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Game studies reading recommendations!
This will likely be of narrow interest, but here is an ongoing list of the academic game studies texts that I find interesting. My goal is to assemble a concise list of readings that could someday become an informal syllabus of sorts. It’s all in alphabetical order, by first name, for no particular reason.
Books:
- Who Are You? Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance Platform
Alex Custodio
- Video Games Have Always Been Queer
Bo Ruberg
- The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist: Why We Should Think Beyond Commercial Game Production
Brendan Keogh
- Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds
Celia Pearce
- Pilgrim in the Microworld: Eye, Mind, and the Essence of Video Skill
David Sudnow
- Mortal Kombat: Games of Death
David Church
- Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
Janet H. Murray
- The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games
Jesper Juul
- A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players
Jesper Juul
- Woke Gaming: Digital Challenges to Oppression and Social Injustice
Kishonna L. Gray
- Race, Gender, and Deviance in Xbox Live: Theoretical Perspectives from the Virtual Margins
Kishonna L. Gray
- Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Marsha Kinder
- Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games
Nick Dyer-Witheford, Greig de Peuter
Journal Articles:
- Who Gets to Be in The Guild? Race, Gender and Intersecting Stereotypes in Gaming Cultures
Cody Mejeur, Amanda Cote
https://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/333
- Tom Nook, Capitalist or Comrade?: On Nook Discourse and the Millennial Housing Crisis
Emma Vossen
https://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/309
- Janky Controls and Embodied Play: Disrupting the Cybernetic Gameplay Circuit
M. D. Schmalzer
https://gamestudies.org/2003/articles/schmalzer
- Playing the Panopticon: Procedural Surveillance in Dark Souls
Tom van Nuenen
https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015570967