For the past 3 years, I’ve been organizing and leading a seminar-style summer reading group for PhD students (and some recent grads) here at UC Irvine who work on game studies. It’s been a really great opportunity to build community across departments and focus in on important topics that wouldn’t otherwise be covered in seminars — like race, gender, sexuality, and affect in games, and how we can challenge existing canons of game studies.
This year’s group starts tomorrow (!) and runs through late August. Our topic, as pitched and brought to life by UCI Informatics PhD student Bono Olgado, is “A Summer in the Global South: Regional & Transnational Game Studies.” We’ll be reading texts about game development and player cultures in areas like Southeast Asia, Western Africa, and South America — with an eye toward how game studies has (or has not yet) addressed the relationship between video games and the Global South.
Here is the reading list. Feel free to read along! Thanks again to Bono for taking the lead on assembling materials so we can explore this important topic.
