Welcome to the "Anthropology of Videogames" repository! This is a collection of readings that I used when teaching the course at both undergraduate and master levels. An anthropological perspective on videogames implies to look at both the consumption and production of videogames. I encourage you to add your own readings to the list, or to make up your own reading list! I hope you find the reading list useful and have fun immersing yourself in this topic!

The Anthropology of Videogames

In summer 2021 I taught "The Anthropology of Videogames" at the MLU in Halle-Wittenberg. This was the reading list for the course! Feel free to update it and add readings!

General Readings to start getting into the topic:

• Allen, R. 2017. America’s Digital Army: Games at Work and War. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
• Boellstorff, T. 2008. Coming of age in Second Life: an anthropologist explores the virtually human. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Bulut, Ergin. 2020. A Precarious Game: The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry. Cornell University Press.

Selected videogames mentioned in the reading list:

• America’s Army, Second Life, This War of Mine, Walden, a Game, World of Warcraft.

Week 1: Theoretical Debattes surrounding the notion of ‚Spiel’ (Game)

Key Readings

• Huizinga, J. 1949. Homo ludens: a study of the play element in culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Read Chapter 1: „Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon“. Pp.1-27
• Caillois, Roger. 1958. Man, Play and Games. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Chapter 1. “The Definition of Play”.

Question for debatte: What's Huizinga's or Caillois's understanding of the term 'Spiel' (game)?

Further Readings:

• Appadurai, A. 1995. Playing with modernity: the decolonization of Indian cricket. In Consuming modernity: public culture in a South Asian world (ed.) C.A. Breckenridge, 23-48. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

• Bateson, Gregory. 1972 [first published 1955]. “A Theory of Play and Fantasy”. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, pp. 183-198. Also available in The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthrology (Eds. Zimmerman and Salen) 2006, pp. 314-328.

• Carbone MB, Ruffino P, Massonet S. Introduction: The Other Caillois: The Many Masks of Game Studies. Games and Culture. 2017;12(4):303-320.

• Gray, Peter. 2009. Play as a Foundation of Hunter Gatherer Social Existence. American Journal of Play. 476-522.

• Hamayon, R. 2016. Why we play? An anthropological study. Hau Books, Chigaco.

• Kristensen L, Wilhelmsson U. Roger Caillois and Marxism: A Game Studies Perspective. Games and Culture. 2017;12(4):381-400.

• Lambrow A. 2020. The Seriousness of Play: Johan Huizinga and Carl Schmitt on Play and the Political. Games and Culture. November 2020.

• Lewis Graham, Kerrie. et al. 2010. “Current Perspectives on the Biological Study of Play”. Quarterly Review of Biology 85:4.

• Sicart, Miguel. 2014. Play Matters. MIT Press.

• Sutton-Smith. 1997. The Ambiguities of Play. Harvard University Press.

• Sharpe, Lynda. 2011. So You Think You Know Why Animals Play...Scientific American. Available at: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/so-you-think-you-know-why-animals-play

Week 2: Social Anthropology and Videogames

Key Readings

• Boellstorff, T. 2006. A ludicrous discipline? Ethnography and game studies. Games and Culture 1(1): 29-35.
• Nardi, Bonnie A. 2010. My Life as a Night Elf Priest. An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Chapter 2

Question for debatte: How have anthropologists found access to video games?

Further Readings:

• Carlson R, Corliss J. Imagined Commodities: Video Game Localization and Mythologies of Cultural Difference. Games and Culture.

• Chaplin, Heather & Ruby, Aaron Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution. Algonquin Books. New York.

• Corliss J. Introduction: The Social Science Study of Video Games. Games and Culture. Entertainment Software Association. 2019. Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry: 2019, Sales, Demographic and Usage Data. Available at https://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019-Essential-Facts-About-the-Computer-and-Video-Game-Industry.pdf

• Galloway, Alexander. 2006. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. „Game Definitions“, Molleindustria, http://www.gamedefinitions.com/#

• Koster, Raph: A Theory of Fun for Game Design

• Lange PG. Learning Real-Life Lessons From Online Games. Games and Culture.

• O’Donnell C. The Nintendo Entertainment System and the 10NES Chip: Carving the Video Game Industry in Silicon. Games and Culture.

