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GameStudies.org
By Justin Hall

Video games exist as a rare form of popular entertainment largely untouched by polysyllabic analysis. That is changing; events like the recent Computer Games and Digital Textualities have been examining the medium with a nuanced sense of narrative and media history, and sites like MyVideoGames have raised the level of discourse above that of commercial sites and fan sites that too often alternate between drooling admiration and snotty dismissal.

A new periodical, GameStudies, has emerged as arguably the highest-minded Web site on video games. While the first issue is an inspiring foray into videogame scholarship, I hope that game analysis in the future will examine more games and less narrative theory.

Big Britches

Billed as "the international journal of computer game research," GameStudies attempts to straddle the gap between the gleefully sophomoric mentality of most electronic entertainment and the professoriate's passion for detached media studies. The editors feel their time has come: "Today we have the possibility to build a new field. We have a billion dollar industry with almost no basic research, we have the most fascinating cultural material to appear in a very long time, and we have the chance of uniting aesthetic, cultural and technical design aspects in a single discipline" (Computer Game Studies, Year One by Espen Aarseth). This sense of purpose pervades the essays, infusing analysis with an attitude borne of passion for a subject heretofore rejected by the academy.

Universities have hosted academic discussions about electronic entertainment for decades now; a conference about the meaning and impact of video games at Harvard took place back in 1983 (see Video Games Visit Harvard Yard by Edna Mitchell). MIT and USC have each hosted lively events in the last few years (Computer and Video Games Come of Age, MIT, February 2000, and Entertainment in the Interactive Age,, USC, January 2001); and the University of Chicago will chime in with Playing by the Rules this fall. Nevertheless, most professors working to establish video game course offerings have found their efforts largely rebuffed up until very recently. Millions of adults spend their recreational hours videogaming and enormous numbers of kids exist strapped to their GameBoys; with so many people playing, some nuanced study of electronic entertainment is overdue.

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