Epistemic Genres: New Formations of Play (Approaches to Digital Game Studies)

Epistemic Genres: New Formations of Play (Approaches to Digital Game Studies)

This anthology brings together scholars from around the world to theorize and explore “epistemic genres” of digital games, which are defined by the social uses and meanings attributed to different constellations of games by the communities that play, make, and study them. Game studies has experienced a cultural turn in the last decade, centering the social dimensions of games and play. What resources for theorizing game genres emerge from this cultural turn? How might the critical theories of race and culture, intersectional feminism, queer and trans theory, eco-criticism, and post-colonial and decolonial interventions of the past decade suggest new ways of thinking about game genres? The chapters in this edited volume make a case for epistemic genres that are distinguished primarily by their social context and use. The notion of epistemic genre centers the player’s experience and the meanings that emerge from distinct communities as they engage with games. Epistemic game genres are those constellations of games that overflow and cut-across the genre boundaries of the commercial game industry and mainstream gaming culture. The first section examines epistemic genres as they are constituted by different scholarly lenses. Here, the contributors consider how certain scholarly theories allow us to see the connections between seemingly disparate games. The second section examines epistemic genres as products of specific material and discursive contexts. The third section examines epistemic genres defined by the specific interpretive frames of communities of players that share a cultural lexicon, symbol system, or grammar. Overall, the chapters in this book make the case for understanding game genres as formations shaped more by play than the qualities of the games themselves. “ Epistemic Genres: New Formations of Games offers wonderfully fresh perspectives on how videogame genres investigate, perform, and reshape the epistemes out of which contemporary games and their players emerge.” ― Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanfield, Assistant Professor, Colgate University, USA “ Epistemic Genres is more than a game studies update. This compilation is a hard reset to disrupt the norm of what game studies has been and can be. Epistemic Genres opens up the possibility that the medium, its users, gamers, audiences, and fans have contributed significantly beyond an entertainment outlet. This text offers a corrective to undo the exclusionary past of game studies.” ― Kishonna L Gray, Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan, USA, and author of Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming (2020) “This book calls for us to take a deeper look at some of the most familiar and beloved game genres of all time (strategy games, first-person shooters, Japanese roleplaying games, massively multiplayer online games). The authors argue that genres in games are not best understood by their forms, mechanics, or aesthetics. Rather, game genres have always been fluid sites of learning that require players to become co-collaborators in dynamic processes of knowledge creation. If genres are “epistemic,” as technologies of learning, then games can also be vital tools of critique, coalition-building, and resistance-especially during turbulent and dangerous times.” ― TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Professor of Interactive Media and Games, University of Southern California, USA Gerald Voorhees is an Associate Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo. He is President of the Canadian Game Studies Association (term ending July 2023) and a former member of the Digital Games Research Association executive board. Josh Call is Professor of English at Grand View University, USA. He is a former area chair of the Game Studies Area of the National Popular Culture Association and Managing Editor of the Approaches to Digital Game Studies series for Bloomsbury Press. Matthew Wysocki serves as coordinator of Media Studies and Film Studies as an Associate Professor at Flagler College, USA. He also is co-area Chair of Game Studies for the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. He has written or co-written numerous chapters on control and player agency, a plethora of them on the BioShock series. He edited CTRL-ALT-PLAY: Essays on Control in Video Gaming (2013) and co-edited Rated M for Mature: Sex and Sexuality in Video Games from Bloomsbury (2015). Betsy Brey Instructor in Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She was Editor-in-Chief of online publication First Person Scholar for three years. She has published chapters in several books, as well as articles in The Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric and Rhetor .