• Salen, K. & Zimmermann, E. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. M.I.T. Press

• „Video Game History Timeline“, National Museum of Play. https://www.museumofplay.org/about/icheg/video-game-history/timeline

• Woodcock, Jamie-2019. Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle. Haymarket Books.

Week 3: Virtual Worlds

Key Readings

• Boellstorff, T. 2008. Coming of age in Second Life: an anthropologist explores the virtually human. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapter 2. Pp.32-60
• Malaby, T. 2009. Making virtual worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kapitel 1: 17-46.

Question for debatte: What are virtual worlds?

Further Readings:

• Bainbridge, William Sims. 2010. The Warcraft Civilization. Social Science in a Virtual World. M.I.T. M.I.T. University Press
• Boellstorff, T., B. Nardi, C. Pearce, & T.L. Taylor 2012. Ethnography and virtual worlds: a handbook of method. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Consalvo, Mia & Begy, Jason. 2015. Players and Their Pets: Gaming Communities from Beta to Sunset. Minnesota University Press.
• Frömming, Udine. 2013. Virtual Environments and Cultures: A Collection of Social Anthropological Research in Virtual Cultures and Landscapes. Peter Lang, GmbH.
• Golub. Alex. 2014. The Anthropology of Virtual Worlds: World of Warcraft. Reviews in Anthropology, 43:2
• Guliani, Stefano. & Valla, Daniel. 2020. Virtual Existentialism: Meaning and Subjectivity in Virtual Worlds. Palgrave Macmillan. London.
• Kendall, Lori. 2002. Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. University of California Press.
• Pearce. Celia. 2009. Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds. M.I.T. Press. M.I.T.
• Plesner, Ursula & Philipps, Louise. 2014. Researching Virtual Worlds: Methodologies for Studying Emergent Practices. Routledge Press. London
• Snodgrass, Jeffrey, Lacy, Michael, Dengah II, Francois, Fagan Jesse 2011. Enhancing one life rather than living two: Playing MMOs with offline friends. Computers in human behavior pp. 1211-1222.

Week 4: Escapism, Violence and Addiction

Key Readings

• Allen, R. 2017. America’s Digital Army: Games at Work and War. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Chapter 2.
• Coulson Mark & Ferguson Christopher J. 2016. The Influence of Digital Games on Aggression and Violent Crime“ in Kowert, R. & Quandt., T. The Video Game Debate: Unravelling the Physical, Social, and Psychological Effects of Video Games (English Edition). New York, Routledge. Chapter 4. Pp. 54-74.

Question for debatte: What physical, social and psychological effects do video games have on the player?

Further Readings:

• Calleja, Gordon. 2010. Digital Games and Escapism. Games and Culture 5 (4), pp.335-353.
• Castranova, Edward. 2007. Exodus To The Virtual World. St. Martin Press. New York.
• McGonigal, Jane 2011. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. London: Jonathan Cape.
• Pötzsch H. Selective Realism: Filtering Experiences of War and Violence in First- and Third-Person Shooters. Games and Culture.
• Schroeder, Jens. 2011. ‚Killer Games‘ Versus ‚We Will Fund Violence’ – The Perception of Digital Games and Mass Media in Germany and Australia. Berlin: Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften.
• Schüll, N. 2012. Addiction by design: machine gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton University Press.

Week 5: War Simulation Games

Key Readings

• Allen, R. 2017. America’s Digital Army: Games at Work and War. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Kapitel 5. Pp. 115-147.
• Allen, R. 2017. America’s Digital Army: Games at Work and War. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Kapitel 6. Pp. 147-167.

Question for debatte: How is war portrayed in war simulation games?

