This episode we speak with Dr Brendan Keogh, discussing his new book The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist: Why We Should Think Beyond Commercial Game Production ( https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545402/the-videogame-industry-does-not-exist/ ). It is the final part of a special 6-episode Season of Keywords in Play, exploring intersections and exchanges between Chinese and Australian game studies scholarship. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Counci...
Aug 04, 2023•47 min•Ep. 114
This episode we speak with Dr. Xavier Ho, discussing his data visualisation and design research, as well as the curation process of the thoughtful queer indie games exhibition ‘Pride at Play’ ( https://prideatplay.org/ ). It is part 5 of a special 6-episode Season of Keywords in Play, exploring intersections and exchanges between Chinese and Australian game studies scholarship. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisor...
Jul 27, 2023•38 min•Ep. 113
This episode we speak with Dr. Stephanie Harkin, discussing the concept of “techno-femininity” from her award winning PhD Thesis (2022) Girlhood Games: Gender, Identity, and Coming of Age in Videogames. You can read her PhD here: https://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/file/86788440-fcec-420a-8df1-b7c35f976066/1/stephanie_harkin_thesis.pdf , follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sa_harkin , and read more of her work on Academia.edu: https://swin.academia.edu/SHarkin . It is part 4 of a specia...
Jul 24, 2023•28 min•Ep. 112
This episode we speak with Dr. Felania Liu. The episode is part 3 of a special 6-episode Season of Keywords in Play, exploring intersections and exchanges between Chinese and Australian game studies scholarship. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Dr Felania Liu is a game researcher, and is founder and curator of the Homo Ludens Archive. She currently lectures at Beijing Normal University and has previousl...
Jul 17, 2023•34 min•Ep. 111
This episode we speak with Dr. Tingting Liu, discussing her research as a cultural anthropologist examining digital intimacies, gender, platforms and gaming in China. It is part 2 of a special 6-episode Season of Keywords in Play, exploring intersections and exchanges between Chinese and Australian game studies scholarship. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Dr Tingting Liu is an Associate Professor in th...
Jul 03, 2023•21 min•Ep. 110
This episode marks the beginning of a special 6-episode Season of Keywords in Play, exploring intersections and exchanges between Chinese and Australian game studies scholarship. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. This episode we speak with Dr. Gejun Huang. Gejun is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. He was a Lecturer in the School o...
Jun 12, 2023•23 min•Ep. 109
This epsiode we speak with Florence Smith-Nicholls about the paper "The Dark Souls of Archaeology: Recording Elden Ring" https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.10949. Florence is a game AI PhD researcher based in London. They also work as a Story Tech, a member of the writers' room at the indie studio Die Gute Fabrik. Building on their background as an archaeologist, they have contributed to the field of archaeogaming through experimenting with archaeological approaches to titles such as Elden Ring and Nier...
Dec 16, 2022•31 min•Ep. 108
This episode we are doing something a little bit different - interviewing a group of scholars about their Call for Papers on "The Post-Gamer Turn", which can be found here: https://postgamerturn.wordpress.com/ . Abstract submissions of 500-800 words are due on November 30th 2022. We discuss with Mahli-Ann Butt, Amanda Cote, Emil Lunedal Hammar and Cody Mejeur the rationale behind the edited collection, their backgrounds doing diversity work in game studies, and their thoughts about the future of...
Nov 10, 2022•30 min•Ep. 107
Everest Pipkin is a writer, game developer and software artist from Central Texas whose work follows themes of ecology, information theory, and system collapse. As an artist and as a theorist, they fundamentally believe in the liberatory capacity of care; care not as an abstract emotion but rather as a powerful force that motivates collective work towards a better world. They hold a BFA from University of Texas at Austin, an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and live and work in southern New ...
Sep 26, 2022•43 min•Ep. 106
Alesha Serada is a PhD student and a researcher at the University of Vaasa, Finland. Their dissertation, supported by the Nissi Foundation, discusses construction of value in games and art on blockchain. Inspired by their Belarusian origin, their research interests revolve around exploitation, violence, horror, deception and other banal and non-banal evils in visual media. In this episode we discuss Alesha's paper "‘Died from Debeeration’: the Case of the First Belarusian Political Game" which c...
