“The future of media studies is game studies”

ABSTRACT

Game studies, as a subfield of media and/or communication studies, has occupied an odd place within critical media studies. Those who are invested in critical theory of video game studies understand the importance of the subfield, those who do not study or play video games tend to think of the topic as “other”—as distinct from other theoretical compartments of media studies work. Yet, as the games scholars in this invited issue explain, games are now a central component in the convergence of media content, media platforms and technologies, and media audiences. Theories and methods that help us understand games and their culture are therefore increasingly relevant to understanding wider media production and use. The goal with this special issue, therefore, was to offer a variety of approaches and specifics that would be helpful to scholars both within and beyond game studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Game studies
• media studies
• convergence
• creative industries
• critical theory
• media theory
• platforms
• audiences

Introduction

Upon seeing the title of this special issue—“The future of game studies”—we imagine that many readers immediately decided that the topic was not relevant to their research. Game studies, as a subfield of media and/or communication studies, has occupied an odd place within the larger discipline.¹ It has been relegated to a kind of theoretical outsider status. While quantitative studies and media effects work on video games are often treated as more naturalized to the topic, theory work in video game studies often speaks within an echo chamber. Largely speaking, those who are invested in critical theory of video game studies understand the importance of the subfield, those who do not play video games tend to think of the topic as “other”—as distinct from other theoretical compartments of media studies work. Having attended many game-specific panels at non-game conferences, we have seen this time and again: the same speakers talking to the same audiences with only rare interest from beyond game studies.

This special issue on “The future of game studies” is meant, however, to address scholars who largely sit outside of the aforementioned echo chamber. It is meant to pull in a broader discussion about why video games should matter in scholarship that goes beyond the material specificity of the media in question to apply it more broadly to critical theory scholarship. To do so we asked some of the best emerging scholars we know to both showcase their work and to position the importance of game studies as a way to understand our current media landscape more broadly. To those of you who have paid little attention to the growth in this subfield, this special issue is here to suggest that you stop ignoring it and see how it can enrich and advance your own work.

There are several reasons why critical theory in video game studies is at the forefront of understanding and explaining shifts in a variety of media content and media platforms, which we will detail next.

The first—and most obvious reason—is the intersection of the industrial components of media industries and the increasing consolidation between large media companies. While critical game scholars such as David Nieborg have been doing important work in this area for the past decade, much more scholarship needs to be done (Nieborg, 2015; Nieborg & Poell, 2018). Hollywood and tech giants have maintained ambivalence towards video games and how lucrative they might be, swooping in and out of ownership within the last decade. For example, in 2016, Disney transitioned from making video games back to exclusively making television and film content after having attempted an entry to games many years before (Gilbert, 2016). In 2021, Microsoft announced that it would purchase Activision Blizzard despite years of claims of harassment and abusive practices (Chalk, 2022). Amazon bought the game livestreaming platform Twitch in 2014 for nearly a billion dollars (Gittleson, 2014), a service that during the pandemic saw record-breaking numbers of viewers, with January 2022 statistics showing more than 2 billion hours of viewing in that month alone (Chase, 2022). Netflix, formerly a CD-rental-by-mail service for films and television shows, is now a global streaming giant as well as a major original content producer, having won seven Academy Awards in 2021, the most of any studio (Whitten, 2021). In 2018 it released the Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch, an interactive film that received mixed reviews but generated enormous buzz about the potential for mainstream interactive entertainment. Netflix also continues to create content related to games such as The Witcher series, and has announced it will start making games in 2022 (Liao, 2022). And the game platform Unity, initially used to create game worlds like Pokémon Go, Pillars of Eternity, and Hearthstone, is now being used (via its Cinemachine tool) by film companies to make movies like Disney‘s Sonder and backgrounds for its 2019 film The Lion King (Riva, 2018). The point here is that video games and their tools are integral parts of the broader media industries. Companies have bought and sold products, processes, and ideas, attempting to crack the code on video games (so to speak) for two decades now, and the result is that video game content has diffused into everything.

