| Title | Anthropology, Play Studies, and the Entanglements of Game Studies |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Two Roads Diverged in an Ivory Wood |
| Contributor | Laya Liebeseller(author) |
| Josh Rivers(author) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.53288/0441.1.19 |
| 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 | Laya Liebeseller and Josh Rivers |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2025-07-25 |
| Long abstract | Game Studies is a robust interdisciplinary field that has succeeded in incorporating myriad methodological and theoretical positionalities, yet there remain voices from the discipline’s past and its margins that go unheard or forgotten. In this article, we trace the history of The Association of the Study of Play (TASP), originally founded in 1973 as The Association of the Anthropological Study of Play (TAASP), and its entanglement with, as well as disentanglement from, the broader discipline of Anthropology in order to highlight the social mess à la John Law that is involved in the institutionalization of a set of research interests and thereby ‘legitimization’ of a field. In doing so, we speak to the inherent pitfalls involved in demarcating a discipline’s boundaries while challenging Game Studies scholars to consider the entanglements of their field. This tracing of the entanglements between TASP, Anthropology, Game Studies, and Play Studies aims to serve as a reminder that no discipline is immune from losing sight of its past and no field ought to forego searching the annals of its own history, both for what has been lost or purposefully ignored. |
| Page range | pp. 411–430 |
| Print length | 20 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
Laya Liebeseller (they/any) is a play scholar, game designer, and anthropologist. Their current design work focuses on imagining queer futures and horror in its relation to current social dynamics. In their academic work they study play during pandemic times. Since 2013, they have worked with live-action roleplay communities, tabletop roleplaying communities, and most recently alternate reality game communities. Their ongoing dissertation research details analog game communities, their abrupt transition online in 2020, and the continuing ramifications.
Josh Rivers (he/him) holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, at the time of publication, is a Research Manager at Xbox. His research interests reside at the nexus of queer theory, institutions, and video games. Past projects include his dissertation work, an ethnographic exploration of how the Icelandic cultural context of CCP Games impacted the manner in which the corporation architects ethics into the fabric of their massively-multiplayer online game, EVE Online, as well as an ethnographic analysis of queer community-making in Final Fantasy XIV.