Jul 15, 2022•31 min•Ep. 105
In this episode we talk with Gregory Whistance-Smith, an independent scholar based in Edmonton, Canada. The discussion focuses on the book "Expressive Space: Embodying Meaning in Video Game Environments" https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110723731/html?lang=en Video game spaces have vastly expanded the built environment, offering new worlds to explore and inhabit. Like buildings, cities, and gardens before them, these virtual environments express meaning and communicate ideas an...
Jun 17, 2022•34 min•Ep. 104
Jaroslav Švelch is an assistant professor at Charles University, Prague. He is the author of the recent monograph Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games (MIT Press, 2018). He has published work on history and theory of computer games, on humor in games and social media, and on the Grammar Nazi phenomenon. He is currently researching history, theory, and reception of monsters in games and his monograph Player vs. Monste...
May 13, 2022•25 min•Ep. 103
In this episode we speak with Regina Seiwald and Ed Vollans on paratexts and their forthcoming collaboration "Not in the Game: History, Paratext and Games", soon to be published with De Gruyter. Regina Seiwald is highly interested in the relationship between literary theory and narratology across the languages. Her focus thereby lies with the Anglo-American and Germanic tradition. In my PhD thesis, she researched metafiction in the postmodern British novel to determine how texts communicate the ...
Apr 22, 2022•34 min•Ep. 102
Esther Wright is Lecturer in Digital History at Cardiff University. Her work is situated within the field of Historical Game Studies, critically examining how digital representations of the past found in popular visual media have the potential to shape public understandings of history. Her PhD, awarded by the University of Warwick in August 2019, is a study of Rockstar Games as developer-historian, and the company’s long-established project of negotiating and representing U.S. History in their g...
Mar 11, 2022•39 min•Ep. 101
April Tyack is a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University and vice-president of DiGRA Australia. April researches player experience and how games facilitate different types of experiences. In this episode, April discusses the paper Off-Peak: An Examination of Ordinary Player Experience (2021), published with Elisa D. Mekler. The paper critiques the focus in game research, culture and development on extraordinary, optimal or peak experiences, and how this focus has shaped the field of HCI in p...
Feb 11, 2022•21 min•Ep. 100
This episode we speak with Felan Parker about his work on cultural intermediaries and indie games. Felan is Assistant Professor of Book & Media Studies at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, and a scholar of media industries and cultures specializing in games, digital media, and film. His ongoing research, supported from 2016-2019 by the Indie Interfaces SSHRC Insight Development Grant, explores the production, distribution, and reception of independent or “indie” digital games w...
Nov 19, 2021•33 min•Ep. 99
This episode we speak with Leon Xiao about the paper "What are the odds? Lower compliance with Western loot box probability disclosure industry self-regulation than Chinese legal regulation", co-authored with Laura Henderson and Philip Newall. This empirical study of loot boxes and probability disclosure is (as of this interview) a preprint and hence subject to change during peer-review. The current version is available here: https://osf.io/g5wd9/ Leon is a Teaching Associate at Queen Mary Unive...
Oct 15, 2021•27 min•Ep. 98
This episode we speak with Adrienne Shaw about the paper "Encoding and decoding affordances: Stuart Hall and interactive media technologies". This paper brings Stuart Hall's concepts of encoding and decoding into proximity with ideas of affordance and technology. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0163443717692741 Adrienne Shaw is an Associate Professor in Temple University’s Department of Media Studies and Production and a member of the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication gra...
Sep 17, 2021•30 min•Ep. 97
This episode we speak with Alenda Y. Chang about games, ecology, literature, and environmental relations. Alenda is an Associate Professor in Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara. With a multidisciplinary background in biology, literature, and film, she specializes in merging ecocritical theory with the analysis of contemporary media. Her writing has been featured in Ant Spider Bee, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Qui Parle, the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, ...
Jun 11, 2021•29 min•Ep. 96
This episode we talk with Aaron Trammell about challenging canonical thinkers, race, torture and TTRPGs, with special reference to his open-access piece "Torture, Play and the Black Experience" https://www.gamejournal.it/torture-play/. Aaron is Assistant Professor of Informatics and Core Faculty in Visual Studies at UC Irvine. He writes about how Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and board games inform the lived experiences of their players. Specifically, he is interested in how these ga...
