New Books in Game Studies

Games That Haunt Us: Gothic Game Space as a Living Nightmare (Bloomsbury, 2026) is an examination of how the Gothic appears in game space to interrogate an area of substantial importance to contemporary games, with a focus on environments, bodies, and defining the Gothic in games. The Gothic, both as a literary and videogame genre has increased in prominence amongst literature, media, and culture scholars globally, as games studies becomes a more recognized and exciting field of study and as Gothic scholars find new ways to apply their works across emerging mediums. But why have Gothic games risen in popularity since 2010? What do players feel when they play these games? Why are themes surrounding fraught identities, mourning, and monstrosity gaining so much attention? Games That Haunt Us investigates the very nature of the Gothic and how video games provide new ways of connecting with the genre. The scholars in this collection look at why Gothic games are having their moment of popularity, the unsettling themes they evoke in unstable times, why we are fascinated with death and decay, theories surrounding body horror, and how games transform avatars and ourselves. Games That Haunt Us is arranged into three sequential themes: what makes a Gothic game; Gothic environments in game space; and how Gothic bodies are approached and utilized in ludonarratives. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Identity Building Among Role-Playing Gamers: Slaying Goblins in the Real World (Bloomsbury 2025), Heather Shay draws from 19 months of participant-observation and 20 in-depth interviews with players. She found that gamers derive significant social and psychological benefits from table-top role-playing games-not least in that players often feel the hobby makes them better people. Playing these games allow players to depict themselves as good, moral actors through their in-game actions as well as by making the game enjoyable for their fellow players in real life. Table-top role-playing games also serve a psychological function by allowing participants to take imaginary risks with their characters, which in turn make them feel more alive than their everyday experiences allow them to. As they pretend to be fictional characters in fictional worlds, players use these games to create identities that make their lives more meaningful. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology at William Penn University, where he focuses on the cultural and interpretive analysis of space, behavior, and identity. His work examines how built and designed environments shape social interaction, networks, and morality in everyday life across a range of settings. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023), Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022), and his most recent book Smalltown Urban: Performing the City in Rural America (Bloomsbury, under contract). His current research advances several interconnected projects, including the study of escape rooms as emotion-structured environments, the production of temporary urbanism in rural historic towns, and the ways students experience “hanging out” and feeling at home in higher education. He is also developing new work on the social organization and cultural meaning of rodeo. More broadly, his scholarship is united by an interest in how people actively produce meaning, attachment, and identity within specific spatial and temporal contexts. To learn more about his work, visit his personal website or Google Scholar, connect with him on Bluesky (@professorjohnst.bsky.social) or X (@ProfessorJohnst), or reach out directly via email ([email protected]). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This book offers a comprehensive and practical guide to Games User Research (GUR). Blending theory and hands-on experience, it walks readers through methods, tools, and techniques tailored to the real-world constraints of small and medium-sized game development studios to support them in delivering better player experiences. The book is divided into three parts. Part one introduces core concepts to game development, and explores gameplay experience, together with factors that influence player behaviour and decisions. The part ends by exploring the games user researcher's role and its common challenges. Next, part two presents readers with a 10-step end-to-end research process for a single study. From understanding stakeholders, designing methods, through recruiting participants, moderating sessions and analysing results, to delivering actionable insights. It provides guidance, real-life examples, and templates for integrating research in the game development practices, even when the budget and timeline are tight. Finally, part three provide readers with ready-to-use "recipes" for 10 research methods covering every phase of the game production cycle. Each recipe includes practical tips, pitfalls to avoid, and actual report excerpts. Whether you're an indie developer wanting to better understand your players, UX designer or researcher moving from application software to the world of games, this book will provide you with all the information on how to use research to gain the insights needed to create better player experiences. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tracing the cultural history of play--from Fluxus to SimCity Games and gamified activities have become ubiquitous in many adults' lives, and play is widely valued for fostering creativity, community, growth, and empathy. But how did we come to our current understanding of what it means to play? The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play charts the transformation of notions of playfulness beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, when a legion of artists, academics, and engineers developed new ways of theorizing, structuring, and designing ludic activity. Through examples ranging from experimental Fluxus games to corporate role-playing exercises and from the Easy Bake Oven to Tetris, The Impossible Reversal presents four styles of playfulness characteristic of the "era of designed play": the impossible reversal, which puts a player in a seemingly hopeless scenario they must upend with a tiny gesture; expending the secret, which involves silly rules that gain an obscure power and require players to embrace failure; simulated freedom, a satiric criticism of the ordinary world; and oblique repetition, a way of playing that stumbles toward unimaginable outcomes through simple, meaningless, and endlessly iterated acts. A unique genealogical account of play as both concept and practice, The Impossible Reversal illuminates how playfulness became essential for understanding cultural, technical, and economic production in the United States. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bounce: Balls, Walls, and Bodies in Games and Play (MIT Press, 2026) follows an array of bouncing balls through the histories of nonelectronic and electronic games, across the spectrum of play, game, and sport, and into the domains of physics, material science, animation, and computing. The book’s focus on bounce sidesteps the focus on play found in much of the game studies literature and broadens the scope of game history by spotlighting an interaction that is central to thousands of physical and digital games and sports. The book is divided into three sections that introduce different kinds of bounce to address the matter of the ball, the virtuality of bounce, and bounded spectacle: Ricochet in ancient tennis is set against modern tennis’s true bounce; squash and stretch in animation serves as a mirror of the pings and pongs of computer bounce; and the bounce feel in Electronic Art’s FIFA video game series and pok ta pok of the Mesoamerican game ulama elaborate the contrasting positions of these two mythological games. Carlin Wing is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Scripps College. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Despite its time travel mechanics, high stakes, and pulpy murder plot, Don’t Nod Entertainment’s 2015 adventure game Life is Strange stood out from most video games with its unapologetic emphasis on queer romance and friendships. Yet for all the game’s specificity, players around the world found something of themselves in its protagonist, Max Caulfield, a perceptive yet insecure teen photographer who discovers she has the ability to rewind time itself. Narrative designer Kaitlin Tremblay offers an intimate close reading in Life is Strange (Boss Fight Books, 2026) through the lenses of personal history, YA fantasy, identity formation, grief, and most of all, choice. If Max is “the sum of all the possible choices that she could make,” as Tremblay writes, then every decision we players make says something about who we are—and who we want to be. Kaitlin Tremblay is a writer and narrative designer. