| Title | What Video Games Have Taught Us |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Two Decades of Gaming and Learning |
| Contributor | Kirk M. Lundblade(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.53288/0441.1.08 |
| 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 | Kirk M. Lundblade |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2025-07-25 |
| Long abstract | This chapter examines boundary formation between game studies and games and learning in the past two decades. Beginning with the (re)formation of the field in the early 00s, the chapter focuses on the work of James Paul Gee–author of the pivotal monograph What Video Games Have Taught Us: Two Decades of Gaming and Learning–during this early period. A thorough examination of this scholarship suggests a necessary recontextualization of the popular narrative of decline, decay, and retreat offered in recent assessments of game studies. Examination of Gee’s work and that of others during this period reveals less of a genuine move towards transdisciplinary scholarship and instead a more instrumental form of multidisciplinarity rooted in a shared desire for scholarly legitimacy; this multidisciplinary argument relies on a utopian framing to bind the scholars on either side of the nascent boundary in this early effort. The now-distinct separation between game studies and games and learning is revealed via close reading of this early scholarship’s attitudes towards capitalism and its role in the future of games. Finally, this work argues that–instead of a narrative of decline and failure–the evolution of game studies during this period is best characterized as a critical maturation which seeks to reflexively examine the conceptual flaws in the field’s early nods to cross-disciplinary work. |
| Page range | pp. 171–193 |
| Print length | 23 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
Kirk M. Lundblade (he/him) received his PhD from the Texts & Technology program at the University of Central Florida, and he is currently a postdoctoral researcher and applications programmer for the RICHES (Regional Initiative for Collecting History, Experiences, and Stories) project in the Department of History there. His research broadly examines how digital historical games shape and are shaped by popular conceptions of history, with his dissertation examining how the Crusader Kings community’s discrete constituencies engage with the cyclical (re)production and remediation of popular historical knowledge. His work has been published in the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds as well as the Foundations of Digital Games proceedings.