Skip to main content
punctum books

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

Chapter of: Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be(pp. 547–567)

Export Metadata

  • ONIX 3.1
    Cannot generate record: No publications supplied
  • ONIX 3.0
    • Thoth
      Cannot generate record: No publications supplied
    • Project MUSE
      Cannot generate record: No BIC or BISAC subject code
    • OAPEN
      Cannot generate record: Missing PDF URL
    • JSTOR
      Cannot generate record: No BISAC subject code
    • Google Books
      Cannot generate record: No BIC, BISAC or LCC subject code
    • OverDrive
      Cannot generate record: Missing Language Code(s)
  • ONIX 2.1
    • EBSCO Host
      Cannot generate record: No PDF or EPUB URL
    • ProQuest Ebrary
      Cannot generate record: No PDF or EPUB URL
  • CSV
  • JSON
  • OCLC KBART
  • BibTeX
  • CrossRef DOI deposit
    Cannot generate record: This work does not have any ISBNs
  • MARC 21 Record
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 Markup
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 XML
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
Metadata
TitleLudic Dissertations
Subtitle“Level 101” and Video Games as Playable Scholarship
ContributorJustin Wigard(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.53288/0441.1.25
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/
CopyrightJustin Wigard
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2025-07-25
Long abstractThis chapter traces a divide between critical and creative camps within game studies’ history, offering some accounting of where this stems from, along with how it has grown and shifted particularly in relation to other fields. Topics include the historical inaccessibility of game development knowledge, software, even hardware; successful attempts to bridge this gap, along with common roadblocks; and the academy’s resistance to consideration of alternative scholarship forms. Alongside this historiography, I work through the premise, methodology, and stakes of creating a short, playable video game as my dissertation: Level 101: A Video Game About Video Games. Drawing on other alternative dissertations (e.g. Sousanis, Carson, Visconti), my dissertation explores, explains, and interrogates the video game medium on several levels in order to understand the medium through a methodology of play. Ultimately, this chapter speculates on what future game studies may look like by embracing playable criticism as a mode of scholarly discourse, by embracing games as our mode of critical inquiry, not just our subjects of observation. It also acknowledges the laborious efforts involved with such endeavors, and offers potential paths forward for future game scholar-makers.
Page rangepp. 547–567
Print length21 pages
Contributors

Justin Wigard

(author)
Assistant Professor of 20th- and 21st-Century US Literature at University of North Dakota
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0124-5934
https://justinwigard.com/

Justin Wigard (he/him) is Assistant Professor of 20th- and 21st-Century US Literature at University of North Dakota, where he works and teaches in comics studies, game studies, and digital humanities. Along with Mitch Ploskonka, Justin is co-editor of Attack of the New B Movies: Essays on SYFY Original Films (McFarland Press, 2023). He has published games scholarship in Cinergie, Unbound, Vault of Culture, and various edited collections. His next project examines the long publishing history of the Indigenous character Turok across comics, games, and even animation.