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A deep dive into the reflective modes of playfulness in video games. Slowness and reflectiveness have always been part of the video game medium, though they have been used very differently throughout its history. In Zen and Slow Games (MIT Press, 2026), Víctor Navarro-Remesal challenges the dominant discourse of action and quick reflexes in video games to offer an analysis of reflectiveness as a style in games, tracing its evolution from its origins to the present time. Two labels are of particular importance: the Zen modes (and later, Zen games) of the 2000s, especially during the Casual Revolution, and the slow games or slow gaming movement, which started in the 2010s and is ongoing today. The term “reflective games” is offered as an umbrella to bring together these and other labels to raise awareness and discussion of slow gaming. Víctor Navarro-Remesal is a media scholar specializing in games working at TecnoCampus, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The play element at the heart of our interactions with computers—and how it drives the best and the worst manifestations of the information age. Whether we interact with video games or spreadsheets or social media, playing with software shapes every facet of our lives. In Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture (MIT Press, 2023), Miguel Sicart delves into why we play with computers, how that play shapes culture and society, and the threat posed by malefactors using play to weaponize everything from conspiracy theories to extractive capitalism. Starting from the controversial idea that software is an essential agent in the information age, Sicart considers our culture in general—and our way of thinking about and creating digital technology in particular—as a consequence of interacting with software's agency through play. As Sicart shows, playing shapes software agency. In turn, software shapes our agency as we adapt and relate to it through play. That play drives the creation of new cultural, social, and political forms. Sicart also reveals the role of make-believe in driving our playful engagement with the digital sphere. From there, he discusses the cybernetic theory of digital play and what we can learn from combining it with the idea that playfulness can mean pleasurable interaction with human and nonhuman agents inside the boundaries of a computational system. Finally, he critiques the instrumentalization of play as a tool wielded by platform capitalism. Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, editor of “Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rushed through development in just a year to capitalize on the runaway success of its predecessor, Dragon Age II's writing team had only a few months to write an entire game before handing it off to voice acting and development. The result was an often ramshackle sequel featuring a smaller world, fewer companions, and repetitive quests—as well as some of the best characters, dialogue, and storytelling Bioware has ever put to screen. Based on new interviews with DA2 writers David Gaider, Jennifer Hepler, Lukas Kristjanson, as well as editor Karin Weekes, author Charlotte Reber tells the wild behind-the-scenes story of how a team at the top of their game made the best of an impossible assignment to create the series’s first fully voiced protagonist, its charmingly unreliable narrator, and a crew of unforgettable party members to bother, befriend, and romance. From DA2’s inception to its mishandled marketing campaign to its volatile reactions from players, Reber’s book raises a mug of ale to the game that was—and the game that might have been. Charlotte Reber is a fiction writer and gamer with a fascination for telling stories and playing games in unusual ways. She has a handful of degrees in creative writing and children's literature from Wellesley College and Simmons University, and lives in Vermont with her family, several cats, and a suspiciously low number of dragons. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section,  and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

PONG is one of the longest- and most consistently circulating video games. Released in 1972, it remains at our fingertips as Android or iOS app, hosted at freepong.org and the Internet Archive, and even released as A Tiny Game of Pong for the Apple Watch. Despite its simplicity and ubiquity, Atari’s PONG encapsulates far more than the history of a video game and an iconic game company. King PONG: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions (MIT Press, 2026) is the first book dedicated to an unassuming game that changed the world. Through the prisms of product positioning, market development, and category creation, Professor Raiford Guins answers the question of why Atari’s inaugural product succeeded and why it endures.The author of Game After and Atari Design, and an excavator of the “Atari landfill” in New Mexico, Professor Guins brings us a unique history that reconsiders the launch of Atari’s PONG through the lens of the company’s business practices. He follows the young Silicon Valley startup from its early days of positioning its new product within the existing coin-op amusement industry to its establishment of a consumer industry for home video games—a story of remarkable market development innovation. Written with a passion for video games and a historian’s insight, the book animates the business exploits of one of the fastest growing and most influential companies ever. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Videogame culture is obsessed with development. But gaming is still widely associated with wasted time, squandered potential and backwards attitudes. Even as the average gamer grows older, the medium remains dogged by the same old question: when will videogames grow up? The Gamergate movement lent this question renewed urgency, launching attacks on feminists and “social justice warriors” that have come to be seen as a catalyst for the emergence of the alt-right and election of Donald Trump. Artgames after GamerGate (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) explores how makers of independent and experimental videogames responded to Gamergate and its aftermath. Analysing key titles released between 2015 and 2018, it shows how artgame designers used assets, characters and mechanics scavenged from classic franchises like Zelda, Street Fighter and Sonic the Hedgehog to review gaming's history, reframe their own biographies and link gaming’s growing pains to a broader sense of disorientation, disillusionment and decline in American culture. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly cost-free game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do video games and mental health intersect from the perspectives of psychology and game design? In recent years, the topic of mental health has gained tremendous importance for the games industry, affecting both the applied and entertainment games sectors. The former draws from established practices in diagnostics, digital medicine, therapy, and self-help to develop innovative and accessible tools; the latter follows in the tradition of games d'auteur, addressing the topic of mental health from a personal perspective. The contributors to Video Games and Mental Health: Perspectives of Psychology and Game Design (Transcript Publishing, 2024)(also in Open Access) inspect current trends and future perspectives related to these phenomena to inform the work of psychologists and game designers. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building SimCity explores the history of computer simulation by chronicling one of the most influential simulation games ever made: SimCity. As author Chaim Gingold explains, Will Wright, the visionary designer behind the urban planning game, created SimCity in part to learn about cities, appropriating ideas from traditions in which computers are used as tools for modeling and thinking about the world as a complex system. As such, SimCity is a microcosm of the histories and cultures of computer simulation that engages with questions, themes, and representational techniques that reach back to the earliest computer simulations. Gingold uses SimCity to explore a web of interrelated topics in the history of technology, software, and simulation, taking us far and wide—from the dawn of programmable computers to miniature cities made of construction paper and role-play. An unprecedented history of Maxis, the company founded to bring SimCity to market, the book reveals Maxis’s complex relations with venture capitalists, Nintendo, and the Santa Fe Institute, which shaped the evolution of Will Wright’s career; Maxis’s failure to back The Sims to completion; and the company’s sale to Electronic Arts. Building SimCity boasts a treasure trove of visual matter to help bring its wide-ranging subjects to life, including painstakingly crafted diagrams that explain SimCity’s operation, the Kodachrome photographs taken by Charles Eames of schoolchildren making model cities, and Nintendo’s manga-style “Dr. Wright” character design, just to name a few. