Animal Crossing: New Horizons' 3.0 version update is now out. I want to use it as an opportunity to briefly reflect on my 2022 article on New Horizons' character trade. cris.tuni.fi/ws/portalfil... (1/7)

Nieuwe publicatie in Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap! We onderzochten de rol van gamemotieven in het voorspellen van problematisch gamegedrag bij adolescenten, aan de hand van een survey bij 619 Vlaamse gamende adolescenten (11-19 jaar oud, 53% jongens), afgenomen op twee meetmomenten.

ZEN AND SLOW GAMES will be out in 11 days! You can already pre-order it, ask your favourite bookshop to do so, or save the url for the open access pdf. If you have a podcast, website, fanzine, or any other space where you want to ask me about it, you know where to find me :)

One more week to submit to this wonderful event - gogogogogogogo!

The article by @gutierrezcarrera.bsky.social and me is now out! Julián has created an entire thread to summarize our argument in the article (below). The article is open access, freely available in the journal Thanatos: journal.fi/thanatos/art...

Eludamos has a new CFP for a Special issue: New Perspectives on Men and Masculinity in Gaming Eludamos invites scholars in game studies and beyond to submit full papers for a special issue on men and masculinity in gaming, with deadline March 15, 2026.

Call for Papers Scream@30 An in-person academic conference hosted by The Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies, Bangor University, UK 16th December 2026 The deadline to submit abstracts is 1st June 2026. www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa-j...

GOING BOX MODE 📦 Pleased to share the intro to our CSMC Special Issue on games + Sofia's theory of "container technologies." From solar gaming & trucking sims to hot tub streams & apocalypse bunkers, 13 articles square up for an expanded definition of gaming cultures: doi.org/10.1080/1529...

Re-upping the article I wrote a few years ago about how #StrangerThings typifies the nostalgia industry that has come to dominate popular culture. muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/arti...

Hi folks! I’m currently co-editing a special issue for GAME about queer and trans games studies. Find the full cfp here www.gamejournal.it/n-132025-bey..., deadline for abstract submission is 12 January 2026!

Call for Applications! Ways of Undoing invites videographic makers, scholars, and artists to apply to one of three intensive, week-long residential workshops (St Andrews 2026 | Vancouver 2027 | Tokyo 2028). Funded accommodation & board provided. Deadline: Feb 1, 2026 waysofdoing.com/ways-of-undo...

Finally made it to Bluesky so that I can share this awesome project with everyone!

Busy week for the CoE blog! Have a look at this blog post where Matilda Ståhl, Aska Mayer (@amayer.bsky.social), Robyn Hope, Rainforest Scully-Blaker (@rainforestsb.bsky.social) and Nick Taylor (@nickttaylor.bsky.social) discuss intersections between survival games and survivalism.

My paper "'Was Barbarossa Not German?!' Nation, History, and Identity in Civilization Players’ Online Discussions" has just been published in the new issue of Eludamos! Very happy to see this out in the world eludamos.org/index.php/el...

🚨 My new article 'Antagonistic Game Design: the Author as a Player' is out on #Eludamos (Journal for Computer Game Culture)! 🚨 >> septentrio.uit.no/index.php/el... << WARNING: might contains traces of @cloobot.bsky.social @doougle.net @jzagal.bsky.social @foddy.net and @add-hawk.bsky.social XD

The new yearly Eludamos issue has just dropped! It's massive: one editorial, 12 articles, 4 book reviews, and one commentary. It's well over 350 pages. Please find it here: eludamos.org/index.php/el...

MANGA'S FIRST CENTURY got a nice review in Buzz magazine! www.buzzmag.co.uk/mangas-first... In the US and Canada, you can get 30% off your copy of the book via UC Press with code HOLIDAY30! www.ucpress.edu/books/mangas... The book will be out in the UK and everywhere else on January 26, 2026!

New issue of East Asian Journal of Popular Culture ⬇️⬇️⬇️ Focuses on transnational circulation of East Asian popular culture, incl: K-drama fandom in Indonesia, K-pop & Japanese visual kei in Chile & the Blackpink concert in post-pandemic Hong Kong #FanStudies www.intellectbooks.com/east-asian-j...

And now, Writing Game Histories (2026) with cover art (courtesy of @murthynikhil.bsky.social’s Syphilisation) www.bloomsbury.com/uk/writing-g...

We explored a pathway model from gambling-like elements in and around video gaming to gambling in adolescents. Interacting with gambling-like elements in the first wave was predictive of gambling behavior at wave two, indirectly via gambling attitude and intention. doi.org/10.1080/1445...

Fun #CfP for a spicy issue of Celebrity Studies (Forum section)!! Let's close this year strong!! 📢 Short accessible readings of 1500 words 📆 Submit before 16 January Good luck! 🩷✨️ #celebritystudies #mediastudies

Abstract below:

📢 #CallForPapers for the Trans #Asian Transcultural #Fandom Symposium happening on May 28, 2026 prior to @mechademia.bsky.social in #Singapore🇸🇬 Deadline for 500-word abstract⏳Feb 1 Find out more ▶️ transasianfan.wordpress.com We welcome your submissions🫰 @berthac.bsky.social @profweiyu.bsky.social

Passend dazu werde ich übrigens in den nächsten Tagen hier nochmal ein bisschen die einzelnen Beiträge der Ausgabe vorstellen, behaltet also diesen Thread hier im Auge, falls euch das interessiert! 👀 (Oder schaut einfach direkt selbst über die unten verlinkte Einleitung vorher schon in die Beiträge)

In Memoriam: Marsha Kinder 1940-2025 It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Marsha Kinder, Emerita University Professor at the University of Southern California and a pioneering figure in film, television, and digital media studies.