So, to this end, video games should matter to media studies scholars, broadly, because as convergence culture becomes less of a special case and more of an everyday reality, the medium itself matters less. Video games are dispersed throughout all industries, not just in overt ways but in subtler ways such as gamification in streaming services, and the increasing reliance on games as a part of transmedia storytelling. Video games, as a proper and defined medium, may not be relevant to everyone, but game studies analysis and theorization is relevant to the field, in subtle yet compelling ways.

The second reason why video game studies increasingly matters can be articulated in one hashtag: #GamerGate. We are writing this introduction and organizing this special issue a good eight years following the occurrences of GamerGate, and the effects of it still ripple within and beyond the video game industry. For those who did not follow the events, there has been much written on it elsewhere. But, in short: it was a hashtag movement wherein certain actors within video game culture attempted to use alt-right rhetoric to oust already existing diversity initiatives and advocates from the industrial and cultural spaces surrounding the video game industry (Massanari, 2017; Mortenson, 2018). It led to chilling stories of harassment in workplaces (Jane, 2018), social media (Burgess & Matamoros-Fernandez, 2016), and academia itself (Chess & Shaw, 2015).

GamerGate was a canary in a coal mine, so to speak. While it pre-dated the misinformation campaigns of the current era, it provided a road map (via Steve Bannon himself (Waldman, 2017)) regarding how to structure misinformation and gaming practices into social media presence (Bezio, 2018). Because many invested in video game culture were primed to a specific kind of antagonism (via the medium and the broader rhetoric around it), it became a prime ground for indoctrination and propaganda. That is to say, regardless of whether or not someone is part of video-game adjacent culture, it is a space to watch as a potential predictor of toxicity and pushback from certain quarters. Video games have had as much (if not more) impact on our current politics and culture wars than many care to acknowledge.

Finally, many of the things that critical games scholars study have resonance across media fields. For decades, we have examined how people interact in virtual worlds, something that will become essential to understand if and when talk about “metaverses” becomes reality (Boellstorff, 2008; Nardi, 2010). How do people relate to their avatars, which are increasingly used outside of game spaces as part of customization options for apps and online profiles (Banks, 2015; Boudreau, 2012)? How will groups respond when online spaces shut down, as some games have (Consalvo & Begy, 2015; Pearce, 2009)? How do different constituencies react to things like in-game or in-app purchases, loot boxes, or transfer of ownership of virtual property (Paul, 2010; Zanescu et al., 2021)? Further, we will need help unraveling how best to moderate or manage such spaces, as people with different goals, practices and demographics enter such spaces (Blamey, 2021). The insights gained from critical game studies scholarship must inform future media studies work in these ways, at minimum.

Introducing the essays

All the folks that agreed to be part of this special issue have a unique stance on video games that highlights why the particular objects, culture, and/or actors they focus on are important beyond the subfield. Each essay reimagines both disciplinary and power structures as they apply to game studies but also reach beyond it. The papers all broach issues of how power functions in the video game industry, in game culture, in specific games, and (of course) in academia writ large. This focus is central because we—as editors of the issue—feel that the future of game studies is necessarily about disrupting power structures. At the same time, the authors each took the prompt in different directions: some highlighted methodological approaches, others theoretical approaches, some focused more on technology and others on culture. Some of the papers weaved together multiple such directions, and imagined futures that reconsidered all these approaches. The idea here is that there is not one singular and consistent future for game studies, but many possible futures that can help to reimagine both the medium and the scholarship coming from that medium. Additionally, the goal within this special issue was to offer a variety of approaches and specifics that would appeal to folks both within and beyond game studies.

Alexandrina Agloro kicks off the special issue with the essay “Another world is possible: Building games for just futures,” which immediately asks us to question how we understand games both in terms of medium and audience. In the essay, Agloro highlights a non-traditional game format (Alternate Reality Games (ARGs)) and uses games to galvanize social movements. The piece offers two case studies of ARGs for social justice: “The Resisters” an ARG created by the author about immigration in the United States, and “Vukuzenzele” a South African game about informal settlements and housing crises. Agloro argues that these examples can be considered a kind of “speculative reality game” that imagines better and just futures for participants.