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: The Last of Us (Playstory Press, 2025) explores the psychological themes at the heart of The Last of Us franchise. Authors from media, culture, and fandom studies explore how trauma, grief, morality, survival, and revenge shape the story’s characters and influence their choices. This book examines these themes across both video games (The Last of Us and The Last of Us 2) and HBO television adaptation, focusing on their unique approaches to telling the same emotionally resonant stories. This includes close readings of key characters - such as Ellie and Joel - and considers how their experiences reflect broader human struggles. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On September 26, 1998, a video game made its debut in Japanese arcades. It was over seven feet tall and weighed just over 900 pounds. It had no characters, no story, no quests to fulfill or bosses to beat. What it had was a metal platform on which you were supposed to stand, put your feet into the right place at the right time, and dance. Join two music critics, long-ago players, and Sota Fujimori fans as they take you on the astonishing journey through the artists, influences, and innovators of Dance Dance Revolution, a game two and a half decades in the making and still going -- in homes, arcades, and expos. From its unexpected appearance to its social heyday to its reappearance in the American market, DDR has taken many forms -- not all of them sanctioned by Konami. It has spawned community, creativity, competition, lawsuits, 1,000+ songs that range from wacky to tacky to beautiful, and yes, a lot of dancing. While we were all leaning on the back bar, working up a sweat, DDR managed to change the world. Jessica Doyle has a Ph.D. in city planning and a love for writing about the connections between pop music, globalization, and the built environment. She cares for her family in the Atlanta suburbs. Jordan Ferguson is the author of J Dilla’s Donuts, #93 in the 33 1/3 series of record guides, and co-host of the Geekdown, a podcast about fandoms. He lives and works in Toronto, Canada. Find him online @jordan_ferguson. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An immersive journey into the author's lifelong attachment to video games, revealing how they shape us, shatter us, and give us the courage to start again Of Floating Isles: On Growing Pains and Video Games (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025) is a captivating collection of personal essays that unpack the mystifying and often intimate roles that video games play in our lives. Interweaving memoir with cultural critique, Kawika Guillermo explores the subtle yet transformative influences of video games in shaping them as a queer and mixed-race grandson of two preachers; as a traveller, immigrant, and games scholar; and as a father, caregiver, and mourner. Through a mixture of fanciful musing, rigorous inquiry, and unflinching self-reflection, Of Floating Isles reframes the gamer's retreat from others not as social isolation, but as a quest for a different community, one where they feel seen, heard, and understood. This deep-seated longing to belong, Guillermo suggests, forms the imaginative worlds of video games and the floating isles they conjure. By exploring their own lifelong attachment to video games, Guillermo shows how games can spark rage, confusion, and the desire to escape, but these emotions are not necessarily bad - they are the growing pains that many young people must work through. So too can games provide reflective realms to dwell, to imagine, and to build spaces for queer, trans, racialized, and neurodiverse groups. Envisioning games as forms of poetic interaction, Of Floating Isles boldly conveys their truth-telling powers: their ability to offer guidance in times of loss and hardship, and their power to reveal the oppressive mechanisms of our "real" world. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be (Punctum Books, 2025) offers a first-of-its-kind reflection on how game studies as an academic field has been shaped and sustained. Today, game studies is a thriving field with many dedicated national and international conferences, journals, professional societies, and a strong presence at conferences in disciplines like computer science, communication, media studies, theater, visual arts, popular culture, and others. But, when did game studies start? And what (and who) is at the core or center of game studies? Fields are defined as much by what they are not as by what they are, and their borderlands can be hotly contested spaces. In this anthology, scholars from across the field consider how the boundaries of game studies have been established, codified, contested, and protected, raising critical questions about who and what gets left out of the field. Over more than two dozen chapters and interviews with leading figures, including Espen Aarseth, Kishonna Gray, Henry Jenkins, Lisa Nakamura, Kentaro Matsumoto, Ken McAllister, and Janet Murray, the contributors offer a dazzling array of insightful provocations that address the formation, propagation, and cultivation of game studies, interrogating not only the field’s pasts but its potential futures and asking us to think deliberately about how academic fields are collectively built. Alisha Karabinus (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Studies at Grand Valley State University.  Carly A. Kocurek (she/her) is Professor of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology.  Cody Mejeur (they/them) is Assistant Professor of Game Studies at University at Buffalo, SUNY.  Emma Vossen (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Game Studies in the Department of Digital Humanities at Brock University, Canada.  Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Julien Mailland, Associate Professor of Media Management, Law, and Policy at The Media School of Indiana University Bloomington, about his book, The Game That Never Ends: How Lawyers Shape the Videogame Industry. The book examines key moments, beginning in the 1970s, in which legal decisions influenced how the videogame industry worked, how law shaped business and technology strategy and vice versa. The conversation touches on the book’s three major themes: intellectual property, freedom of speech, and international law. The pair also discuss Mailland’s new project, a geopolitical history of the best-selling videogame of all time, Tetris. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

African American males are confronted with formidable barriers in their pursuit of quality education, resulting in stark disparities in academic performance, economic opportunities, and social outcomes. Despite numerous educational initiatives striving for parity, African American males persistently bear the brunt of the highest rates of suspensions, expulsions, and dropout rates, surpassing all other demographic groups. Educational environments often fail to acknowledge and integrate the cultural and social needs of Black males, viewing them as "problems" rather than recognizing their immense potential for academic and leadership success. The prevalence of negative stereotypes in media, particularly in video games, exacerbates societal biases, portraying African American males as inherently violent and criminal. These representations contribute to implicit biases that affect perceptions and treatment in real-life scenarios. The systemic issues within the education system, coupled with socioeconomic factors, result in African American males being underrepresented in advanced placement and gifted education programs. This underrepresentation limits their opportunities for higher education and professional advancement.  