Further Readings:

• Allen R. The Unreal Enemy of America’s Army. Games and Culture. 2011;6(1):38-60.
• Bogost, Ian 2007. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. University Press.
• Crogan, Patrick. 2011. Gameplay Mode: War, Simulation, and Technoculture. University of Minnesota
• Dunningham, James. 1992. The Complete Wargames Handbook: How to Play, Design, and Find Them. New York. Quill.
• Dyer-Whiteford, Nick and de Peuter, Greig. 2009. Games of Empire. University of Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
• Ferrara, John. 2017. Games for Persuasion: Argumentation, Procedurality, and the Lie of Gamification . Games and Culture
• Fogg, B.J. 2003. Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do (Interactive Technologies). San Fransisco, Morgan Kaufman.
• Lenoir, Timothy. 2000. "All But War Is Simulation: The Military Entertainment Complex," Configurations, Vol 8 (2000), pp. 238-335.
• Lenoir,. Timothy.2003. "Programming Theaters of War: Gamemakers as Soldiers," in Robert Latham, ed., Bombs and Bandwidth: The Emerging Relationship between IT and Security, New York: New Press, 2003, pp. 175-198.
• Lenoir, Timothy. 2003. Fashioning the Military Entertainment Complex," Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society, Vol. 10, Winter/Spring, 2002-2003, pp. 14-16.
• Whitehead, N. & Finnström, Sverker. 2013. Virtual War and Magical Death: Technologies and Imaginieries for Terror and Killing.
• Wright, Evan. Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War. New York: Putnam.

Week 6: Morality Play

Key Readings

• Ryan M, Formosa P, Tulloch R. Playing Around With Morality: Introducing the Special Issue on “Morality Play.” Games and Culture.
• Smale S, Kors MJL, Sandovar AM. The Case of This War of Mine: A Production Studies Perspective on Moral Game Design. Games and Culture. 2019;14(4):387-409.

Question for debatte: What s 'moral game design'?

Further Readings:

• Briggs, Jean. 1999. Inuit Morality Play. The Emotional Education of a Three-Year-Old. Yale University Press.
• Butt M-AR, Dunne D. Rebel Girls and Consequence in Life Is Strange and The Walking Dead. Games and Culture. 2019;14(4):430-449.
• Consalvo M, Staines D. Reading Ren’Py: Game Engine Affordances and Design Possibilities. Games and Culture. November 2020.
• De Paoli, S. and Kerr, Aphra (2011) On Crimes and Punishments in Virtual Worlds: Bots, the failure of punishment and players as moral entrepreneurs. Ethics and Information Technology, 14. pp. 1-32.
• Donald I. Just War? War Games, War Crimes, and Game Design. Games and Culture. 2019;14(4):367-386
• Katsarov J, Christen M, Mauerhofer R, Schmocker D, Tanner C. Training Moral Sensitivity Through Video Games: A Review of Suitable Game Mechanisms. Games and Culture.
• Laidlaw, J. 2002. For an anthropology of ethics and freedom. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8, 311-32.
• Sicart, Miguel. 2009. The Ethics of Computer Games. M.I.T. Press.
• Sicart, M. 2013. Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay. M.I.T University Press.
• Schrier K. Designing Games for Moral Learning and Knowledge Building. Games and Culture.
• Staines D, Formosa P, Ryan M. Morality Play: A Model for Developing Games of Moral Expertise. Games and Culture. 2019;14(4):410-429.
• Werning, Stefan.2021. Making Games. The Politics and Poetics of Game Creation Tools. M.I.T. Press.

Week 7: E-Sports

Key Reading

• Steinkühler, Constance. 2019. Esports Research: Critical, Empirical, and Historical Studies of Competitive Videogame Play. Games and Culture.
• Brock, Tom. 2017. “Roger Caillois and e-sports: On the problems of treating play as work.” Games and Culture, 12 (4): 321-329.

Question for debatte: Is e-sports work?

Further Readings:

• Crawford, Garry, and Victoria K. Gosling. 2009. “More Than a game: Sports-themed video games and player narratives.” Sociology of Sport Journal 26: 50–66.
• Harper, Todd. 2014. The Culture of Digital Fighting Games: Performance and Practice. New York: Routledge.
• Jonasson, Kalle and Jesper Thiborg. 2010. “Electronic sport and its impact on future sport.” Sport in Society 13 (2): 287–299.
• McCrea, Christian. 2009. “Watching Starcraft, strategy and South Korea.” In Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific, ed. Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan, 179–193. New York: Routledge.
• Moeller, Ryan M., Bruce Esplin, and Steven Conway. 2009. “Cheesers, pullers, and glitchers: The rhetoric of sportsmanship and the discourse of online sports gamers.” Game Studies, 9 (2).
• Szablewicz, Marcella. 2011. “From addicts to athletes: Participation in the discursive construction of digital games in urban China.” In Selected Papers of Internet Research, IR 12.0 conference.
• Szablewicz, Marcella. 2016. “A realm of mere representation? ‘Live’ e-sports spectacles and the crafting of China’s digital gaming image.” Games and Culture, 11(3): 256-274.
• Taylor, T.L. 2012. Raising the stakes: e-sports and the professsionalization of computer gaming. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press
• Taylor. T.L. 2018. Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming. Princeton University Studies. Princeton.
• Witkowski, Emma. 2012. “On the Digital Playing Field: How We ‘Do Sport’ With Networked Computer Games.” Games and Culture, 7:349-374.

