Gameology: Commentary and Resources for the Game Studies Community

To clarify on my question of a PhD in ludology, I'm interested in knowing of PhD programs in ludology or game studies or something explicit within the formal academic structure (accredited, formally validated within the institution). Jesper Juul is normally held as the first PhD in game studies/ludology, but the same sources also mention other PhDs in game studies from other fields. I'm not trying to reinforce boundaries at all, but fields like film studies have grown from being fostered within other areas to being fields with their own departments and schools and that's already happened for game studies, or at least sort of through existing game design programs and IT-related schools, but I don't know that we've seen a tipping point with schools with game studies departments that aren't still under or conjoined with other departments (media studies, English, Computer Science, Digital Arts...) and I don't know how likely that is to happen because games are so interdisciplinary that it almost makes more sense to have centers and institutes with affiliated programs. Yet, the academic and institutional recognition of a "game studies department" or "ludology department" with specialists in computer science, art, narrative, interface and interaction design, film, game history, social aspects of play, is something that still has cultural weight and I don't know think that we've seen it within that exact frame yet. Georgia Tech, MIT, USC (Southern California), CUNY (City University of New York), and many others have programs that fit the configuration even if without having the configuration explicitly named or institutionalized.

I'm not sure of the use value of the cultural weight given to an easily named department given the factors in play -- use of ease for understanding game studies as a field and concept, value afforded to intellectual rigor of games, cultural value of games as something "worth" studying; and, abuse potential with "real" game studies versus "fake" within departments not named the same way, turf wars for "which" game studies if departments more weighted to one field based on instructors or classes or projects, and cultural backlash with calls to "return to tradition", and feature creep.

I'm personally more worried about feature creep in terms of how academia pushes its people. While the stereotype of academia is that academics don't do much (summers off, few hours, job security forever), the reality is far from it. Academia can and does push researchers too far and too hard, which has already led to "brain doping" and the "permanence" of tenure doesn't exist in the event of financial woes where tenured and tenure-track may indicate order of cutting or size of severance package but which does not mean the cultural idea of a job "for life", and academia's issues have particular implications for game studies given its impending need for growth and for the turf wars it may face if it displaces other areas within specific institutional configurations. I think all of these can be good problems, with room for growth and discussion especially from those in new fields who know how to leverage technology most usefully, but they'll also mean a great deal of work through collaborative effort. It also seems that academic blogs like GrandTextAuto and WaterCoolerGames which are more focused on games as well as blogs like Printculture with game studies framed within cultural studies and academia specifically have already begun much of the infrastructure-establishment for the work to come.