Confronting these challenges necessitates a comprehensive approach that encompasses the creation of inclusive educational environments, the eradication of systemic racism, and the promotion of positive representations of African American males in media. By acknowledging and fostering the potential of Black males, society can strive to reduce disparities and cultivate a more equitable and just education system that recognizes and celebrates their academic and professional achievements. African American Males and Video Gamesexplores the perspectives of four African American male college students aged 18 to 21 on the impact of video games on their academic growth and development. The participants, all maintaining a GPA of 3.0 or higher, shared their experiences with teachers, video games, and coping mechanisms. This qualitative approach allowed for a rich understanding of the participant's experiences and the role of video games in their academic and mental well-being. Video games emerged as a significant coping tool for the participants, providing a mental escape from academic and social pressures. The games allowed them to engage in competitive and creative activities, fostering a sense of accomplishment and reducing stress. For example, games like NBA 2K21 and Forza Horizon 4 enabled them to explore alter egos and interests in a virtual space, offering entertainment and a sense of community. African American Males and Video Gamesis a critical text for exploring alternatives in providing a quality education experience for young African American males. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Grant Us Eyes is a book-length close reading of Bloodborne by literary critic Nathan Wainstein (LA Review of Books, Cartridge Lit, American Book Review). Grant Us Eyes situates the game’s oft-discussed difficulty in relation to a much longer tradition of difficult art – surrealist painting, the modernist novel, etc. Wainstein probes the difficulty of Bloodborne’s fragmented narrative, the difficulty of its graphical and aural glitches, the difficulty of the philosophical problems it poses, and the difficulty of performing close analysis itself within a medium that still doesn’t have established, agreed-upon methods of interpretation in the way literature and film do. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dom Ford joins Jana Byars to talk about Mytholudics: Game and Myth (DeGruyter Brill, 2025). Games create worlds made of many different elements, but also of rules, systems and structures for how we act in them. So how can we make sense of them? Mytholudics: Games and Myth lays out an approach to understanding games using theories from myth and folklore. Myth is taken here not as an object but as a process, a way of expressing meaning. It works to naturalise arbitrary constellations of signs, to connect things in meaning. Behind the phrase ‘just the way it is’ is a process of mythologization that has cemented it.  Mytholudics lays out how this understanding of myth works for the analysis of games. In two sections each analysing five digital games, it then shows how this approach works in practice: one through the lens of heroism and one through monstrosity. These ask questions such as what heroic mythology is constructed in Call of Duty? What do the monsters in The Witcher tell us about the game’s model of the world? How does Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice weave a conflict between Norse and Pictish mythology into one between competing models of seeing mental illness? This method helps to see games and their worlds in the whole. Stories, gameplay, systems, rules, spatial configurations and art styles can all be considered together as contributing to the meaning of the game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The World is Born From Zero is an investigation into the relationship between video games and science fiction through the philosophy of speculation. Cameron Kunzelman (Mercer University, Macon, Georgia, USA) argues that the video game medium is centered on the evaluation and production of possible futures by following video game studies, media philosophy, and science fiction studies to their furthest reaches. Claiming that the best way to understand games is through rigorous formal analysis of their aesthetic strategies and the cultural context those strategies emerge from, Kunzelman investigates a diverse array of games like The Last of Us, VA-11 Hall-A, and Civilization VI in order to explore what science fiction video games can tell us about their genres, their ways of speculating, and how the medium of the video game does (or does not) direct us down experiential pathways that are both oppressive and liberatory. Taking a multidisciplinary look at these games, The World is Born From Zero offers a unique theorization of science fiction games that provides both science fiction studies and video game studies with new tools for thinking how this medium and mode inform each other. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a beautiful day in the village, and you are a horrible goose, ready to wreak charming havoc on the weary locals. You'll ruin their gardens, invade their pub, and terrorize their children. What kind of scoundrels would make such a devious game? Before the critical acclaim, the tweets from celebrities, the major awards, the memes, the fan art, and the legion of players, Untitled Goose Game was just the goofy dream of House House, four friends in Melbourne, Australia. What began with a photo of a goose and the joking caption "Let's make a game about this" transformed into one of the wittiest and most stylish games of its generation. Through interviews with the creators and their co-conspirators, journalist and developer James O'Connor tells the story of how this indie megahit came to be, revealing how the team succeeded by evolving their friendship into an art practice, contributing to the wider Australian game development scene, trusting their own good taste, and never, ever naming their game. James O'Connor has been writing about games for most of his adult life. His work has been featured on IGN, GameSpot, Edge, and beloved Australian magazine institutions Hyper and PC PowerPlay. He has also worked as an academic, teacher, game developer, and in a handful of other roles around games. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In The Computer Always Wins: A Playful Introduction to Algorithms through Puzzles and Strategy Games (MIT Press, 2025), Elliot Lichtman will teach you some of computer science’s most powerful concepts in a refreshingly accessible way: exploring them through word games, board games, and strategy games you already know. Learn recursion by playing tic-tac-toe, efficient search through puzzle games like sudoku and Wordle, and machine learning by way of the playground classic rock-paper-scissors. Finish the book, and you’ll come away with not only a deeper understanding of these foundational programming techniques but also a new appreciation for the amazing feats that can be accomplished using simple, readable code. Elliot Lichtman started teaching online classes in computer science when he was a freshman in high school. Small classes quickly grew into a series of larger and longer offerings, and from those, this book was born. Elliot is currently a junior at Yale University. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ultima and World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game (Amherst College Press, 2024) is the first scholarly book to focus exclusively on the long-running Ultima series of computer role-playing games (RPG) and to assess its lasting impact on the RPG genre and video game industry. Through archival and popular media sources, examinations of fan communities, and the game itself, this book historicizes the games and their authors. By attending to the salient moments and sites of game creation throughout the series’ storied past, authors Carly A. Kocurek and Matthew Thomas Payne detail the creative choices and structural forces that brought Ultima’s celebrated brand of role-playing to fruition. This book first considers the contributions of series founder and lead designer, Richard Garriott, examining how his fame and notoriety as a pioneering computer game auteur shaped Ultima’s reception and paved the way for the evolution of the series. Next, the authors retrace the steps that Garriott took in fusing analog, tabletop role-playing with his self-taught lessons in computer programming. Close textual analyses of Ultima I outline how its gameplay elements offered a foundational framework for subsequent innovations in design and storytelling. Moving beyond the game itself, the authors assess how marketing materials and physical collectibles amplified its immersive hold and how the series’ legions of fans have preserved the series. Game designers, long-time gamers, and fans will enjoy digging into the games’ production history and mechanics while media studies and game scholars will find Ultima and World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game a useful extension of inquiry into authorship, media history, and the role of fantasy in computer game design. Carly A. Kocurek is professor of digital humanities and media studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is the author of Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minnesota, 2015) and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (Bloomsbury, 2017).Matthew Thomas Payne is associate professor of ?lm, television, and theatre at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Playing War: Military Video Games after 9/11 (NYU Press, 2016), and is a co-editor of How to Play Video Games (NYU Press, 2019) and Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games (Routledge, 2009). Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can technology creates new possibilities for transgender people? How do trans experiences, in turn, create new possibilities for technology? Trans Technologies, (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Oliver L. Haimson, explores how and why mainstream technologies often exclude or marginalize transgender users. Trans Technologies describes what happens when trans people take technology design into their own hands. Dr. Haimson, whose research into gender transition and technology has defined this area of study, draws on transgender studies and his own in-depth interviews with more than 100 creators of technology—including apps, games, health resources, extended reality systems, and supplies designed to address challenges trans people face—to explain what trans technology is and to explore its present possibilities and limitations, as well as its future prospects.Dr. Haimson surveys the landscape of trans technologies to reveal the design processes that brought these technologies to life, and to show how trans people often must rely on community, technology, and the combination of the two to meet their basic needs and challenges. His work not only identifies the role of trans technology in caring for individuals within the trans community but also shows how trans technology creation empowers some trans people to create their own tools for navigating the world. Articulating which trans needs and challenges are currently being addressed by technology and which still need to be addressed; describing how trans technology creators are accomplishing this work; examining how privilege, race, and access to resources impact which trans technologies are built and who may be left out; and highlighting new areas of innovation to be explored, Trans Technologies opens the way to meaningful social change. Our guest is: Dr. Oliver Haimson, who is an Assistant Professor at University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI) where he directs the Community Research on Identity and Technology (CRIT) Lab, and is affiliate faculty with the Digital Studies Institute (DSI) and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies (CATS). He is a recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and a Henry Russel Award. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: More Than A Glitch Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters Raising Them Public Scholarship and Feminist Communications Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get ready for the fight of your life in Go Straight: The Ultimate Guide to Side-Scrolling Beat-'Em-Ups (Bitmap Books, 2022). Written by award-winning author Dave Cook, and opening with a foreword by legendary Double Dragon creator, Yoshihisa Kishimoto, this odyssey through bare-knuckle nostalgia features over 200 games spanning 37 years. At over 450 pages, Go Straight takes a deep dive into familiar beat-'em-up legends like Double Dragon, Golden Axe, Final Fight and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as well as delving into the more obscure brawlers you just have to try, like Denjin Makai, Shadow Force and Gaia Crusaders. As well as reviewing each game, Go Straight features hints, tips and guides to levels and enemies. The book is packed full of screenshots, sprites and level maps, all lovingly curated and presented to our usual high standards. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How players evoke personal and subjective meanings through a new theory of player response.  In The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully (MIT Press, 2025), Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber explore the experiences we have when we play games: not the outcomes of play or the aesthetics of formal game structures but the ephemeral and emotional experiences of being in play. These are the private stories we tell ourselves as we play, the questions we ask, and our reactions to the game’s intent. These experiences are called “readings” because they involve so many of the aspects of engaging with literary, cinematic, and other expressive texts. A game that is experienced in such a way can be called “well-read,” rather than, or as well as, “well-played,” because of the personal, interpretive nature of that experience and the way in which it relates to our reading of texts of all kinds. The concept of the “well-read game” exists at the convergence of literary, media, and play theories—specifically, the works of Louise Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory, Brian Upton’s situational game theory, Tracy Fullerton’s playcentric design theory, and Bernie DeKoven’s well-played game philosophy. Each of these theories, from their own perspective, challenges notions of a separate, objective, or authorial meaning in a text and underscores the richness that arises from the varied responses of readers, who coauthor the meaning of each text through their active engagement with it. When taken together, these theories point to a richer understanding of what a game is and how we might better value our experiences with games to become more thoughtful readers of their essential meanings. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're pleased to welcome Dr. Peter Krapp, the author of Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation (MIT Press, 2024), to the New Books Network.  In Computing Legacies, Peter Krapp explores a media history of simulation to excavate three salient aspects of digital culture. Firstly, he profiles simulation as cultural technique, enabling symbolic work and foregrounding hypothetical literacy. Secondly, he positions simulation as crucial for the preservation of cultural memory, where modeling, emulation, and serious play are constitutive in how we relate to our mediated history. And lastly, despite suggestions that we may already live in a simulation, he interrogates how simulation can serve as critique of the computer age. In tracing our digital heritage, Computing Legacies elucidates inflection points where quantitative data becomes tractable for qualitative evaluations: modeling epidemics for scientific study or entertainment, emulating older devices, turning numerical calculations into music, conducting espionage in virtual worlds, and gamifying higher education. Simulation, this book demonstrates, is pivotal not only to high-tech research and to archives, museums, and the preservation of digital culture but also to our understanding of what it is to live and work under the technical conditions of computing. Dr. Peter Krapp is a Professor of Film & Media Studies, English, and Music at UC-Irvine. Your host is Dr. Adam Kriesberg, Assistant Professor at the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Rise of the Roguelite: Inside a Gaming Phenomenon (CRC Press, 2025) analyzes the wave of roguelite games that have appeared over the past decade, putting them in historical context, informing readers about their development out of and relation to the roguelike genre that inspired them. The book includes discussions of the historical development and significance of roguelites, critical perspectives on topics such as gender, politics, philosophy, analyses of the influence of roguelikes on roguelites, and discussions of design and mechanics. This book will appeal to those wishing to study and learn more about the roguelites, games studies students and researchers, and game designers interested in this genre. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. 150 million lifetime downloads. Advertise on the New Books Network. Watch our promotional video. Learn how to make the most of our library. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. One out of every five American adults gambled on sports in 2023, amounting to $121 billion, more than they spent on movies and video games combined. The rise of online sports gambling—the immediacy of betting with your phone, the ability of the companies to target users, the dynamic pricing and offers based on how good or bad of a gambler you are—has produced a public health crisis marked by addiction and far too many people, particularly young men, gambling more than they can afford to lose. Under intense lobbying from the gaming industry, states have created a system built around profit for sportsbooks, not the well-being of players. In Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom (Columbia Global Reports, 2025), historian Jonathan D. Cohen lays out the astonishing emergence of online sports gambling, from sportsbook executives drafting legislation to an addicted gambler confessing their $300,000 losses. Sports gambling is here to stay, and the stakes could not be higher. Losing Big explains how this brewing crisis came to be, and how it can be addressed before new generations get hooked. