This will likely be of interest to absolutely no one, but here is an ongoing list of the academic game studies texts that I find interesting. My goal is to assemble a concise list of readings that could someday become an informal syllabus of sorts. I also hope to annotate this list with some commentary, when I somehow acquire a large amount of free time with which to express thoughts.
It’s all in alphabetical order, by first name, because this is my website and I can do whatever I want.
Books
Alex Custodio
Who Are You? Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance Platform
Bo Ruberg
Video Games Have Always Been Queer
Brendan Keogh
The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist: Why We Should Think Beyond Commercial Game Production
Celia Pearce
Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds
David Sudnow
Pilgrim in the Microworld: Eye, Mind, and the Essence of Video Skill
David Church
Mortal Kombat: Games of Death
Janet H. Murray
Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
Jesper Juul
The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games
Jesper Juul
A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players
Kishonna L. Gray
Woke Gaming: Digital Challenges to Oppression and Social Injustice
Kishonna L. Gray
Race, Gender, and Deviance in Xbox Live: Theoretical Perspectives from the Virtual Margins
Marsha Kinder
Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Nick Dyer-Witheford, Greig de Peuter
Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games
Journal Articles
Cody Mejeur, Amanda Cote
Who Gets to Be in The Guild? Race, Gender and Intersecting Stereotypes in Gaming Cultures
https://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/333
Emma Vossen
Tom Nook, Capitalist or Comrade?: On Nook Discourse and the Millennial Housing Crisis
https://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/309
M. D. Schmalzer
Janky Controls and Embodied Play: Disrupting the Cybernetic Gameplay Circuit
https://gamestudies.org/2003/articles/schmalzer
Tom van Nuenen
Playing the Panopticon: Procedural Surveillance in Dark Souls
https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015570967
The Powellfilm Archive 