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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:

  1. Who Are You? Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance Platform
    Alex Custodio
  2. Video Games Have Always Been Queer
    Bo Ruberg
  3. The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist: Why We Should Think Beyond Commercial Game Production
    Brendan Keogh
  4. Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds
    Celia Pearce
  5. Pilgrim in the Microworld: Eye, Mind, and the Essence of Video Skill
    David Sudnow
  6. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death
    David Church
  7. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
    Janet H. Murray
  8. The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games
    Jesper Juul
  9. A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players
    Jesper Juul
  10. Woke Gaming: Digital Challenges to Oppression and Social Injustice
    Kishonna L. Gray
  11. Race, Gender, and Deviance in Xbox Live: Theoretical Perspectives from the Virtual Margins
    Kishonna L. Gray
  12. Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
    Marsha Kinder
  13. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games
    Nick Dyer-Witheford, Greig de Peuter

Journal Articles:

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. Janky Controls and Embodied Play: Disrupting the Cybernetic Gameplay Circuit
    M. D. Schmalzer
    https://gamestudies.org/2003/articles/schmalzer
  4. Playing the Panopticon: Procedural Surveillance in Dark Souls
    Tom van Nuenen
    https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015570967