The Center for Digital Play at the IT University of Copenhagen is organizing a new conference: Playing Futures. The conference will take place from May 20th to 22nd at the IT University of Copenhagen. You can read more about it here: playingfutures.today

DiGRA deadline extended until 8th December for abstracts and full papers. www.digraconference2026.com

The full Special Issue of Celebrity Studies on Celebrity Crises and Conflicts is now out! www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcel20/1...

Darshana Jayemanne and my 2012 article "Game Studies Material Turn" from Westminster Papers In Communication just hit 200 citations on google scholar www.westminsterpapers.org/article/id/1... #gamestudies

If you’re in Leiden www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20...

CFP for a special issue of Eludamos. What are antifascist games? Proposal deadline is December 19. eludamos.org/index.php/el...

I'm delighted to announce that my new book, Artgames after Gamergate, is out now with Palgrave: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

New article on larp, activism and deliberation in this collection, out in December!

The Edu-Larp Conference will happen again in 2026! On April 15th in Gothenbrg, Sweden! Registration and the call for program is now open. Sent in your program proposal before January 4th. edularpconference.com

Since this article and its perspectives are generating a bit of buzz, I'd like to dig into what I find distasteful and, frankly, disingenous about it, particularly the ethical values it proclaims. 1/8 www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...

Tampere Game Research Lab Spring Seminar is on the horizon again. This will be out 22nd annual game studies work in progress seminar. The theme is different each year, this time it is Events and Communities. Check out the CFP.

This Wednesday I'll take a seat on Sebastian's flight to talk about transmedia storytelling and game characters!

🚚🚚🚚New article alert! Part of a special issue on games + container technologies, it’s about truckers who play Truck Simulator in their trucks, but also simulation, battlestations, and the logistics of work and play. It's open access, so please take a look 🚚🚚🚚 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

✨Hello friends, I'm launching #EmergentGenders @dukepress.bsky.social next month in Busan 🇰🇷 hosted by @thekpopprof.bsky.social at Pusan National University, Global Studies Department 📅 Dec 9 (Tues) 🕰️ 10:30am (GMT+9) 📍 PNU CEIT #203 & Zoom 📧 [email protected] (for Zoom link)

For the past decade, I've been slowly cooking a small and humble book. Part (alternative) history, part analysis, and part social critique, this is a look at what games also are and have always been. ZEN AND SLOW GAMES Out 20/1/2026 by MIT Press mitpress.mit.edu/978026255356...

GREEN GAMING An educational innovation project in which 55 of my students researched ecogames and ecogamemaking. The result is a white paper that's meant to be accessible and useful for scholars, students, and the industry. tinyurl.com/greengamingtcm If you like it, please share it around!

November 19th, I'll take a (virtual) seat in Dr. Sebastian Möring's plan from Lublin to Helsinki. I'll be talking during the flight about my book on Video Game Characters and Transmedia Storytelling, and about my experiences of having lived in Japan. Find the link to the stream below!

Now it is official! The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Games is now, like, actually, surely, coming out! (This has been in the pipeline since 2018.) I have a piece here on this brand new thing called 'magic circle'. Everyone will be talking about it.

Following multiple requests, we are publicly extending the deadline for the ACM Games: Research and Practice Special Issue on Game Advertising by two weeks to Sunday, 16 November 2025. We look forward to your submission.

Mark Maletska (@ markmaletska.bsky.social) will give an Oasis Lunchtime Talk on "Why being a Ukrainian game studies scholar is… complicated?” on Thursday 23 October at 12:00-13:00 EEST. Join us at Oasis, Tampere University, or follow online: www.youtube.com/live/EBRRynA...

Since this article is making the rounds again, I guess this is a good moment as any to plug my book (despite me feeling super weird about self promotion), as I describe these dynamics in (some would argue) excruciating detail.

This weekend Cassandra Bookshop in Porto hosted the launch of the book Inteligências Entretecidas, which includes my essay “Imitation Aesthetics”. The book documents the workshop series organized by Earthsea Association and is edited by Ana Carvalho, Isabel Carvalho, and Vera Carmo.

Just now I discovered that with the acquisition of Amsterdam University Press (AUP) by Taylor & Francis (TF), the eBook version of my book is sold for €41,95 on their website with no OAPEN link available. I hope that this is just a mistake on TF's part and I just contacted them for clarification.

We‘d all like to make Rowling and her franchise disappear, but her transphobia & large-scale political influence and the reboot TV show make it hard to ignore from a scholarly perspective. Cassie Brummitt has written a salient study on what became of Harry Potter post-book that I got to blurb:

Bryan Hikari Hartzheim will give an Oasis Lunchtime Talk on “Institutions of Play: Mapping Japan’s Indie Game Scene" on Thursday 2 October at 12:00-13:00 EEST. Join us at Oasis, Tampere University, or follow online: www.youtube.com/live/IuTUH27...