of these factors limit what game studies is, while opening up space to create what game studies could be. Game studies needs more people, more different kinds of people, looking at different games from different perspectives. This chapter is an attempt to articulate the stakes of what games studies has been and point in a direction we should go. |
| Page range | pp. 653–670 |
| Print length | 18 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
Christopher A. Paul (he/him) is Professor of Communication and Media at Seattle University. He has published Optimizing Play: Why Theorycrafting Breaks Games and How to Fix It (MIT Press, 2025), Free-to-Play: Mobile Video Games, Bias, and Norms (MIT Press, 2020), Real Games: What’s Legitimate and What’s Not In Contemporary Videogames (MIT Press, 2019, with Mia Consalvo), and The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture Is the Worst (University of Minnesota Press, 2018).