Week 8: Videogames and the Environment

Key Reading

• Chang, Alenda. 2011. Games as Environmental Texts. Qui Parle 19 (2): 57–84.
• Maxwell & Miller. "Warm and Stuffy": The Ecological Impact of Electronic Games. In Zackariasson, P. & Wilson L. (eds.) The Videogame Industry, Routledge Press.

Question for debatte: What s the Relationship between Games and the Environment?

Further Readings:

• Abraham, B.J. & Jayemanne, D. 2017. Where are all the climate change games? Locating digital games response to climate change. Transformations.
• Chang. Alenda. 2019. Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games.
• Chang, A. and Parham, John (2017) Green Computer and Video Games: An Introduction. Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, 8 (2). pp. 1-17.
• Fullerton, Tracy. 2020. A Year at Play in the Woods of Walden Pond. Art Journal.
• Gabrys, Jennifer. Digital Rubbish. A Natural History of Electronics. University of Michigan Press.
• Gordon, Lewis. 2020. The many ways video game development impacts the climate crisis. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/5/21243285/video-games-climate-crisis-impact-xbox-playstation-developers
• Isbister, Katherine. 2016. How Games Move Us. Emotion by Design. Cambridge MA, The M.I.T. Press.
• Louv, Richard. 2008. Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill.
• Maxwell & Miller. 2012. Greening the Media. Macmillan.
• Starosielski Nicole, Walker Janet. 2016. Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment. Routledge University Press. UNEP. 2018. How video games are joining the fight to save the planet. Available at: https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/how-video-games-are-joining-fight-save-planet

Week 9: Work in the Videogames Industry

Key Reading

• De Peuter, Greig & Young, Chris. 2019. Contested Formations of Digital Game Labor. Television & New Media. Pp. 747-755.
• Ozimek, Anna. M. 2019. Outsourcing Digital Game Production: The Case of Polish Testers. Television & New Media. Pp. 824-835.

Question for debatte: How is work experienced in the game industry?

Further Readings:

• Banks J, Potts J. Co-creating games: a co-evolutionary analysis. New Media & Society. 2010;12(2):253-270.
• Dyer-Whiteford, Nick and de Peuter, Greig. 2009. Games of Empire. University of Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
• Fuchs, Christian. 2014. Theorising and analysing digital labour: From global value chains to modes of production. The political economy of communication. Pp.3-27.
• Johnson, M. R. and Woodcock, J. (2017) ‘It’s like the Gold Rush: The Lives and Careers of Professional Video Game Streamers on Twitch.tv’, Information, Communication and Society, 22(3): 336-351.
• Ruberg, Bonnie. 2019. The Precarious Labor of Queer Indie Game-making: Who Benefits from Making Video Games “Better”? Television & New Media. Pp.778-788.
• Ruffino, P. and Woodcock, J. (2020) 'Game Workers and the Empire: Unionisation in the UK Video Game Industry', Games and Culture: a journal of interactive media.
• Woodcock, J. (2016) ‘The work of play: Marx and the video games industry in the United Kingdom’, Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, 8(2): 131-143
• Woodcook. James & Johnson, Marc. R. 2019. The Affective Labor and Performance of Live Streaming on Twitch.tv. Television & New Media. Pp. 813-823.
• Woodcock, J. (2020) 'How to Beat the Boss: Game Workers Unite in the UK', Capital and Class, 44(4): 523-529
• Zackariasson, P. & Wilson, T. 2012. The Videogame Industry. Formation, Present State and Future. Routledge Press.
• Zhang, Lin & Fung, Anthony. 2013. Working as playing? Consumer labor, guild and the secondary industry of online gaming in China. New Media Society. 1-13.

