Analog Game Studies

Editors' Note and Table of Contents for Volume 13, Number 2 of Analog Game Studies (June 29, 2026). 

What does it mean to adapt, repurpose, or reimagine an existing game?  Where is the line between thoughtful and respectful modification and problematic appropriation and consumption?  Why do games seem culturally or politically neutral even when they carry deep histories of race, migration, commodification, and power?  In this case, what do we do about mahjong, a game which became popular in the United States after being brought from Shanghai and Beijing in the 1920s. In the wake of debates about the appropriation of mahjong by white American game companies, game studies scholars Tara Fickle and Edmond Y. Chang discuss how mahjong functions as a site of diasporic identity formation, intergenerational connection, and gendered sociality. We explore mahjong’s history as well as the communities, affects, and power relations that “gather around” it.

In the popular improv storytelling game Dungeons & Dragons (1974), busy school and work schedules intersect while dice rolls dictate life and death. This system and other tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) provide players with a chance to step into the shoes of an adventurer as they navigate a fantastical world, letting a twenty-sided die decide between their character's success and failure. During my freshman year of college, I started listening to the actual-play TTRPG podcast The Adventure Zone: Balance (2014), a comedy production by McElroy brothers Griffin, Justin, and Travis, and their father Clint. In the show, Griffin took on the role of game master (GM) to lead his family members through a story of treasure-hunting, memory wipes, and powerful community. In this article, I explore how TTRPGs can be read through the lens of queer theory through 1) Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity, 2) Halberstam’s rejection of chronological signifiers and Muñoz’s uninhibited fictive utopias, 3) memory and trauma, and 4) queer kinships. I assert that queer time defines the imaginative and creative experience of immersing oneself in tabletop role-playing as well as shaping the lives of the player characters embodied. Ultimately, I analyze why non-normative time is not only a crucial component in the pacing of an effective campaign, but also a relevant lens of analysis for evaluating the queer experiences fostered by TTRPGs since Dungeons & Dragons hit the shelves in 1974.

One of the most significant yet overlooked elements of contemporary tabletop games is the “poison” mechanism, which can be traced back to the June 1994 release of Magic: The Gathering (MTG)’s expansion set “Legends.” This article explores the life-draining effects of using gradual, “damage-over-time” (DoT) attacks in modern board games and card games, including those that were designed and published in the wake of recent public health crises, when the need to socially isolate amidst a global pandemic has intensified anxieties about infection. Although MTG along with several of its successors have incorporated other DoT effects, poisoning a competitor brings various cultural associations to bear on ludic texts that are themselves sometimes stereotypically portrayed as being either harmful to the emotional and psychological wellbeing of young players or conducive to toxic forms of behavior (aggression, bullying, verbal abuse) among older ones. As both a conspicuous mechanism and recurring theme of contemporary board games, poison proves useful to identifying what makes this previously ignored media form different from, if also similar to, other types of cultural production. Whether it is deployed by players sneakily plotting the downfall of their opponents (in competitive games) or manifests through embedded processes of randomization (whereby the game itself takes aim at the soon-to-be-infected), poison reveals much about the social dynamics and mechanical operations of this medium. As such, it highlight latent elements of modern game design as well as the broader culture of tabletop gaming that are endowed with additional meanings by virtue of the symbol-laden physical components which distinguish this ludic form from other pleasurable yet poison-filled experiences.

Deception has been a cornerstone of card games throughout human history, but what underlying patterns drive player behavior in social deduction games? This study explores player psychology and decision-making in the card game COUP using self-collected telemetry data from eight gameplay sessions. We identify key patterns shaped by risk sensitivity, uncertainty aversion, and emotional responses such as revenge. Despite being permitted and seemingly central to victory, in our small sample study, we discovered that lying was far less common than expected. Most players avoided bluffing whenever possible, and when they did bluff, they failed more often than they succeeded. Instead of pure strategic calculation, we found gameplay driven by emotional grudges, revenge spirals, and what we came to call the “hatred meter”: players targeting opponents who had wronged them, even when it defied optimal strategy. And we found meta-gaming patterns emerging across sessions, where players developed implicit tactical rules that never appeared in the official rulebook but spread through experiential learning. Our findings reveal how COUP serves as a compelling window into human decision-making, where risk aversion, cognitive load, perceived scarcity, and emotional dynamics could override rational strategic calculation in socially dynamic, competitive environments.

A review of Unsettling Catan: Detached Design in Eurogames, which argues why eurogames like Settlers of Catan might help players to imagine new, critical ways of challenging simplistic narratives of settled peace and to challenge systems like capitalism and settler colonialism.