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Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be

  • Edited by Alisha Karabinus, Carly A. Kocurek, Cody Mejeur, Emma Vossen

Published on July 25, 2025 by punctum books

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Pages
780 pages
Languages
English
Dimensions
5⤫8 in.
ISBN (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-68571-200-6 (Paperback)
ISBN (PDF)
ISBN: 978-1-68571-201-3 (PDF)
DOI
DOI: 10.53288/0441.1.00(opens in new tab)
LCCN
LCCN: 2025936417
BISAC subject codes
BISAC: GAM013000, SOC002010
Thema subject codes
THEMA: JBCC, KNTV, UGG

Historiographies of Game Studies offers a first-of-its-kind reflection on how game studies as an academic field has been shaped and sustained. Today, game studies is a thriving field with many dedicated national and international conferences, journals, professional societies, and a strong presence at conferences in disciplines like computer science, communication, media studies, theater, visual arts, popular culture, and others. But, when did game studies start? And what (and who) is at the core or center of game studies? Fields are defined as much by what they are not as by what they are, and their borderlands can be hotly contested spaces.

In this anthology, scholars from across the field consider how the boundaries of game studies have been established, codified, contested, and protected, raising critical questions about who and what gets left out of the field. Over more than two dozen chapters and interviews with leading figures, including Espen Aarseth, Kishonna Gray, Henry Jenkins, Lisa Nakamura, Kentaro Matsumoto, Ken McAllister, and Janet Murray, the contributors offer a dazzling array of insightful provocations that address the formation, propagation, and cultivation of game studies, interrogating not only the field’s pasts but its potential futures and asking us to think deliberately about how academic fields are collectively built.

Contents

  1. Frontmatter (1–15)

  2. Introduction: What Game Studies Has Been, What It Could Be (17–44)

    Alisha Karabinus, Carly A. Kocurek, Cody Mejeur, Emma Vossen

  3. The Past, Present, and Future of Game Studies: An Interview with Janet H. Murray (47–65)

    Bianca Batti

  4. Young Scholars, and Old Debates: Why the Ludology Versus Narratology “Debate” Cannot Be Forgotten (67–93)

    Emma Vossen

  5. Why Are You Being an Ass on the Internet? GamesNetwork, Communities, and History-Making (95–119)

    Jennifer deWinter, Gillian Smith

  6. Definitions and Misunderstandings in Game Studies: An Interview with Espen Aarseth (121–145)

    Cody Mejeur

  7. Redirecting Ludification: Dutch Game Studies and the Neoliberalization of Academia (147–170)

    Dennis Jansen

  8. What Video Games Have Taught Us: Two Decades of Gaming and Learning (171–193)

    Kirk M. Lundblade

  9. Video or Digital? Exploring the Use of Terminology and Connected Approaches in the History of Game Studies (195–225)

    Jasper van Vught, Joris Veerbeek

  10. Of Parents and Siblings, Disciplines and Debates: Game Studies as Media Culture Studies and the Possibility of Schools of Thought (227–247)

    Tobias Unterhuber

  11. Queering the Game Studies Canon: A Polemical Reading of Roger Caillois’s "Man, Play and Games" (251–272)

    Bo Ruberg

  12. Ken S. McAllister: Innovation, Collaboration, Humanities? Yes! (273–290)

    Judd Ethan Ruggill

  13. Re-Historicizing Game Studies with C.L.R. James (293–306)

    Cameron Kunzelman, Michael Lutz

  14. A Story or a Machine? Revisiting the Work of Bohuslav Blažek, the Czechoslovak Pioneer of Game Studies (307–329)

    Jaroslav Švelch

  15. On the Political Function of Triflers and Spoilsports in Game Studies (331–354)

    Liam Mitchell

  16. My Mother Was a Jump Rope Rhyme: A Game Studies That Might Have Been (355–368)

    Carly A. Kocurek

  17. Reflecting on the Evolution of Intersectional Game Studies: An Interview with Lisa Nakamura (369–388)

    Sarah Christina Ganzon

  18. Unveiling the Path: Seeing and Doing Game Studies from a Sámi Perspective (389–409)

    Outi Kaarina Laiti

  19. Anthropology, Play Studies, and the Entanglements of Game Studies: Two Roads Diverged in an Ivory Wood (411–430)

    Laya Liebeseller, Josh Rivers

  20. Autoethnographic Denial: The Disavowal of Game Studies’ Most Fundamental Methodology and the Struggle for Its Realization (433–466)

