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Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games, but any previously unpublished article focused on games and gaming is welcome.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
“The Mythical Mass Market”: Design, Habit and the Invention of the American Mobile Gamer

by Logan Brown

This article provides a history of the American mobile game industry’s attempts to define their consumer base around what I call the mobile habitué, a new subjectivity defined by an increasingly habitual, strongly affective relationship with the cell phone as an extension of the self. [more]
Playing with Gender: Women in Assassin's Creed Odyssey

by Lina Eklund, Anna Foka, Johan Vekselius

This study explores the doing of gender, when playing historical video games, as a two-way dialogue between history and contemporaneity. We argue that the position of video game players, with contemporary values and experiences of doing gender and ‘player choice’ as a core video game value, impacts historical reconstructions available. [more]
Do Gender Stereotypes Affect Gaming Performance? Testing the Stereotype Threat Effect in Video Games

by Elisabeth Holl, Gary Lee Wagener, André Melzer

While negative stereotypes of female gamers still exist, mixed research results do not confirm that females play worse than males per se. Although the stereotype threat effect can explain why female gamers might feel pressured and perform worse, our studies did not indicate such an effect. Gender performance rather depended on the game or genre. [more]
Identifying with Lack: The Enjoyment of Nonbelonging in Her Story

by Benjamin Nicoll

Drawing on an analysis of Her Story (2015), this article argues that the failure to identify with on-screen referents in videogame play is unconsciously satisfying because it reproduces the constitutive failure of subjectivity. [more]
A Concise Introduction to the Study of Analepses in Video Games: Approaches and Possibilities through The Last of Us: Part II

by Alexis F. Viegas

This essay explores the understudied topic of analepses in video games. It analyzes existing studies, proposes a potential research approach through narratology and explores the implementation of both playable and non-playable past sequences in The Last of Us: Part II. [more]

Book Reviews

Review: Playing the Middle Ages: Pitfalls and Potential in Modern Games

by Dunstan Lowe

Playing the Middle Ages: Pitfalls and Potential in Modern Games (2023) edited by Robert Houghton. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN-10: 1350242888. 283 pp. [more]

 

©2001 - 2024 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.