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Analog Game Studies

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Volume 13, Issue 3, 2026

Issue cover

September 7, 2026

Cover Caption: Analog Game Studies Vol. 13, No. 3 (2026)

Articles

  • 13.3 TOC and Editors Note (September 7, 2026)

    Editors' Note and Table of Contents for Volume 13, Number 3 of Analog Game Studies (September 7, 2026). 

  • The Separation of Analog and Digital Game Studies

    This essay concerns the substantially different perceived value of analog games vs. digital games in a field that otherwise seeks to unite them under the label of "games." It first contrasts expectations regarding these two areas of game development before then investigating their origins.
     
     

  • “Good Play Isn’t the Same as Good Storytelling”: Interview with Alex Roberts

    Alex Roberts is a Diana Jones award-winning indie game designer. Roberts’s games include Star Crossed (2019), but it is For the Queen (2019, 2024) that has sparked a lineage of “Descended from the Queen” (DftQ) games informed by a System Reference Document (SRD). This interview discusses focuses on the changing nature of the collective player through repetition and player education by other players.

  • Edge Cases: Deckbuilding as Gameplay in On the Edge

    Within the design and study of games, it is common to view deckbuilding as an additional, contextual practice that sets up games but is not gameplay itself. This article argues for the inclusion of deckbuilding as a form of gameplay. Through the close play of the TCG On The Edge, one of the many games released shortly after massive hit Magic: The Gathering, the authors recognized that their aesthetic and affective engagements with the game happened most often during the deckbuilding process rather than in the mechanical operations of the rules in an explicit game of On The Edge. By paying close attention to the experiential components of gameplay, and reading carefully through both the game design and game studies literature surrounding card games, we argue that deckbuilding is a productive edge case through which we can produce a more expansive vision of where gameplay happens and how it is facilitated. 

     

  • Roleplaying Fascism? Secret Hitler and the Politicising Potential of a “Light-Weight” Social Deduction Game

    This paper treats the social deduction game Secret Hitler, including the controversies surrounding its release and online discourses among its player communities, from a critical board-game studies perspective, situating its thesis within broader scholarly discussions around colonialism and historical trauma in contemporary hobby board games. Firstly, the game’s genesis, marketing and mobilisation, which has been used to implicitly justify Nazi “role play” and to marginalise those with reservations about the game’s theme and content, reveals significant continuities with previous white supremacist impulses within the board-gaming hobby in general. Secondly, analysis of online commentary on Secret Hitler, both in reviews, and on fora such as BoardGameGeek and Reddit, evinces striking similarities with many of the tropes and themes which Natàlia Lozano-Monterrubio, Juan Luis Gonzalo-Iglesia, and Núria Araüna-Baró have identified as constitutive of online discourse around controversial colonialist boardgames. Using their analytical schema to parse the discourse around Secret Hitler displays this framework’s potential for far wider applicability in critical player studies. Finally, analyzing Secret Hitler and the debates surrounding its release and gameplay in detail proves definitively that even more “light-weight” types of analog games may still touch upon serious political and historical issues and shed light on the ways that board-gaming communities can be politicized.

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