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Analog Game Studies

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Analog Game Studies 101

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What is analog game studies? How do I get started in analog game studies?  What should I read or know?  Gathered below is a working bibliography of books, articles, and other sources to help you get started.  The list is by no means exhaustive or prescriptive.  Rather, it is meant to be a jumping off point, a collaborative space, a jumble of opportunities for serendipity and discovery.  The interdisciplinary field(s) of analog game studies are ever-changing and growing--as will these suggested readings--check back for updates and revisions.  A special thanks to Editorial Interns Bea Livesey-Stephens and Luke Hernandez (and the AGS Editors) for their help curating the bibliography.

Analog Game Studies (AGS)

AGS Special Issues

AGS Books

Journals

Readings by Topic

Actual Play

  • Alberto, Maria K. and Emily C. Friedman.  “In Focus Introduction: Actual Play as Actual Art,” JCMS: Journal of Cinema & Media Studies 64, No. 2 (Winter 2025): 150-155.
  • Chalk, Alex.  “Mapping an Online Production Network: The Field of ‘Actual Play’ Media,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 29, No. 2 (May 2022), https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221103.
  • Jones, Shelly.  Watch Us Roll: Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop Role-Playing Games, McFarland, 2021.
  • MacCallum-Stewart, Esther. “‘You’re Going to Be Amazing’: The Mercer Effect and Performative Play in Dungeons & Dragons,” in Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons, edited by Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and José P. Zagal, MIT Press, 2024, pp. 121-139.
  • Stanton, Ryan and Mark R. Johnson.  “Inclusivity and Diversity in ‘Actual Play’: Studying The Adventure Zone,” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 15, No. 3 (October 2023), p. 229-245.
  • Švelch, Jan.  "Mediatization of Tabletop Role-Playing: The Intertwined Cases of Critical Role and D&D Beyond," Convergence 28, No. 6 (2022): 1662-1678, https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221111680.
  • White, William J. “ Actual Play at the Forge: A Rhetorical Approach,” International Journal of Role-Playing, No. 7 (2016), https://journals.uu.se/IJRP/article/view/256.
  • White, William J.  "Actual Play and the Laws of Media," Analog Game Studies 4, No. 4 (December 2019), https://analoggamestudies.org/2019/12/actual-play-and-the-laws-of-media/.

Bleed

Board Games & Card Games

Disability

Gender & Transgender

Indigenous & Decolonizing Games

  • Barreras, Cesar A. and Paul V. Kroskrity. “An Indigenous Language and Culture Board Game? Serious Play and Yo’eme Language Reclamation,” American Indian Culture & Research Journal 48, No. 1 (January 2025), pp. 69-92.
  • Byrd, Jodi A.  American Indians, Video Games, and the Structures of Dispossession, Duke University Press, 2025.
  • Borit, Cornel, Melania Borit, and Petter Olsen. “Representations of Colonialism in Three Popular, Modern Board Games: Puerto Rico, Struggle of Empires, and Archipelago,” Open Library of Humanities 4, No. 1 (2018), https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/4474/.
  • Flanagan, Mary and Mikael Jakobsson.  Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games, MIT Press, 2023.
  • Justice, Daniel Heath.  “Hack the Orcs, Loot the Tomb, and Take the Land: Reflections on Settler Colonialism, Indigeneity, and Otherwise Possibilities of Dungeons & Dragons,” in Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons, edited by Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and José P. Zagal, MIT Press, 2024, pp. 259-273.
  • LaPensée, Elizabeth.  “Indigenous Board Game Design in The Gift of Food,” Analog Game Studies 3, No. 2 (March 2016), https://analoggamestudies.org/2016/03/indigenous-board-game-design-in-the-gift-of-food/.
  • Moll, Nicholas William.  “A Selective History: Identity and Identification in Deadlands,” Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre, Eds. Kerry Fine, Michael K. Johnson, Rebecca M. Lush and Sara L. Spurgeon, University of Nebraska Press, 202, pp. 92-115.

