The International Journal of Computer Game Research

Our Mission - To explore the rich cultural genre of games; to give scholars a peer-reviewed forum for their ideas and theories; to provide an academic channel for the ongoing discussions on games and gaming.

Game Studies is a non-profit, open-access, crossdisciplinary journal dedicated to games research, web-published several times a year at www.gamestudies.org.

Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games, but any previously unpublished article focused on games and gaming is welcome. Proposed articles should be jargon-free, and should attempt to shed new light on games, rather than simply use games as metaphor or illustration of some other theory or phenomenon.



Game Studies is published with the support of:

The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet)

The Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences

Blekinge Institute of Technology

IT University of Copenhagen

Lund University

If you would like to make a donation to the Game Studies Foundation, which is a non-profit foundation established for the purpose of ensuring continuous publication of Game Studies, please contact the Editor-in-Chief or send an email to: foundation at gamestudies dot org
Bewildered by the Apparatus: Toward Opacity in Video Game Production

by Chaz Evans

This essay compares Blizzard’s Overwatch and Somewhere by Studio Oleomingus to illustrate the limits of representation in mass-market video games and the importance of opacity in small-scale video game production. [more]
The “Git Gud” Fallacy: Challenge and Difficulty in Elden Ring

by Mateusz Felczak

This article offers an assessment of FromSoftware’s Elden Ring and its challenges in relation to the so- called “git gud” discourse present within the YouTube and Reddit gaming communities. The analysis implements a tool-assisted frequency analysis and implied designer theory. [more]
Elden Ring: Subverting Heroic Nostalgia 

by Oliver Rendle, Amber Pasternack

This article demonstrates how Elden Ring represents a shift away from the nostalgic heroism popularised by Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In the face of increasingly insistent socio-political crises, Elden Ring offers a timely critique of the glorification of the past and outdated notions of individualistic entitlement. [more]
Invitation to Party: MMORPG Heroism and the Metafictional Horrors of Social Interaction in Final Fantasy XIV

by Kevin Wong

This article examines how Final Fantasy XIV taps into some of the narrative possibilities unique to MMORPGs, given the genre’s extended time frame and focus on player sociality. It does so by tracing the diegetic arc, development history and player reception of the Tam-Tara Deepcroft questline -- the game’s most distinctive horror story. [more]
Commemorating Gendered Collective Trauma: Social Realism and Procedural Rhetoric in the Chinese Indie Game Laughing to Die

by Mayshu (Meixu) Zhan

This article explores how the Chinese indie game Laughing to Die (2022) uses procedural rhetoric and audiovisual design to critique gendered violence, navigating censorship while amplifying marginalized voices. It investigates the ways indie games in non-Western contexts resist ideological control and foster social realism through critical design. [more]

 

©2001 - 2025 Game Studies Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the journal, except for the right to republish in printed paper publications, which belongs to the authors, but with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.