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, will be out in the fall of 2025. You can reach Paul at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zombies, Consumption, and Satire in Capcom's Dead Rising (Routledge, 2024) explores the relationship between video games and satire through an in-depth examination of Capcom’s Dead Rising series, which alludes to, recontextualises, and builds upon George A. Romero’s filmic satire on American consumer culture, Dawn of the Dead. Proposing a taxonomy of videoludic satire, this book details how video games can communicate satire through their virtual environments, their characters, their audio, the way they frame the passage of time, and the outcomes of in-game choices that their players can make. By applying this taxonomy to the Dead Rising series, this book presents a compelling case for how video games can function as instruments for social commentary and indicators of ideological tensions. This unique and insightful study will interest students and scholars of media studies, video game studies, satire, visual culture, and zombie studies. Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Studies and Gamedesign at Neu-Ulm University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at TITEL kulturmagazin, radio host of “Replay Value”, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Game streamers and live commentators are producing increasingly comprehensive analyses of gameplay, yet scholarship still tends to flatten the experiential media of video games into text for close reading. By shifting focus toward the immersiveness of video games, Playthrough Poetics: Gameplay as Research Method (Amherst, 2024) makes the case for gameplay as a necessary, alternate method. Contributors to this volume engage widely with the activity of play through autoethnographies, meta-analyses of self-broadcasting, new procedural methods like gamespace soundwalking, as well as the affective aspects of games research.  In doing so, they model new possibilities for academic players and gamers alike. Rigorous scholarship meets cultural practice in this innovative, multi-modal edited collection that includes video essays and offers transcripts of the playthroughs themselves. Readers (and viewers) will come away with a toolkit of models, case studies, and conceptual frameworks for analyzing video games through gameplay. This volume is a fresh return to the joy of play: the poetics of games as contemporary forms of storytelling and interactivity. With contributions from Ashlee Bird, Brandon Blackburn, Milena Droumeva, Kishonna Gray, Robyn Hope, Ben Scholl, Maria Sommers, Ashlyn Sparrow, Christine Tran, and Aaron Trammell. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The secret insights of economics, translated for the rest of us. Should I buy or rent? Do I ask for a promotion? Should I tell people I’m pregnant? What salary do I deserve? Should I just quit this job? Common anxieties about life are often grounded in economics. In an increasingly win-lose society, these economic decisions—where to work, where to live, even how to live—have a way of feeling fixed and mistakes terminal. Daryl Fairweather is no stranger to these dynamics. As the first Black woman to receive an economics PhD from the famed University of Chicago, she saw firsthand how concepts of behavioral economics and game theory were deployed in the real world—and in her own life—to great effect.  Hate the Game: Economic Cheat Codes for Life, Love, and Work (U Chicago Press, 2025) combines Fairweather’s elite knowledge of these principles with her singular voice in describing how they can be harnessed. Her great talent, unique among economists, is her ability to articulate economic trends in a way that is not just informative, but also accounts for life’s other anxieties. In Hate the Game, Fairweather fixes her expertise and service on navigating the earliest economic inflection points of adult life: whether to go to college and for how long; partnering, having kids, both, or neither; getting, keeping, and changing jobs; and where to live and how to pay for it. She speaks in actionable terms about what the economy means for individual people, especially those who have the sneaking suspicion they’re losing out. Set against her own experiences and enriched with lessons from history, science, and pop culture, Fairweather instructs readers on how to use game theory and behavioral science to map out options and choose directions while offering readers a sense of control and agency in an economy where those things are increasingly rare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The vast majority of people who stream themselves playing videogames online do so with few or no viewers. In Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch (MIT Press, 2025) Dr. Mia Consalvo, Dr. Marc Lajeunesse, and Dr. Andrei Zanescu investigate who they are, why they do so, and why this form of leisure activity is important to understand. Unlike the esports athletes and streaming superstars who receive the lion's share of journalistic and academic attention, microstreamers are not in it for the money and barely have an audience. In this, the first book dedicated to the latter group, the authors gather interviews from dozens of microstreamers from 2017 to 2019 to discuss their lives, struggles, hopes, and goals. For readers interested in livestreaming, and Twitch in particular, the book rethinks the medium's history through accounts of the everyday uses of webcams, with particular attention to notions of liveness and authenticity. These two concepts have become calling cards for the videogame livestreaming platform and underlie streamer motivations, the construction of their practices (whether casual, serious, or anywhere in between), and the complex “metas” that take shape over time. The book also looks at the authors' own practices of livestreaming, focusing on what can be gained through experiencing the lived reality of the practice. Finally, the authors explain how Twitch's platform (studied from 2017–2023) informs how streamers structure their every day and how corporate ideologies bleed into real-world spaces like TwitchCon. This book is available open-access via the MIT Press website. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah Stang, editor, joins Jana Byars to talk about Monstrosity in Games and Play (Amsterdam UP, 2024). Monsters fascinate us. From ancient folklore to contemporary digital games, they are at the core of the stories we tell. They reflect our fears, deepest desires, and the monstrosity hidden within ourselves. Monsters hold a mirror to our contemporary society and reveal who we truly are.  This edited collection examines monsters and monstrosity in games and play. Monsters are a key feature of most games: we fight, kill, and eat them--and sometimes, we become them. However, monsters in games and play are not only entertaining but also a reflection of the monstrosity of our world. In this book, twenty-two scholars explore how themes such as mental health, colonialism, individualism, disability, gender, sexuality, racism, and exclusion are reflected in the monsters we interact with in games, play, and our daily lives both online and offline. Monstrosity in Games and Play is recommended to readers interested in the monstrous in contemporary game cultures and their surrounding societies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For decades, Marvel Comics' superhero group the Avengers have captured the imagination of millions, whether in comics, multi-billion dollar grossing films or video games. Similar to the chronology of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Avengers video games first started with titles driven by single characters, like Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor and Captain America. Over time, the games grew to include more and more heroes, culminating in playing experiences that featured the Avengers assembled.  