Abstract
The article explores the limitations of the current scholarly game studies (GS) field. Its central presuppositions are (1) that there are certain attributes broadly understood as “GS” by those writing in or adjacent to the field; (2) that those attributes are historically rooted in an attempt to disassociate videogames from other types of electronic (and later—digital) media; and that (3) the preconditions that have led to this split are currently moot. In the first section of this article, I elaborate on these presuppositions through reading GS as a historically rooted field, centred around the videogame artefact. Following, by examining the notion of being ‘against’ something in academic work, I move to my central claim for the article: that maintaining this conception of GS is counterproductive to the state of contemporary videogames scholarship and that adopting a post-dualistic and post-humanities stance will greatly contribute to the broadening of the field. I break down this claim into three separate threads. Ontologically, I show that videogames are much closer to non-videogames than they used to be. Methodologically, I point out how re-integrating methodologies from outside the field is crucial to address the complex phenomena evolved in and around gaming. Politically, I highlight the importance of games in contemporary digital culture and show how boundary-work and gatekeeping might harm the attempt to make game scholarship engage with larger political issues. The article concludes with suggestions for a more inclusive and intermingled vision for the field, focusing on the notion of play rather than games.
Highlights
Tilting at WindmillsCritiquing an entire academic field is a fool’s errand
Author an article lashing at game studies as a whole, besides a vague hope of accruing many a-negative citations, in a perverse click-bait-like take on the academic game?
He points out to several particular reasons to this, the exodus of Media, Communication and Psychology scholars to other venues due to career and publishing limitations. He refers to this as the “pyrrhic victory” of game studies (GS): by legitimising the scholarship on games, it made easier for academic to pursue game research in broader disciplines. Regardless, he stipulates that: Game studies are today constituted by humanities, qualitative social sciences, and design scholars focused on games and play as cultural phenomena of meaning making, with homogenous epistemic cultures: some form of constructivism, pragmatism, or transformative critical theory, with a tendency toward qualitative or textual analysis. (Deterding, 2017 p. 533)
Summary
Critiquing an entire academic field is a fool’s errand. The central presuppositions of this article are: (1) that there are certain attributes broadly understood as “Game Studies” (GS) by those writing in or adjacent to the field; (2) that those attributes are historically rooted in an attempt to disassociate videogames from other types of electronic (and later—digital) media; and that (3) the preconditions that have led to this split are currently moot. I move to my central claim for the article: that maintaining this conception of GS is counter-productive to the state of the contemporary videogames scholarship. This article can be read as a doomed project, a catch-22 of academic hot takes: I write it as someone familiar with GS yet more by way of flirtation than actual embeddedness in the field.
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