New Books in Game Studies

How does analyzing video games as hypertexts expand the landscape of research for video game rhetoricians and games studies scholars? This is the first book to focus on how hypertext rhetoric impacts the five canons of rhetoric, and to apply that hypertext rhetoric to the study of video games. It also explores how ludonarrative agency is seized by players seeking to express themselves in ways that game makers did not necessarily intend when making the games that players around the world enjoy.

Hey! Listen!: Hypertext Rhetoric and The Legend of Zelda (McFarland, 2024) takes inspiration from The Legend of Zelda, a series which players all over the world have spent decades deconstructing through online playthroughs, speedruns, and glitch hunts. Through these playthroughs, players demonstrate their ability to craft their own agency, independent of the objectives built by the makers of these games, creating new rhetorical situations worthy of analysis and consideration.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist.

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John Eglin talks with Jana Byars about The Gambling Century: Commercial Gaming in Britain from Restoration to Regency (Oxford UP, 2023). Gambling captures as nothing else the drama of the "long eighteenth century" between the age of religious wars and the age of revolutions. The society that was confronted with games of chance pursued as commercial ventures also came to grips with unprecedented social mobility, floated by new wealth from new sources created fortunes from trade in sugar, cotton, ivory, silk, tea, or enslaved human beings. Likewise, play for money was prominent in the public imagination as money itself, deployed through an ever expanding and ever more sophisticated range of mechanisms, increasingly invaded public awareness, as when prospective spouses in period fiction were rated in terms of annual income as if they were municipal bonds. Similarly, the archetypal figure of the gambler captured the imagination of the public in fiction, media, and politics. At the same time, new interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - encouraged and bankrolled by those in power - fostered a new and unprecedented appreciation for mathematical probability and its applications, opening the possibility that games of chance might be pursued as a profitable commercial venture. 

The Gambling Century focuses like no previous work on those who enabled, facilitated, and profited from gambling, as well as on efforts to regulate or outlaw it. Using extensive archival material as well as printed sources, it follows its subjects from the Court to the coffeehouse, to private clubs and "at homes" in townhouses, all of which prefigure that quintessentially modern gambling space, the casino.

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A guide to the fascinating legal history of the videogame industry, written for nonlawyers. 

Why did a judge recall FIFA 15, a nonviolent soccer game, from French shelves in 2014? Why was Vodka Drunkenski, a character in Nintendo-Japan’s Punch-Out!, renamed Soda Popinski in the US and then in Western Europe, where the pun made no sense? Why was a Dutch-American company barred by US courts from distributing a clone of Pac-Man? 

Julien Mailland answers all these questions and more in The Game That Never Ends: How Lawyers Shape the Videogame Industry (MIT Press, 2024), an inside look at the legal history that undergirds our favorite videogames. Drawing on a series of case studies as vignettes of the human comedy, Mailland sheds light on why and how the role of lawyers is key for understanding the videogame industry. Each chapter in The Game That Never Ends is a mini-puzzle that pieces together how an important legal issue arose, was resolved, and impacted the industry and the experience of gamers in real time. These chapters are interspersed with shorter chapters called “The Lawyer’s Corner,” opportunities to dive deeper into individual cases. Lightly footnoted, these interludes connect the previous chapters together by providing a conceptual meta-analysis. Offering a comprehensive overview of the global legal history of videogames, The Game That Never Ends will leave readers with a nuanced, in-depth, and more global understanding of the videogame industry.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist.

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“You’re in our world now.” This bold tagline led Sony’s 1999 ad blitz for EverQuest (Boss Fight Books, 2024), the year’s most anticipated massively multiplayer game. Though just five words long, it challenged players to live in a virtual world beyond anything they’d experienced before—and delivered. The game that proved the MMORPG’s potential, EverQuest outsold all prior entries in the genre and was the most popular subscription game in North America for five years until Blizzard’s World of Warcraft overthrew it. Yet EverQuest lives on, with tens of thousands of players logging in every day.

Based on new interviews with EverQuest developers and veteran MMORPG developers, journalist Matthew S. Smith explores EverQuest's unlikely creation at a studio built to develop sports games, a rocky release which overwhelmed the game’s ill-prepared datacenter, the enticing game loops that placed EverQuest in a media firestorm around gaming addiction, and the real-money black market for EverQuest items that foretold the future of digital goods.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Titel kulturmagazin, radio host of “Replay Value”, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

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The engaging story of Intellivision, an overlooked videogame system from the late 1970s and early 1980s whose fate was shaped by Mattel, Atari, and countless others who invented the gaming industry. Astrosmash, Snafu, Star Strike, Utopia—do these names sound familiar to you? No? Maybe? They were all videogames created for the Intellivision videogame system, sold by Mattel Electronics between 1979 and 1984. This system was Atari’s main rival during a key period when videogames were moving from the arcades into the home. In Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie® (MIT Press, 2024), Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman tell the fascinating inside story of this overlooked gaming system. Along the way, they also analyze Intellivision’s chips and code, games, marketing and business strategies, organizational and social history, and the cultural and economic context of the early US games industry from the mid-1970s to the great videogame industry crash of 1983. While many remember Atari, Intellivision has largely been forgotten. As such, Intellivision fills a crucial gap in videogame scholarship, telling the story of a console that sold millions and competed aggressively against Atari. Drawing on a wealth of data from both institutional and personal archives and over 150 interviews with programmers, engineers, executives, marketers, and designers, Boellstorff and Soderman examine the relationship between videogames and toys—an under-analyzed aspect of videogame history—and discuss the impact of home computing on the rise of videogames, the gendered implications of play and videogame design at Mattel, and the blurring of work and play in the early games industry.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist.