Week 10: Globalisation and the Videogames Industry

Key Reading

• Bulut, Ergin. 2020. A Precarious Game: The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry. Cornell University Press. Introduction: FOR WHOM THE LOVE WORKS IN VIDEO GAME PRODUCTION? pp. 1-29)
• Kerr, A. (2013). Space wars: The politics of games production in Europe. In N. B. Huntemann & B. Aslinger (Eds.), Gaming globally: Production, play and place (pp. 215–231). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Question for debatte: How have global labor processes changed the video game industry?

Further Readings:

• Badger, A. and Woodcock, J. (2019) 'Ethnographic Methods with Limited Access: Assessing Quality of Work in Hard to Reach Jobs', in D. Wheatley (ed) Handbook of research methods on the quality of working lives, 135-146. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• Braverman, H. 1999. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. London: Monthly Review Press.
• Hardt, M. and Negri, A. 2000. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Jaffe, S. Forthcoming, 2021. Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone.
• Keogh B. The Cultural Field of Video Game Production in Australia. Games and Culture. 2021;16(1):116-135.
• Kerr, A. 2017. Global games: Production, circulation and policy in the networked era- New York. Routledge Press.
• Kücklich, J. 2005. ‘Precarious playbour: Modders and the digital games industry’, Fibreculture Journal, 5:1
• Nakamura, L. 2009. ‘Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 26(2): 128-44.
• O'Donnell, Casey. 2014. Developer’s Dilemma. The Secret World of Videogame Creators. M.I.T. Press.
• Thompson, P., Parker, R., and Cox, S. 2015. ‘Interrogating Creative Theory and Creative Work: Inside the Games Studio’, Sociology, 50(2): 316-332.
• Zackariasson, Peter and Wilson, Timothy eds. (2012). The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future. New York: Routledge.

Week 11: Indy Games

Key Reading

• Sandqvist. U. The Development of the Swedish Game Industry: A True Success Story? In The Videogame Industry: Formation, Present State and Future. Routledge Press.
• Juul, J. 2003. The game, the player, the world: looking for a heart of gameness. In Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings (ed.) M. Copier & J. Raessens, 30-45. Utrecht: University Press.

Question for debatte: What is 'indie' about Indie Games?

Further Readings:

• Jorgensen, K., Sandqvist, U., Sotamaa, O. 2015. From hobbyists to entrepreneurs: On the formation of the Nordic game industry. Convergence 23(5)
• Juul, Jesper. 2019. Handmade Pixels. Independent Video Games and the Quest for Authenticity. M.I.T. Press.
• Guevara Villalobos, O. 2014. Artisanal Local Networks: Game Work and Culture in Independent Game Production. In Handbook of Digital Games (pp.730-750).
• Guevara, Villalobos. O. Playful peripheries: The consolidation of independent game production in Latin America. In  Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Techniques And Politics (ed. Ruffino, P.) London: Routledge Press.
• Harvey, A. & S. Fisher (2013.) “Making a Name in Games: Immaterial Labour, Indie Game Design, and Gendered Social Network Markets.” Information, Communication, and Society, 16(3), pp. 362-380.
• Kerr, Aphra and Cawley, Anthony (2011) The spatialisation of the digital games industry: Lessons from Ireland. International Journal of Cultural Policy . pp. 1-21.
• Ruffino, Paolo. 2019. Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Techniques and Politics. Routledge Press.
• Simon, Bart. 2013. Indie Eh? Some Kind of Game Studies. Indie Eh? The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association. Vol 7(11): 1-7
• Srauj, Sam. 2019. Precarity and Why Indie Game Developers Can’t Save Us from Racism. Television & New Media. Pp. 802-812.

Week 12: The Global History of Videogames

Key Reading

• Šisler, V., Švelch, J., & Šlerka, J. (2017). Video Games and the Asymmetry of Global Cultural Flows: The Game Industry and Game Culture in Iran and the Czech Republic. International Journal of Communication, 11(0), 3857–3879.
• Saarikoski ,P. & Suominen, J. 2009. Computer Hobbyists and the Gaming Industry in Finland. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. Pp.20-33.