    Stephanie C. Jennings

  21. Down on Luck: Examining the Pervasive Merit-Based Logics in Game Studies (467–490)

    Michael Anthony DeAnda

  22. The Separation of Analog and Digital Game Studies (491–510)

    Evan Torner

  23. Navigating Public History and Game Preservation: In Conversation with the Computerspielemuseum (511–523)

    Racquel M. Gonzales

  24. Archiving Play, Archiving Histories: Preserving Games Hardware, Software, and Experience (525–545)

    Lee W. Hibbard

  25. Ludic Dissertations: “Level 101” and Video Games as Playable Scholarship (547–567)

    Justin Wigard

  26. Navigating a Complex Space: An Interview with Henry Jenkins (579–608)

    betsy brey

  27. Is It All Just Cultural Studies? One Scholar’s Journey into Media and Game Studies (609–630)

    Adrienne Shaw

  28. Turns in Game Studies: An Interview with Kishonna L. Gray (631–652)

    victoria l. braegger

  29. Confessions of a Game Studies Insider: “Our” Field Needs to Do Better (653–670)

    Christopher A. Paul

  30. “Publish in English or It’s Game Over”: On English Linguistic Monopoly in Game Studies (671–696)

    Samuel Poirier-Poulin

  31. The Influence of Aesthetics and Semiotics on Game Research in Japan: An Interview with Matsumoto Kentaro (697–715)

    Douglas Schules

  32. “There’s Nothing Written about It”: Disciplinarity, Regionality, and the Ghosts Haunting Game Studies (717–734)

    Alison Harvey

  33. Definitions, Boundaries, and Issues Week: An Analysis of University Games Courses (735–760)

    Alisha Karabinus

  34. Contributor Biographies (761–774)

Biographies

  • Alisha Karabinus

    (Editor) (opens in new tab)

    Grand Valley State University

    Alisha Karabinus (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Studies at Grand Valley State University. She researches the intersections between games and rhetoric, and is currently at work on a project exploring professionalization and hobbies.

  • Carly A. Kocurek

    (Editor) (opens in new tab)

    Illinois Institute of Technology

    Carly A. Kocurek (she/her) is Professor of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She researches the cultural history of video games with an emphasis on gender identity. Her books include Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minnesota, 2015) and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (Bloomsbury, 2017). Currently, she is researching the history and impact of the games for girls movement as part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation. Her articles have appeared in outlets including The American Journal of Play, Feminist Media Histories, Game Studies, Velvet Light Trap, and others.

  • Cody Mejeur

    (Editor) (opens in new tab)

    University at Buffalo, State University of New York

    Cody Mejeur (they/them) is Assistant Professor of Game Studies at University at Buffalo, SUNY. Their work uses games to theorize narrative as an embodied and playful process that constructs how we understand ourselves, our realities, and our differences. They have published on games pedagogy, gender and queerness in games, and video game narratives and player experiences, and they are currently the game director for Trans Folks Walking, a narrative game about trans experiences. They are Director of the Amatryx Gaming Lab & Studio at UB and work with the LGBTQ Video Game Archive on preserving and visualizing LGBTQ representation. They are editor at One Shot: A Journal of Critical Games & Play, and served as Diversity Officer for the Digital Games Research Association.

  • Emma Vossen

    (Editor) (opens in new tab)

    Brock University

    Emma Vossen(opens in new tab) (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Game Studies in the Department of Digital Humanities at Brock University, Canada. Her work focuses on the intersections of politics, identity, and technology, particularly in the context of digital games. She has been an outspoken and ongoing voice in the discussion around online radicalization, digital violence, and contemporary fascism since 2013. Many publications, including ABC News, CBC News, NBC News, Wired, Maclean’s Magazine, The Washington Post, University Affairs Magazine, Toxic Avenger Magazine, and Electronic Gaming Monthly, have interviewed her about her work. In 2016, CBC Ideas produced “The Dangerous Game: Gamergate and the ‘Alt-Right,'” a 40-minute radio documentary about her dissertation research, which was broadcast nationally. Vossen is an award-winning public speaker and the co-author and co-editor of the books Feminism in Play (Palgrace Macmillan, 2018) and the former editor-in-chief of First Person Scholar.

Awards

  • IPPY

    Short Listed · 2026

Additional resources

Historiographies of Game Studies(opens in new tab)

New Books Network / Rudolf Thomas Inderst

audio

Interview with the editors

Usage metrics

Genres

  • Cultural Studies+Critical Theory
  • Humanities+University
  • Media+Technology

Keywords

  • academic institutions
  • communication
  • game studies
  • historiography
  • history
  • media studies
  • play