The Avengers in Video Games (McFarland, 2021) is the first-ever book assessing the video games starring "Earth's Mightiest Heroes." Featured games span consoles and platforms, from popular PlayStation and Xbox titles to an arcade game in danger of being lost to time. All video games are covered in depth, with each entry including game background and a detailed review from the author. Some game entries also include behind-the-scenes knowledge from the developers themselves, providing exclusive details on the Marvel video game universe. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you had some free time and a Windows PC in the 1990s, your mouse probably crawled its way to Minesweeper, an exciting watch-where-you-click puzzle game with a ticking clock and a ton of “just one more game” replayability. Originally sold as part of a “big box” bundle of simple games, Minesweeper became a cornerstone of the Windows experience when it was pre-installed with every copy of Windows 3.1 and decades of subsequent OS updates. Alongside fellow Windows gaming staple Solitaire, Minesweeper wound up on more devices than nearly any other video game in history. Sweeping through a minefield of explosive storylines, Journalist Kyle Orland reveals how Minesweeper caused an identity crisis within Microsoft, ensnared a certain Microsoft CEO with its addictive gameplay, dismayed panicky pundits, micromanagers, and legislators around the world, inspired a passionate competitive community that discovered how to break the game, and predicted the rise of casual gaming by nearly two decades. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Games with a medieval setting are commercially lucrative and reach a truly massive audience. Moreover, they can engage their players in a manner that is not only different, but in certain aspects, more profound than traditional literary or cinematic forms of medievalism. However, although it is important to understand the versions of the Middle Ages presented by these games, how players engage with these medievalist worlds, and why particular representational trends emerge in this most modern medium, there has hitherto been little scholarship devoted to them. The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism (Boydell & Brewer, 2024) explores the distinct nature of medievalism in digital games across a range of themes, from the portrayal of grotesque yet romantic conflict to conflicting depictions of the Church and religion. It likewise considers the distinctions between medievalist games and those of other periods, underlining their emphasis on fantasy, roleplay and hardcore elements, and their consequences for depictions of morality, race, gender and sexuality. Ultimately the book argues that while medievalist games are thoroughly influenced by medievalist and ludic tropes, they are nonetheless representative of a distinct new form of medievalism. It engages with the vast literature surrounding historical game studies, game design, and medievalism, and considers hundreds of games from across genres, from Assassin's Creed and Baldur's Gate to Crusader Kings and The Witcher series. In doing so, it provides a vital illustration of the state of the field and a cornerstone for future research and teaching. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her research examines race, video games, and the political economy of the video game industry. Srauy’s work appears in various academic journals including Social Media + Society, First Mondays, Games and Culture, and Television and New Media. She teaches courses on identity, race/racism, digital media production, and video game studies/production. Prior to academia, Srauy worked for over a decade in the high-tech industry. Her experience in that field includes municipal wireless networks, open-source technology, and streaming media systems. About the book:  Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit (Routledge, 2024) offers a detailed and much needed examination of how systemic racism in the US shaped the culture, market logic, and production practices of video game developers from the 1970s until the 2010s. Offering historical analysis of the video game industries (console, PC, and indie) from a critical, political economic lens, this book specifically examines the history of how such practices created, enabled, and maintained racism through the imagined 'gamer.' The book explores how the cultural and economic landscape of the United States developed from the 1970s through the 2000s and explains how racist attitudes are reflected and maintained in the practices of video games production. These practices constitute a 'Vicious Circuit' that normalizes racism and the centrality of an imagined gamer identity. It also explores how the industry, from indie game developers to larger profit-driven companies, responded to changing attitudes in the 2010s, where racism and lack of diversity in games was frequently being noted. The book concludes by offering potential solutions to combat this 'Vicious Circuit'. A vital contribution to the study of video games that will be welcomed by students and scholars in the fields of media studies, cultural studies, game studies, critical race studies, and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can experimenting with game design increase our chances of finding a cure for cancer? Cancer is crafty, forcing us to be just as clever in our efforts to outfox it—and we’ve made excellent progress, but is it time for a new play in the playbook?  In Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery (MIT Press, 2025), Jeff Yoshimi proposes a new approach to fighting an increasingly exhausting war. By putting the work of cancer research into the hands of nonspecialists, Yoshimi believes, we can accelerate the process of outgaming the disease once and for all. Gamers have already used “serious games” to discover new galaxies, digitize ancient texts, decode viruses, and solve theoretical problems in neuroscience. Cancer is a multilayered threat, and our best bet at overcoming it is via more minds working in concert. Gaming Cancer is an instruction manual for engineering games that motivate users to strain and sweat to find cancer cures. It integrates game design with research in cancer biology, data visualization techniques, and developments in cognitive science and AI while remaining sensitive to the limitations of citizen science and ethical concerns. Yoshimi sees in cutting-edge game technology the potential to educate and empower people to outwit cancer, an indirect route to richer science literacy that draws on the boundless resources of the mind. This book offers anyone invested in beating this seemingly intractable disease a concrete playbook that combines real science with creative vision in an effort to defeat the boss monster, cancer. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since its debut in 1993, Magic: The Gathering has grown to be an influential collectible card game, allowing its community of loyal fans to duel each other while enjoying its lore and compelling narratives. Beyond the Deck (McFarland, 2023) focuses on Magic from a variety of disciplinary approaches. Authors explore the innovative game design of Magic, the ludic differences between analog and digital play, how players interact with the MTG market and one another, professional play versus casual play and the many ways Magic has impacted gaming. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are witnessing the collapse of the postwar consensus, the implosion of the caring society. In times of social, economic, and political insecurity, egotism spreads. Many popular videogames follow a logic of consumerist self-gratification and self-empowerment. Deeply political, videogames contribute to the transformation of players, causing a need for change in what game designers do and how and why they do it. Awareness of the socio-political and cultural contexts can be promoted by the mainstream videogame market for critical active participation. A New Virtual Ethics: Interconnectedness and Interrelationality in Videogames (McFarland, 2024) focuses on the need for individual self-realization in Western societies and how it manifests in the various dimensions of videogames. Videogames remind us that we can never be isolated in a world defined by complexity and interlaced systems. Connecting videogames and new Neo-Kantian virtual ethics builds upon notions of agency, mutual respect, and obligation. This addresses humans in their entirety as thinking, acting, and feeling agents through engagement, immersion, and involvement. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Narrative strategies, immersion, interaction, participation, identification, multimodality, characters and the connection between physical and fictional or virtual worlds: the fields of inquiry into the complex relationship between live performance and video games are numerous and diverse. For the first time, Live Performance and Video Games: Inspirations, Appropriations and Mutual Transfers (Transcript Publishing, 2024) brings together international researchers and artists to explore this relationship in a variety of essays. The contributors to this volume focus on reciprocal inspirations, appropriations and transfers applied by theatre artists, game designers and researchers. They analyze several artistic forms such as VR performance, immersive theatre, speedrunning or game theatre. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World (Verso, 2024) by Marijiam Did asks if videogames can achieve egalitarian goals instead of fuelling hyper-materialist, reactionary agendas. Combining cultural theory and materialist critiques with accessible language and personal anecdotes, industry insider Marijam Did engages both novices and seasoned connoisseurs. From the innovations of Pong and Doom to the intricate multiplayer or narrative-driven games, the author highlights the multifaceted stories of the gaming communities and the political actors who organise among them. Crucially, the focus also includes the people who make the games, shedding light on the brutal processes necessary to bring titles to the public. The videogame industry, now larger than the film and music industries combined, has a proven ability to challenge the status quo. With a rich array of examples, Did argues for a nuanced understanding of gaming’s influence so that this extraordinary power can be harnessed for good. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Tabletop Revolution: Gaming Reimagined in the 21st Century (McFarland, 2023) is an overview of the ongoing revolution in tabletop gaming design and culture, which exploded to unprecedented levels of vitality in the 21st century, leading to new ways of creating, marketing, and experiencing a game. Designers have become superstars, publishers have improved quality control, and the community of players is expanding. Most importantly, new and old players have started engaging with the games in a more meaningful way. The book explores the reasons for these changes. It describes how games have begun to keep players engaged until the end. It analyzes the ways in which traditional mechanics have been reimagined to give them more variety and complexity, and reviews the unprecedented mechanics found and perfected. Very interesting is the exploration of how games have performed novel tasks such as reducing conflict, fostering cooperation, creating aesthetic experiences, and telling stories. The book is aimed at scholars, dedicated and aspiring fans, and game designers who want to expand their toolbox with the most up-to-date innovations in the profession. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun. The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most video games were made. But although it sold at least twice as many units as other home computers of its time, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, or Commodore Amiga, it is strangely forgotten in many computer histories. In Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer (MIT Press, 2024), Jesper Juul argues that the C64 was so popular because it was so versatile, a machine developers and users would reinvent again and again over the course of 40 years. First it was a serious computer, next a game computer, then a computer for showcasing technical brilliance (graphical demos using the machine in seemingly impossible ways), then a struggling competitor, and finally a retro device whose limitations are now charming. The C64, Juul shows, has been ignored by history because it was too much fun. Richly illustrated in full color, this book is the first in-depth examination of the C64's design and history, and the first to integrate US and European histories. Containing interviews with Commodore engineers as well as an insightful look at C64 games, music, and software, Too Much Fun will appeal to those who used a Commodore 64, those interested in the history of computing and video games and computational literacy, or just those who wish their technological devices would last longer. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An analysis of the game engine Unreal through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, as well as a critique of the platform studies framework itself. In this first scholarly book on the Unreal game engine, James Malazita explores one of the major contemporary game development platforms through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, revealing how Unreal produces, and is produced by, broader intersections of power. Enacting Platforms: Feminist Technoscience and the Unreal Engine (MIT Press, 2024) takes a novel critical platform studies approach, raising deeper questions: what are the material and cultural limits of platforms themselves? What is the relationship between the analyst and the platform of study, and how does that relationship in part determine what “counts” as the platform itself? Malazita also offers a forward-looking critique of the platform studies framework itself. The Unreal platform serves as a kind of technical and political archive of the games industry, highlighting how the techniques and concerns of games have shifted and accreted over the past 30 years. Today, Unreal is also used in contexts far beyond games, including in public communication, biomedical research, civil engineering, and military simulation and training. The author's depth of technical analysis, combined with new archival findings, contributes to discussions of topics rarely covered in games studies (such as the politics of graphical rendering algorithms), as well as new readings of previously “closed” case studies (such as the engine's entanglement with the US military and American masculinity in America's Army). Culture, Malazita writes, is not “built into” software but emerges through human practices with code. Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Titel kulturmagazin, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How does analyzing video games as hypertexts expand the landscape of research for video game rhetoricians and games studies scholars? This is the first book to focus on how hypertext rhetoric impacts the five canons of rhetoric, and to apply that hypertext rhetoric to the study of video games. It also explores how ludonarrative agency is seized by players seeking to express themselves in ways that game makers did not necessarily intend when making the games that players around the world enjoy. Hey! Listen!: Hypertext Rhetoric and The Legend of Zelda (McFarland, 2024) takes inspiration from The Legend of Zelda, a series which players all over the world have spent decades deconstructing through online playthroughs, speedruns, and glitch hunts. Through these playthroughs, players demonstrate their ability to craft their own agency, independent of the objectives built by the makers of these games, creating new rhetorical situations worthy of analysis and consideration. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Eglin talks with Jana Byars about The Gambling Century: Commercial Gaming in Britain from Restoration to Regency (Oxford UP, 2023). Gambling captures as nothing else the drama of the "long eighteenth century" between the age of religious wars and the age of revolutions. The society that was confronted with games of chance pursued as commercial ventures also came to grips with unprecedented social mobility, floated by new wealth from new sources created fortunes from trade in sugar, cotton, ivory, silk, tea, or enslaved human beings. Likewise, play for money was prominent in the public imagination as money itself, deployed through an ever expanding and ever more sophisticated range of mechanisms, increasingly invaded public awareness, as when prospective spouses in period fiction were rated in terms of annual income as if they were municipal bonds. Similarly, the archetypal figure of the gambler captured the imagination of the public in fiction, media, and politics. At the same time, new interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - encouraged and bankrolled by those in power - fostered a new and unprecedented appreciation for mathematical probability and its applications, opening the possibility that games of chance might be pursued as a profitable commercial venture.  The Gambling Century focuses like no previous work on those who enabled, facilitated, and profited from gambling, as well as on efforts to regulate or outlaw it. Using extensive archival material as well as printed sources, it follows its subjects from the Court to the coffeehouse, to private clubs and "at homes" in townhouses, all of which prefigure that quintessentially modern gambling space, the casino. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices