Our resources section gathers together information that we hope will be useful to scholars pursuing game studies at any level. Some of this content is dynamic and frequently updated, so we provide an RSS feed of CFP announcements that we post.
Also, it's unfortunately still the case that some consider Game Studies as a field to lack a certain degree of legitimization, and we hope to address that problem by providing information about how to use games as sources in scholarly writing. We also provide a database of game images that can be used in papers--with proper attribution.
The term "bibliography" is a bit of misnomer since the root word "biblio" suggests that it is a list of books. We do have books, but perhaps more importantly, we also list citations for video games and other types of content.
Clicking on a citation that you see anywhere on this site (for example, at the beginning of a review or listed on the bibliography page itself) will take to the reference node for that particular work. Here, you'll see the citation again as well as links to an image gallery associated with the reference (if applicable), links to any content that cites the reference as a source, and links to any reviews of that reference.
We organize it this way because we feel its important not only to compile a list of the important texts in our field, but also to see how those texts are used in the context of Game Studies. Because of this structure, you may notice that some key text or major game is missing from our list, but that simply indicates that we don't yet have any discussion of it elsewhere on the site.
A note on the citation style: The format we're using is a slightly modified MLA Style citation, but since these are generated programmatically, there are probably inconsistencies and errors arising from the complexity of their entry. For that reason, we suggest double checking our formatting before using one of our citations in a paper.
References are currently organized into seven categories:
Our Calls for Papers section is a database of CFPs that we've culled together from various sources (including, for example, the massive UPenn list-serve) that have something to do with video games. These include conferences, essays collections, special journal issues, etc.
We try to keep our database updated frequently, but it automatically sorts CFPs by their deadlines so that it lists Calls that are almost closing first.
If you have a CFP that you don't see on our list, please contact us and we'll put it up.
Like any field, Game Studies is developing its own language and vocabulary. Our glossary function allows us to make handy definitions of key terms linked to their usage in other content. For example, if you see the word ludology anywhere, it should have a symbol next to it that links to its definition in our glossary.
We realize that some terms and their definitions might be controversial, but we try to include the most informative and neutral definition possible. If you have a suggestion for a word you think we should define, please contact us.
Our screenshot galleries group together images associated with items in our bibliography. So if, for example, we have a citation for a video game, the reference node for that game will link to a gallery of images associated with that game (if we have one).
You can also browse all of the galleries, and viewing an image from within a specific gallery will also link you back to the reference node from that particular item.