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The Separation of Analog and Digital Game Studies

Chapter of: Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be(pp. 491–510)

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Metadata
TitleThe Separation of Analog and Digital Game Studies
ContributorEvan Torner(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.53288/0441.1.22
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/
CopyrightEvan Torner
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2025-07-25
Long abstractThe essay speculates on underlying historical reasons for Game Studies’ relative neglect of non-digital or analog games in favor of digital games. Despite calls by leaders in the field to include non-digital games in their purview, the emphasis on digital games has taken root and produced a number of biases in research, hiring, teaching, and promotion. The reasons given for this oversight, despite a contemporary renaissance in analog games, are numerous. The 1980s Satanic Panic proved more a public-sphere detriment to hobbyist analog games than the 1990s anti-video-game-violence movement to video games. In its wake, the “gamer” identity was connected with a masculine-oriented first-person-shooter culture, over other gaming cultures. The sheer economic scale of video games cannot be ignored, and this scale was the point of argumentation for the foundation of many Games programs in higher education. Games have been cynically incorporated into these programs for purposes of outreach and enrollment, not real academic interest from administrations. Finally, film and media studies doubled down on its investment in moving images on screens over a more capacious understanding of media, which would otherwise include analog games.
Page rangepp. 491–510
Print length20 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Evan Torner

(author)
Associate Professor of German Studies at University of Cincinnati
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0326-9294

Evan Torner (he/him) is Associate Professor of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he directs the Undergraduate Program in German as well as the UC Game Lab. His work examines the processes and ideologies of cultural production, with a primary focus on the popular media of German-speaking countries as well as niche media of small-press tabletop role-playing games (RPG) and international live-action role-play (larp) communities. As a games scholar, he co-edited Immersive Gameplay (McFarland, 2012) with William J. White, co-founded and serves as an editor for the journal Analog Game Studies, and serves as associate editor for the International Journal of Role-Playing. As a game designer, he has had stand-alone and anthology work published in at least six different languages and written many RPG scenarios for Danish convention Fastaval, including the award-winning Save Some Light for Me (2019). As a community organizer, he co-founded the Golden Cobra Challenge, co-organized the 2017 US run of the queer Norwegian larp Just A Little Lovin’, and co-organized Origins Games on Demand.