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Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games, but any previously unpublished article focused on games and gaming is welcome.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

Just Games

by Espen Aarseth

From the next issue Game Studies actively welcomes articles on games in general, and will not be limited to an empirical focus on digital games. It is time to recognize that the study of games cannot and should not be segregated into digital and non-digital; and that for most of the field, in practice, as well as in theory, this has never been so.[more]
Watching People Is Not a Game: Interactive Online Corporeality, Twitch.tv and Videogame Streams

by Sky LaRell Anderson

This article examines Twitch.tv in order to reveal the design strategies it employs to direct awareness to the presence of players and viewers. Specifically, I describe the elements that direct attention toward humans, persons and personalities outside of games. [more]
Glory to Arstotzka: Morality, Rationality, and the Iron Cage of Bureaucracy in Papers, Please

by Jess Morrissette

This article examines how ludic and thematic elements coalesce in Papers, Please to replicate the monotony of bureaucratic work, trapping players in Weber's iron cage of bureaucracy. Moreover, by offering opportunities to deviate from administrative protocols, the game highlights the inherent tension between morality and bureaucratic rationality. [more]
Abstracting Evidence: Documentary Process in the Service of Fictional Gameworlds

by Aaron Oldenburg

This paper looks at a strategy for creating content and gameplay using documentary processes such as interviews and on-location evidence collection for games that abstract that content with varying levels of fictionalization. [more]
An Enactive Account of the Autonomy of Videogame Gameplay

by Jukka Vahlo

In this paper, the phenomenon of videogame gameplay is analyzed from an enactive view of social cognition. It is asserted that videogame gameplay arises as an autonomous organization in the reciprocal dynamics between at least one social agent and a responsive game. This autonomy is argued as both original and irreducible to its constituents. [more]

Call for Papers

Call For Articles - Game Studies Special Issue: “Queerness and Video Games: New Critical Perspectives on LGBTQ Issues, Sexuality, Games, and Play”

by Guest Editors - Ruberg & Phillips

This special issue of Game Studies seeks to explore new critical perspectives on queerness and video games, building from existing queer game studies work and broadening the current scope of the paradigm by inviting intersectional voices, highlighting underrepresented LGBTQ identities, and exploring the political implications of game studies work. [more]

 

©2001 - 2017 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.