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Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games, but any previously unpublished article focused on games and gaming is welcome.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
Reverse Engineering North Korea's Gaming Economy: Intellectual Property, Microtransactions, and Censorship

by Anonymous 22-01

The article demonstrates how the North Korean video game industry acts as a vector of propaganda in support of the socialist state, all the while relying on a capitalistic economic model. [more]
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Gods: Reading Night in the Woods through Mark Fisher

by Patrick Fiorilli

This article interpolates theorist Mark Fisher's critical vocabulary to present a close reading of an independent game that, by way of narrative and mechanics in equal parts quotidian and chthonic, stands out as a rare and explicit critique of Capital and its deleterious fallout in the rural United States. [more]
Play Your Own Way: Ludic Habitus and the Subfields of Digital Gaming Practice

by Milan Jaćević

This article presents the results of an exploratory study of two groups of players and their behavior in two custom digital games. It empirically develops the concepts of ludic habitus and generic subfields of practice, which account for how past player experiences manifest in the act of gaming practice in response to minute game design variations. [more]
Playing Against Real Time: Queer(ing) Temporalities in Bury me, my Love

by Elizabeth "Biz" Nijdam

Using a subjectless critique, this article examines the interactive narrative Bury me, my Love through discourses on queer time and migrant timescapes to evaluate how the interactive narrative’s engagement with the player’s real time communicates the temporal uncertainty and disruption of refugee time, thereby revealing migrants as queer subjects. [more]
Introducing Mad Studies and Mad Reading to Game Studies

by Cecilia Rodéhn

This paper aims to introduce mad studies as a theory and mad reading as a method for examining representations of madness in games. Through a mad reading of the videogame Outlast, mad studies is positioned as a shift of perspective from previous psy sciences-influenced research to a more inclusive way of studying madness in games. [more]

 

©2001 - 2022 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.