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Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games, but any previously unpublished article focused on games and gaming is welcome.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

Game Analysis Reloaded

by Ida Katherine Hammeleff Jørgensen, Espen Aarseth

This special issue of Game Studies accompanies the Game Analysis Perspectives conference taking place at the IT University of Copenhagen on April 20th-23rd 2022.[more]
“Deathloop”: the Meta(modern) Immersive Simulation Game

by Hans-Joachim Backe

The article argues that "Deathloop" (Arkane Studios, 2021) exhibits aesthetic sensibilities associated with metamodernism (Vermeulen and van den Akker, 2010), by going beyond the conventions of the immersive sim genre and creating a hopeful reflection on the nature of digital games. [more]
The Digital Game Analysis Protocol (DiGAP): Introducing a Guide for Reflexive and Transparent Game Analyses

by Rowan Daneels, Maarten Denoo, Alexander Vandewalle, Bruno Dupont, Steven Malliet

This paper introduces the Digital Game Analysis Protocol (DiGAP), a flexible set of guidelines to perform and report on game analyses in a reflexive and transparent way, focusing on research rationale & objectives, researcher background, game selection, boundaries, analysis approach, coding techniques & data extraction and reporting & transparency. [more]
Sex and the City: A Sonic Analysis of Sex Work and Socioeconomic Class in Watch_Dogs 2

by Lyne Dwyer

This paper imports approaches from sound studies to explore soundwalking as part of a combined method for studying sex work and socioeconomic class in open world videogame cities. The author examines how sex is implicated in the way that soundscapes distinguish between differently classed neighbourhoods. [more]
Through the Ludic Glass: Making Sense of Video Games as Algorithmic Spectacles

by Sonia Fizek

This article explores what it means to analyze video games as "algorithmic spectacles" and how such a perspective changes the way we think about the digital image as one that demands its audience not only to look at it as a representation of something, but above all decode imaginary systems in action. [more]
Videogames and the Technicity of Ideology: The Case for Critique

by Justin Keever

This paper theorizes Ideology as a technology that links subjectivity to our technical being-in-the-world and produces “agency.” Ideology critique is used to analyze videogames as sites of production in which corporeal movement becomes legible as “agency” by subjecting such movement to a grid of computational, economic intelligibility. [more]
How to Interpret Digital Games? A Hermeneutic Guide in Ten Points, With References and Bibliography

by Michał Kłosiński

The article presents a guide describing steps for the hermeneutic interpretation of digital games. The procedure consists of ten points meant to inspire interpretative questions and formulate hypotheses. This guide is meant to test certain limits of hermeneutic methods applied to game analysis and provides a useful tool for students and scholars. [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.