In the second essay, Kelly Bergstrom writes about industrial crises within the game industry, and how corporate abuses have constructed a troubling landscape for future game makers. Her piece “Ignoring the blood on the tracks: Exits and departures from game studies” critiques the “leaky pipeline metaphor”—an overused metaphor to often describe why it is difficult to maintain diversity (and, via diversity, innovation) within the video game industry. Instead, she proposes using a far more visceral metaphor (adopted from Neil deGrasse Tyson) of “blood on the tracks” to confront the abuses that lead to departures, both in the video game industry as well as academia itself.

In the next essay, Kelly Boudreau combines a discussion of the video game industry with gamer culture in her essay, “Beyond deviance: Toxic gaming culture and the potential for positive change.” In this essay, Boudreau argues that the toxicity of the video game industry exists within and because of the same behaviors that exist in broader game culture, both gatekeeping diversity and inhibiting creativity. Her work highlights how toxicity can lead to positivity by creating points of resistance (through organizations such as Dames Making Games and Pixelles) that attempt to reimagine the industry with alternative products and practices.

The CATs (or Critical Approaches to Technology and the Social) Lab at UC Irvine is an interdisciplinary graduate student research lab that focuses on digital critical studies. Lab members Amanda L. L. Cullen, Rainforest Scully-Blaker, Ian R. Larson, Kat Brewster, Ryan Rose Aceae, and William Dunkel co-authored the essay “Game studies, futurity, and necessity (or the game studies regarded as still to come)” where they collectively argue for the value of interdisciplinarity within the tricky space of game studies in order to work beyond specific products and to think about the socio-political conditions of the industry and their products.

Building on the theme of industrial practices, Aleena Chia writes about how the technologies of games, themselves, help to define those practices. In her essay, “The Metaverse, but not the way you think: Game engines and automation beyond game development,” Chia reminds us that the third-party tools we use to construct our technologies are not neutral, and that game engines now reach far beyond the medium of games to define cultures and practices of film, television, and other new media forms.

In the essay “Diversity is not a win condition,” Tara Fickle and Christopher Patterson argue that diversifying games—as an oft stated goal within the industry—fetishizes the final product in ways that emphasize Western logics. Using three examples (the Mass Effect series, Genshin Impact, and Divinity: Original Sin 2) as case studies towards the idealized version of “diversity,” they critique the ways that corporate attempts at diversity can be both flawed and inadvertently reify Western and racist perspectives.

Sarah Christina Ganzon‘s essay “Towards intersectional and transcultural analysis in the examination of players and game fandoms” goes beyond thinking about video game culture and audiences in generalities, to the specificities of fan cultures. In this essay, Ganzon argues that we can use combined lenses of intersectionality and transculturalism to foster diversity, not just in games themselves, but in fanfiction communities based on games. By acknowledging the presence of racism in fandoms that exceed game products, she argues that game fandoms are “cultural contact zones” that can both reify and subvert the normative whiteness and hegemonic masculinity endemic to the culture.

In “Too close, too intimate, and too vulnerable: Close reading methodology and the future of feminist game studies,” Sarah Stang moves into the space of methodologies and (in particular) close readings as a methodological approach to consider the nuance of games as media objects. To this end, Stang describes feminist methodologies as a way to capture medium specific intimacies (and vulnerabilities), and as a mode of critique and resistance. She ultimately argues that engaging in close reading can be a political statement that potentially disrupts not only the industry and its products, but also the academic responses to those products.

Finally, Aaron Trammell offers his provocation, “Decolonizing play.” In this piece, Trammell considers how our very definitions of play and games are built atop colonialist assumptions and arguments that highlight xenophobic logics. To this end, he argues that it is the job of academics to “decolonize play” by reimagining its potential both within and beyond the confines of video game studies.

These essays demonstrate that the future of game studies is in excellent hands and has multiple important pathways to pursue over the next several years. They also make clear how the convergence of media content, media platforms and technologies, and media audiences is a key element to understanding our culture. Game studies has grown up and has much to offer not just to those already in this subfield, but to the wider field of media studies. Read this issue and find out how.

Notes

1 Where game studies sits in larger disciplinary formations is a matter of many political debates, going back to the inaugural issue of Game Studies in 2001. In some instances, game studies exists within departments of game design and development; it has scholars that come from sociology, anthropology, English, philosophy, political science, and many other fields. Yet there is a growing number of scholars in media and communication studies that work in games, and draw from critical media studies as a useful framework.