Issue 1.2: The Clash of the Game-ologies

Game & Word: Volume 1, Issue 2

Game & Word: Volume 1, Issue 2

“The Clash of the Game-ologies”

Summary: In this issue, we’ll build on our previous attempt to define video games by broadly reviewing the two main philosophical schools of thought within game scholarship. We’ll also examine the scholarly debate’s real-life implications, and whether the two camps have more in common than they initially appear to.

Table of Contents (Issue 2: Monday, Jan. 03, 2022)

1. Feature, Chapter 2: The Clash of the Game-ologies

2. Food for Talk: Discussion Prompts

3. Further Reading

4. How to Support G&W

5. Footnotes

Chapter 2: The Clash of the Game-ologies

Last week, we attempted the deceptively challenging undertaking that is defining video games. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, that was just a bunch of armchair theorizing (educated armchair theorizing, but armchair theorizing nonetheless) by a gaming-enthusiast-turned-semi-pro-gaming-writer. What do actual gaming scholars think?

When I first realized that “gaming scholar” was a thing, and that you could actually get paid to think about video games, my mind exploded into a jillion fragments, which the trade winds then scattered to the ends of the Earth. I’m still piecing them back together, like Link dutifully picking up one Korok seed after another as he goes about his endless questing and hero-ing throughout Hyrule.