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In the beginning, a small unlicensed game development company was hit with divine inspiration: They could make a lot of money (and escape the wrath of Nintendo) by creating games for Christians. With the release of the 1990 NES platformer Bible Adventures, the developers saw what they had made, and it was good. Or, at least, good enough.

Based on extensive research and original interviews with Wisdom Tree staff, Gabe Durham's book Bible Adventures (Boss Fight Books, 2015) investigates the rise and fall of the little company that almost could, the tension between faith and commerce in the Christian retail industry, culture's retro/ironic obsession with "bad games," and the simple recipe for transforming a regular game into a Christian game: throw a Bible in it and pray nobody notices.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist.

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The Routledge Handbook of Esports (Routledge, 2024) offers the first fully comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of esports, one of the fastest growing sectors of the contemporary sports and entertainment industries. Global in coverage, the book emphasizes the multifaceted nature of esports and explores the most pressing issues defining the competitive video gaming landscape today. Featuring the work of 93 leading esports academics and industry specialists from around the world, and rigorously peer-reviewed, the book is structured around ten key themes: 1) Introduction to Esports, 2) Esports Research, 3) Esports Players, 4) Esports Business and Management, 5) Esports Media and Communication, 6) Esports Education, 7) Critical Concerns in Esports, 8) Global Esports Cultures, 9) Esports Future Directions, and 10) Key Terms Definitions. Examining the current state of esports, emerging areas of interest and the ongoing debates shaping the esports industry, each of the 62 chapters offers key highlights, an assessment of the latest research, practical esports examples and recommendations, and is complemented by enlightening case studies or industry interviews. For further academic and professional depth, chapters also include a guide to recommended additional resources. Explaining technical terms and gaming jargon in a user-friendly manner, and maintaining a balanced tone throughout, this handbook is essential reading for any student or researcher with an interest in esports, gaming, or sport studies, and for any practitioner or policy-maker working in the esports industry.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist.

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Focusing on games that examine a range of national histories and heritages from across Central and Eastern Europe, Central and Eastern European Histories and Heritages in Video Games (Routledge, 2024) looks beyond the diversity of the local histories depicted in games, and the audience reception of these histories, to show a diversity of approaches which can be used in examining historical games – from postcolonialism to identity politics to heritage studies. The book includes chapters on Serbia, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Hungary, Estonia, Slovakia, Czechia, Finland, and (a Western guest with regional connections) Luxembourg. Through the lens of video games, the authors address how nations struggle with the legacies of war, colonialism, and religious strife that have been a part of nation-building - but also how victimized cultures can survive, resist, and sometimes prevail.

Appealing primarily to scholars in the fields of game studies, heritage studies, postcolonial criticism, and media studies, this book will be particularly useful for the subfields of historical game studies and postcolonial game studies.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Titel kulturmagazin, radio host of “Replay Value”, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

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Painstakingly researched and written by football-obsessed writer and experienced game journalist, historian, and documentarian Richard Moss – author of Bitmap's own The Secret History of Mac Gaming – A Tale of Two Halves: The History Of Football Video Games stays keenly on the ball as it shares the rich and influential history of video game football – or 'soccer', for our American readers – striving to understand the very best the genre has to offer; and those releases that go a little wide of their target.

A Tale of Two Halves takes you on a fascinating journey from the very first examples of the form all the way through to the genre's 2000s' heyday. It hits the back of the net with expert analysis of over 400 football games, including Sensible Soccer, Kick Off, Match Day, FIFA, Pro Evolution Soccer, This Is Football, Championship Manager, Premier Manager, and both old-school and new-school Football Manager. Gathered together in a single volume, that remarkable spread of releases presents a surprising variety of interpretations of the beautiful game, showcasing one of the medium's most creative, beguiling realms.

A Tale of Two Halves primarily focuses on footy gaming's formative years – meaning from around 1980 to 2010 – and carefully divides the genre into two distinct halves, taking a considered look at each. As such, the first half is dominated by the fast and simple 2D action of icons like Kick Off, International Soccer, and Nintendo’s Soccer. Then, following the half-time whistle, it turns its attention to the increasingly realistic 3D outings defined by icons like FIFA, Pro Evo, and Virtua Striker.

Across its 628 pages, A Tale of Two Halves also features a foreword by legendary commentator Clive Tyldesley, hundreds of meticulously realised screenshots, and 13 interviews with pioneering football game developers. Inside you'll also find a series of illustrations from James Reynolds' 'Unlicensed FC' project – which celebrates Pro Evo's unusual takes on players' real names – as well as perfectly pitched pixel art from the team at 8-Bit Football. Numerous gaming platforms are covered, from the Atari 2600 and C64 to the Collecovison, via the Amiga line, PlayStation 1, Xbox 360, Arcades, and many more.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Titel kulturmagazin, radio host of “Replay Value”, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

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People have played games forever, but it’s only in the past few decades that people really started thinking about what games are, how they work, and how to make them better.

Anatomy of Game Design (CRC Press, 2024) takes some of the most popular and beloved games of all time and dissects them to see what makes them tick. By breaking down the systems and content of each game, the underlying systems of game design are laid bare.

Eight games are analyzed – including Settlers of Catan; Centipede; Candy Crush Saga; Papers, Please; Magic: The Gathering; and more – each representing a different genre or era of game design. Each game is discussed in detail, using the same methods for each game. What are the verbs of the game that give the player agency? How do those verbs fit together to form a core loop that makes the game engaging? What are the systems that power the gameplay? What is the larger flow that makes the game interesting over and over again?

Each game is then used as an example to tie back to one or more larger topics in game design, such as systems design, randomness, monetization, game theory, and iterative approaches to game development.

Key Features:

Rudolf Thomas Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at culture magazine Titel kulturmagazin, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

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