LARP

Miniatures & Wargames

Race & Ethnicity

  • Fickle, Tara. The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities, New York University Press, 2019.
  • Garcia, Antero. “Privilege, Power, and Dungeons & Dragons: How Systems Shape Racial and Gender Identities in Tabletop Role-Playing Games,” Mind, Culture, and Activity 24, No. 3 (2017): 232-246.
  • García, Luis-Genaro. “La Lotería as Creative Resistance: The Funds of Knowledge, Critical Pedagogy, and Critical Race Theory in Art Education,” in Funds of Knowledge in Higher Education, edited by Judy Marquez Kiyama and Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, Routledge, 2017, pp. 66-84.
  • Gaunt, Kyra Danielle. The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop, New York University Press, 2006.
  • Kemper, Jonaya. “More Than a Seat at the Feasting Table,” in Shuffling the Deck: The Knutpunkt 2018 Color Printed Companion, edited by Annika Waern and Johannes Axner, ETC Press, 2018.
  • Trammell, Aaron.  “How Dungeons and Dragons Appropriated the Orient,” Analog Game Studies 3, No. 1 (January 2016), https://analoggamestudies.org/2016/01/how-dungeons-dragons-appropriated-the-orient/.
  • Trammell, Aaron. The Privilege of Play: A History of Hobby Games, Race, and Geek Culture, New York University Press, 2023.
  • Trammell, Aaron. Repairing Play: A Black Phenomenology, MIT Press, 2023.

Sexuality & Queer

  • Alder, Avery.  “Queer Storytelling and the Mechanics of Desire,” in The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games, edited by Bonnie Ruberg, Duke University Press, 2020, pp. 183-191.
  • Berge, PS.  “Monster Power. Rebel Heart. Gay Sword.  Queer Structures and Narrative Possibility in PbtA Tabletop Roleplaying Games,” Interactive Storytelling - 14th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2021, Proceedings (2021): 179-192.
  • Biswas, Sharang. “Possibilities for Queer Community-Building Through LARP,” First Person Scholar (March 27, 2019), https://www.firstpersonscholar.com/queer-larp-community/.
  • Jones, Kat.  “Bisexuality, Latina Identity, and the Power of Physical Presence,” in The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games, edited by Bonnie Ruberg, Duke University Press, 2020, pp. 192-201.
  • Sihvonen, Tanja and Jaakko Stenros. “Queering Games, Play, and Culture through Transgressive Role-Playing Games,” Transgression in Games and Play, Eds. Kristine Jørgensen and Faltin Karlsen, MIT Press, 2019, pp. 115-129.
  • Sottile, Emry.  “‘It Might Have a Little to Do with Wish Fulfillment’: The Life-Giving Force of Queer Performance in TTRPG Spaces,” International Journal of Role-Playing, No. 15 (2024), https://journals.uu.se/IJRP/article/view/324.
  • Stenros, Jaakko and Tanja Sihvonen.  “Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG Source Books,” Analog Game Studies 2, No. 5 (July 2015), https://analoggamestudies.org/2015/07/out-of-the-dungeons-representations-of-queer-sexuality-in-rpg-source-books/.
  • Stokes, Michael.  “Access to the Page: Queer and Disabled Characters in Dungeons & Dragons,” Analog Game Studies 4, No. 3 (May 2017), https://analoggamestudies.org/2017/05/access-to-the-page-queer-and-disabled-characters-in-dungeons-dragons/.
  • Vist, Elise.  “Dungeons and Queers: Reparative Play in Dungeons and Dragons,” First Person Scholar (May 30, 2018), https://www.firstpersonscholar.com/dungeons-and-queers/.
  • Warren, Jack. “A Queer Touch of Fantasy Role-Play,” Material Game Studies: A Philosophy of Analogue Play, Eds. Chloe Germaine and Paul Wake, Bloomsbury, 2024, pp. 65-82.

TTRPGs

  • Arnaudo, Marco.  The Tabletop Revolution: Gaming Reimagined in the 21st Century, McFarland, 2024.
  • Borecky, Andrew.  "Dungeons, Dragons, and Music: The Immersive Qualities of Sound in Dungeons & Dragons Available to Purchase," Journal of Sound and Music in Games 2, No. 1 (2021): 46-64, https://doi.org/10.1525/jsmg.2021.2.1.46.
  • Bowman, Sarah Lynne. “Social Conflict in Role-Playing Communities: An Exploratory Qualitative Study.” International Journal of Role-Playing, No. 4 (March 2023), https://journals.uu.se/IJRP/article/view/183.
  • Deterding, Sebastian and José Zagal, Eds. Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations, Routledge, 2018.
  • Fine, Gary Alan. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002
  • Jones, Shelly, Ed.  Watch Us Roll: Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop Role-Playing Games, McFarland, 2021.
  • Laycock, Joseph. Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. Oakland, California, University of California Press, 2015.
  • Sidhu, Premeet, Marcus Carter and José P. Zagal, Eds.  Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons, MIT Press, 2024.
  • Torner, Evan, Aaron Trammell, and Emma Leigh Waldron.  “Reinventing Analog Game Studies,” Analog Game Studies 1, No. 1 (August 2014), https://analoggamestudies.org/2014/08/reinventing-analog-game-studies/.
  • White, William J. Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012: Designs and Discussions, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
  • Zagal, José P. and Sebastian Deterding.  The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies, Routledge, 2024.

Video Game Studies

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