[Forty years agothis weekend, Nintendo released itsfirst game system, and video gaming and American culture changed significantly.So this week I’ll blog about a handful of other games that likewise changedthings, leading up to a weekend post on Nintendo!]

Five ofthe many books and scholars to read for far more in-depth video game studying:

1)     Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perron’s TheVideo Game Theory Reader (2003): That hyperlink is to the 2009 2ndedition, which reflects how successful this important early collection, editedby two of the field’smost prominentscholars, was and remains.

2)     Ian Bogost’s UnitOperations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (2006): I’m not sure anysingle scholar has been more significant to the field than Ian Bogost. Bogost is also a game designer,which seems to me to be a relatively common (if also somewhat complicated) overlapfor many video game studiers.  

3)     Jesper Juul’s Half-Real:Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (2006): As I hope everypost in this series has illustrated, I’m very interested in the line between thecreative fictions that video games create and the social and cultural realitiesthat they always nonetheless reflect and contribute to. No scholarly workbetter analyzes that line than does Juul’s book.

4)     Tom Bissell’s ExtraLives: Why Video Games Matter (2011): I likewise hope this series hasreflected my strong belief that video games matter, on a variety of levels, acrossthe spectrum from more potentially negative effects to the most positivecontributions to our individual and collective experiences and identities. Butdon’t take my word for it—read Bissell’s thoughtful and fun book!

5)     Garry Crawford’s VideoGamers (2012): Even before Gamergate(which, I agree completely with that hyperlinked Harmeet Kaur piece, foreshadowedmuch of the worst of our current moment), I found the majority of video gamerssignificantly less interesting and often much more frustrating than video games.But that’s precisely why I need to push past those feelings to get more analyticalabout this community (or collection of communities, more exactly), and Crawford’sbook offers a great starting point.

Nintendopost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Video games, past or present, you’d analyze?