Featured Books
Woke Gaming by ISBN: 9780295744186Date: 2018-11-01From #Gamergate to the 2016 election, to the daily experiences of marginalized perspectives, gaming is entangled with mainstream cultures of systematic exploitation and oppression. Whether visible in the persistent color line that shapes the production, dissemination, and legitimization of dominant stereotypes within the industry itself, or in the dehumanizing representations often found within game spaces, many video games perpetuate injustice and mirror the inequities and violence that permeate society as a whole. Drawing from groundbreaking research on counter and oppositional gaming and from popular games such as World of Warcraft and Tomb Raider, Woke Gaming examines resistance to problematic spaces of violence, discrimination, and microaggressions in gaming culture.
The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist by ISBN: 9780262545402Date: 2023-04-18The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist presents a much more accurate and nuanced picture of how the vast majority of videogame-makers work-a picture that reveals the diverse and precarious communities, identities, and approaches that make videogame production a significant cultural practice. Drawing on insights provided by over 400 game developers across Australia, North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Brendan Keogh develops a new framework for understanding videogame production as a cultural field in all its complexity. Part-time hobbyists, aspirational students, client-facing contractors, struggling independents, artist collectives, and tightly knit local scenes-all have a place within this model. But proponents of non-commercial game making don't exist in isolation; Keogh shows how they and their commercial counterparts are deeply interconnected and codependent in the field of videogame production.
What is Critical Game Studies?
Critical game studies analyzes and examines how games, play, and gaming cultures are shaped by the world.
Critical game studies considers how social, political, economic, and technological systems shape how games are created, consumed, and understood across contexts. Naturally centering how structures of power and oppression shape games and game culture, critical games studies brings together conversations from developers, critics, educators, researchers, and players, articulates how games exist in the world, and how they might be reimagined.
Find Critical Conversations about Games
Critical game conversations can be accessed in a variety of places, from blogs, to social media, to zines, to your own communities. The following list is an entryway to access freely available, critical conversations about games and game culture.
- Critical DistanceCritical Distance is a curated, searchable collection of current and historical roundups, roundtables, podcasts, and compilations on critical games discourse.
- First Person ScholarFirst Person Scholar seeks to provide "timely, rigorous, and accessible criticism that challenges all players to engage in what Mary Flanagan calls critical play."
- Haywire MagazineHaywire Magazine is an independent, bi-monthly games culture webzine and blog collective. It aims to "offer a shared space for critics outside the traditional publishing system."