May 14, 2021•36 min•Ep. 95
Víctor Navarro-Remesal is a media scholar specialized in games. He teaches History of Videogames and Interactive Narrative at Tecnocampus, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and Game Design at UOC. He’s the author of ‘Libertad dirigida: Una gramática del análisis y diseño de videojuegos’ (Shangrila, 2016) and ‘Cine Ludens: 50 diálogos entre el juego y el cine’ (Editorial UOC, 2019), as well as the editor of ‘Pensar el juego. 25 caminos para los game studies’ (Shangrila, 2020). His research interests are ...
Apr 14, 2021•35 min•Ep. 94
C. Thi Nguyen is a former food writer, now a philosophy professor at University of Utah. He writes about trust, art, games, and communities, and is interested in the ways that our social structures and technologies shape how we think and what we value. His first book is Games: Agency as Art . It’s about how games are the art form that work in the medium of agency. A game designer doesn’t just create a world – they create who we are in that world. Games shape temporary agencies for artistic purpo...
Mar 12, 2021•28 min•Ep. 93
This episode's guest is Sonia Fizek, to discuss a forthcoming book on 'delegated' and 'interpassive' play. Sonia is a digital wanderer and a ludic thinker. On a more formal note, a professor at Cologne Game Lab in media and game studies and a co-editor in chief of the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. Previously a lecturer at Abertay University, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University Lüneburg and a guest lecturer at: Leuphana University...
Dec 11, 2020•21 min•Ep. 92
This episode we speak with Lindsay Grace about love and affection in games. Lindsay is Knight Chair in Interactive Media and an associate professor at the University of Miami School of Communication . He is Vice President for the Higher Education Video Game Alliance and the 2019 recipient of the Games for Change Vanguard award. Lindsay's book, Doing Things with Games, Social Impact through Design , is a well-received guide to game design. In 2020, he edited and authored Love and Electronic Affec...
Nov 13, 2020•37 min•Ep. 91
This episode we speak with Mal Abbas, an independent game designer, artist and producer working on experimental and meaningful games. Malath established Scotland's first game collective and co-working space Biome Collective, a diverse, inclusive melting pot of technology, art and culture for people who want to create, collaborate and explore games, digital art and technology. Work includes Killbox, an online game and interactive installation that critically explores the nature of drone warfare, ...
Oct 16, 2020•29 min•Ep. 90
This episode we speak with Dr Jamie Woodcock. Jamie is a researcher based in London. He is the author of The Gig Economy (Polity, 2019), Marx at the Arcade (Haymarket, 2019), and Working The Phones (Pluto, 2017). His research is inspired by the workers' inquiry. His research focuses on labour, work, the gig economy, platforms, resistance, organising, and videogames. He is on the editorial board of Notes from Below and Historical Materialism. Jamie completed his PhD in sociology at Goldsmiths, Un...
Sep 11, 2020•23 min•Ep. 89
This episode we have a departure from academia; a different approach to the creation and transmission of knowledge. We interview Eli Smith, Traditional Music Consultant for Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption 2. In our first COVID-19 recording (you may hear some sirens), we discuss the American music archive both as living tradition and recording technology, and the ways in which these interface with the virtual space of a digital game. Eli is a folk singer, banjo player and guitarist who grew u...
Aug 17, 2020•19 min•Ep. 88
“Keywords in Play” is an interview series about game research supported by Critical Distance and the Digital Games Research Association. As a joint venture, “Keywords in Play” expands Critical Distance’s commitment to innovative writing and research about games while using a conversational style to bring new and diverse scholarship to a wider audience. Our goal is to highlight the work of graduate students, early career researchers and scholars from under-represented groups, backgrounds and regi...
Jul 17, 2020•23 min•Ep. 87
In this episode we speak with Bo Ruberg, who is Assistant Professor at UC Irvine in Film & Media. Their interdisciplinary research crosses media studies, queer studies, the Digital Humanities, cultural studies, and an engagement with computational fields. From 2015-2017, Bo served as a Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Interactive Media & Games Division and a member of the Society of Fellows at the University of Southern California. In 2015, Bonnie received their Ph.D. in Comparative Literat...
Jun 12, 2020•22 min•Ep. 86
“Keywords in Play” is a monthly interview series about game research supported by Critical Distance and the Digital Games Research Association. As a joint venture, “Keywords in Play” expands Critical Distance’s commitment to innovative writing and research about games while using a conversational style to bring new and diverse scholarship to a wider audience. Our goal is to highlight the work of graduate students, early career researchers and scholars from under-represented groups, backgrounds a...
May 15, 2020•25 min•Ep. 85