Question for debatte: What is 'indie' about Indie Games?

Further Readings:

• Chapman, Adam. 2016. Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice. New York. Routledge Press.
• Guins, Rayford. 2014. Game After: A cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
• Lowood, Henry & Gains, Rayford. 2016. Debugging Game History. A Critical Lexicon. Cambridge MA, The M.I.T. Press.
• Newman, James. 2008. Playing with Videogames. New York. Routledge Press.
• Rollinger, Christian. Classical Antiquity in Video Games: Playing with the Ancient World
• Švelch, J. (2013b). Say it with a computer game: Hobby computer culture and the non-entertainment uses of homebrew games in the 1980s Czechoslovakia. Game Studies, 13(2).
• Swalwell, M., Ndalianis, A., Stuckey. H. 2017. Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives. New York. Routledge Press.
• Svelch, Jaroslav. 2018. Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
• Švelch, J. (2013a). Indiana Jones fights the communist police: Local appropriation of the text adventure genre in the 1980s Czechoslovakia. In N. B. Huntemann & B. Aslinger (Eds.), Gaming globally: Production, play, and place (pp. 163–182). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Wainwright, Martin. 2019. Virtual History. How Videogames Portray the Past. New York: Routledge Press.
• Wolf, M. 2015. Videogames around the World. M.I.T. Press.

Week 12: The Global History of Videogames

Key Reading

• Šisler, V., Švelch, J., & Šlerka, J. (2017). Video Games and the Asymmetry of Global Cultural Flows: The Game Industry and Game Culture in Iran and the Czech Republic. International Journal of Communication, 11(0), 3857–3879.
• Saarikoski ,P. & Suominen, J. 2009. Computer Hobbyists and the Gaming Industry in Finland. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. Pp.20-33.

Question for debatte: How have videogame industries developed at different sites across the globe?

Further Readings:

• Chapman, Adam. 2016. Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice. New York. Routledge Press.
• Guins, Rayford. 2014. Game After: A cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
• Lowood, Henry & Gains, Rayford. 2016. Debugging Game History. A Critical Lexicon. Cambridge MA, The M.I.T. Press.
• Newman, James. 2008. Playing with Videogames. New York. Routledge Press.
• Rollinger, Christian. Classical Antiquity in Video Games: Playing with the Ancient World
• Švelch, J. (2013b). Say it with a computer game: Hobby computer culture and the non-entertainment uses of homebrew games in the 1980s Czechoslovakia. Game Studies, 13(2).
• Swalwell, M., Ndalianis, A., Stuckey. H. 2017. Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives. New York. Routledge Press.
• Svelch, Jaroslav. 2018. Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
• Švelch, J. (2013a). Indiana Jones fights the communist police: Local appropriation of the text adventure genre in the 1980s Czechoslovakia. In N. B. Huntemann & B. Aslinger (Eds.), Gaming globally: Production, play, and place (pp. 163–182). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Wainwright, Martin. 2019. Virtual History. How Videogames Portray the Past. New York: Routledge Press.
• Wolf, M. 2015. Videogames around the World. M.I.T. Press.

Week 13: Game Design, Gamification & Macht

Key Reading

• Schull, Natasha D. 2012. Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton.
• O’Donnell, Casey. 2014. “Gamification, Bullshit, and the Rise of Algorithmic Surveillance.” Surveillance & Society 12: 3.

Question for debatte: What is gamification?

Further Readings:

• Castronova, Edward. 2005. Synthetic Worlds. Chicago. Read Chapter 9, „Governance“.
• Fizek, Sonia. „Gamification“ Critical Keywords for the Digital Humanities.
• Fizek, Soniaa & Dippel, Anne. 2016. „Ludification of Work or Labourisation of Play? On Work/play interferences in the digital times“.
• Golub, Alex and Kate Lingley. 2008. ““Just Like the Qing Empire”: Internet Addiction, MMOGs, and Moral Crisis in Contemporary China.” Games and Culture 3: 1.
• Isbister, Katherine. 2016. How Games Move Us: Emotion by Design. MIT Press.
• Stromberg, Peter. 2009. Caught in Play: How Entertainment Works on You. Stanford.
• Thompson, Clive. 2019. Coders. The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World. Prenguin Books. New York.