Blogging for CTA

While I intended to use this blog to post my thoughts on games culture, my new gig at Crikey means I’ll be prolifically blogging there instead. I’ll use this from time-to-time for things that don’t fit at Crikey, but for all general videogames-related material stop by over there instead.

Access Melbourne talk

dangolding — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:49:38 +0000

About two weeks ago I gave a talk for the Access Melbourne program to year nine students experiencing what university life is like. My session was supposed to illustrate a lecture scenario, where the kids could see what kinds of material they might end up studying.

Access talk

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Videogame Studies: An introductory reading list

dangolding — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 06:28:29 +0000

I’ve been asked by quite a few people recently for some entry points for reading in videogame studies. I therefore thought that some sort of guide would be helpful. Feel free to leave suggestions for additions, subtractions, etc on this post and I’ll endeavour to update this thing fairly regularly.

This is not an attempt at a canon, nor is it a recommendation of the quality of any entries in the list. It is also not meant to be exhaustive in any way – in fact, it is intentionally limited to just a handful of key texts. It is simply a rough survey of entry points into the literature of videogame studies.

Formative Works

Aarseth, Espen. 1997. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press.

Bogost, Ian. 2007. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Juul, Jesper. 2005. Half-real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.

Murray, Janet. 1997. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: Free Press.

Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman. 2004. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge: MIT Press.

The Ludology/Narratology Divide

Frasca, Gonzalo. 2003. “Ludologists Love Stories, Too: Notes from a Debate That Never Took Place.” Proceedings of Levelup 2003, DIGRA.

Frasca, Gonzalo. 2003. “Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology.” The Video Game Theory Reader. New York: Routledge. 221-236.

Jenkins, Henry. 2004. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. Cambridge: MIT Press. 118-130.

Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, and Pat Harrigan, eds. 2004. First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.

Game Studies ‘Pre-history’

Callois, Roger. 1961. Man, Play and Games. New York: The Free Press.

Crawford, Chris. 1987. The Art of Computer Game Design. Berkeley: McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media.

Huizinga, Johann. 1949. Homo Ludens, A Study of the Play Element in Culture. London: Routledge.

Suits, Bernard. 2005 (originally 1978). The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. Peterborough Ont.: Broadview Press.

New Directions

Bogost, Ian, and Nick Montfort. 2009. Racing the Beam: The Atari 2600 Computer System. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Bogost, Ian, Simon Ferrari, and Bobby Schweizer. 2010. Newsgames: Journalism at Play. Cambridge, MA,: MIT Press.

Kirkpatrick, Graeme. 2011. Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game. Manchester: University of Manchester Press.

Juul, Jesper. 2010. A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Nitsche, Michael. 2009. Video Game Spaces: Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Worlds. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.

Game Studies Journals

Game Studies

Games and Culture

Eludamos

Dan Golding