Routledge Advances in Game Studies
About the Book Series
Games studies is now firmly established as a popular, important and significant area of study in the academic world. Bringing together theories and thought from a wide range of disciplines, this series features cutting-edge research addressing the major issues in game studies today.
To submit a proposal for this series, please contact:
Suzanne Richardson, Commissioning Editor for Media, Cultural and Communication Studies
[email protected]
Videogames and the Gothic
1st Edition
By Ewan Kirkland
January 29, 2024
This book explores the many ways Gothic literature and media have informed videogame design. Through a series of detailed case studies, Videogames and the Gothic illustrates the extent to which particular tropes of Gothic culture –neo-medieval aesthetics, secret-filled labyrinthine spaces, the...
Representing Conflicts in Games: Antagonism, Rivalry, and Competition
1st Edition
Edited
By Björn Sjöblom, Jonas Linderoth, Anders Frank
December 30, 2022
This book offers an overview of how conflicts are represented and enacted in games, in a variety of genres and game systems. Games are a cultural form apt at representing real world conflicts, and this edited volume highlights the intrinsic connection between games and conflict through a set of ...
Videogames and Agency
1st Edition
By Bettina Bódi
December 30, 2022
Videogames and Agency explores the trend in videogames and their marketing to offer a player higher volumes, or even more distinct kinds, of player freedom. The book offers a new conceptual framework that helps us understand how this freedom to act is discussed by designers, and how that in turn ...
Comics and Videogames: From Hybrid Medialities to Transmedia Expansions
1st Edition
Edited
By Andreas Rauscher, Daniel Stein, Jan-Noël Thon
August 01, 2022
This book offers the first comprehensive study of the many interfaces shaping the relationship between comics and videogames. It combines in-depth conceptual reflection with a rich selection of paradigmatic case studies from contemporary media culture. The editors have gathered a ...
Forms and Functions of Endings in Narrative Digital Games
1st Edition
By Michelle Herte
August 01, 2022
This book looks closely at the endings of narrative digital games, examining their ways of concluding the processes of both storytelling and play in order to gain insight into what endings are and how we identify them in different media. While narrative digital games share many representational ...
Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Techniques and Politics
1st Edition
Edited
By Paolo Ruffino
August 01, 2022
Independent Videogames investigates the social and cultural implications of contemporary forms of independent video game development. Through a series of case studies and theoretical investigations, it evaluates the significance of such a multi-faceted phenomenon within video game and digital ...
Understanding Counterplay in Video Games
1st Edition
By Alan F. Meades
February 12, 2018
This book offers insight into one of the most problematic and universal issues within multiplayer videogames: antisocial and oppositional play forms such as cheating, player harassment, the use of exploits, illicit game modifications, and system hacking, known collectively as counterplay. Using ...
Gender, Age, and Digital Games in the Domestic Context
1st Edition
By Alison Harvey
February 06, 2018
Western digital game play has shifted in important ways over the last decade, with a plethora of personal devices affording a range of increasingly diverse play experiences. Despite the celebration of a more inclusive environment of digital game play, very little grounded research has been devoted ...
The Dark Side of Game Play: Controversial Issues in Playful Environments
1st Edition
Edited
By Torill Elvira Mortensen, Jonas Linderoth, Ashley ML Brown
February 05, 2018
Games allow players to experiment and play with subject positions, values and moral choice. In game worlds players can take on the role of antagonists; they allow us to play with behaviour that would be offensive, illegal or immoral if it happened outside of the game sphere. While contemporary ...
Video Games and Social Competence
1st Edition
By Rachel Kowert
February 05, 2018
Despite their popularity, online video games have been met with suspicion by the popular media and academic community. In particular, there is a growing concern that online video game play may be associated with deficits in social functioning. Due to a lack of empirical consistency, the debate ...
Video Game Policy: Production, Distribution, and Consumption
1st Edition
Edited
By Steven Conway, Jennifer deWinter
December 08, 2017
This book analyzes the effect of policy on the digital game complex: government, industry, corporations, distributors, players, and the like. Contributors argue that digital games are not created nor consumed outside of the complex power relationships that dictate the full production and ...
Sexuality in Role-Playing Games
1st Edition
By Ashley ML Brown
June 16, 2017
Role-playing games offer a chance to pretend, make believe, and share fantasy. They often invoke heavy themes into their game play: morality, violence, politics, spirituality, or sexuality. Although interesting moral debates perennially appear in the media and academia concerning the ...