This collection expands the analytical framework of digital games by exploring them through the lens of genre analysis—the evaluation of the structural designs that provide the framework for the player’s experience. Each chapter in this volume attends to a unique game genre that is newly emerged or revisited, and often new under-addressed in critical scholarship to theorize where games are situated currently and establish new ground in Game Studies for the future.
As video games continue to dominate the media landscape, understanding the structure and form of games is increasingly important. Despite the fluid nature of genre, there remains an intellectual and ideological power for understanding the connective tissue of game genres as creative artifacts through their relational iterations. This volume extends these ideas by considering the current framework for game genres, highlighting the additions and evolutions of the last decade. Each section in this collection revisits the idea of genre as a flexible dynamic to capture the iterative quality of the work by signaling things that exist currently, tracing their emergence and evolution, and theorizing what such affordances might mean for the future.
The first section considers emerging genres as a function of the material conditions of play, and the game experience. The second section examines many of the formal/mechanical elements used to identify genres, highlighting the emergence or evolution of forms that are unique to the current landscape of games. The final section explores the function and construction of genre as affective, highlighting the expressive and persuasive potential of games to shape the audience.
Introduction I. Materiality 1. Nostalgic Enactment: The Genre of Home Arcade Cabinets Brent Kice (University of Houston- Clear Lake, USA) 2. The FMV Game: A Genre that Never Existed, but Refuses to Die Jakub Majewski (Kazimierz Wielki University, Poland) and Scott Knight (Bond University, Australia) 3. Game Modification As Genre-Bending Media Aleš Ceh (University of Maribor, Slovenia) 4. Teachable Games: Genre Conventions for the University Classroom Rebecca S. Richards (University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA) 5. Non-human Simulators Kari Hanlin (Bowling Green State University, USA) and Spencer Myers (Bowling Green State University, USA) II. Mechanics 6. Questioning Genre Stability In The Current Generation Of RTS Games Kacper Szozda (University of Western Australia) 7. The Study of Hidden Animals: On Pet Breeding Simulators Alesha Serada (University of Vaasa, Finland) 8. Absurdist Videogames Anna Douglass (UNSW Sydney, Australia) 9. Dad Gaming and “Boomer Shooters:” Changing Demographics in a Shifting Gaming Landscape Kyle Moody (Fitchburg State University, USA) 10. Emerging Horror Genre Michael Landon (University of Illinois, USA) 11. Toward Eco Video Games Connor Jackson (Edge Hill University, UK) 12. The Fallen Leaves Tell a Story: Elden Ring and the Emergence of the Soulslike Genre David Hall (University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, USA) III. Affect 13. Transversal Sound: Where Sound and Realities Intersect Casey OCeallaigh (University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, USA) 14. Gaming from the Red Room: Narrative, Genre, Affect, and Hybrid Games G. Bret Strauch (University of Arkansas- Fort Smith, USA) and Nicki Stancil (University of Arkansas- Fort Smith, USA) 15. A Genre in the Making: The Role of Nostalgia in the Genre Awareness of Isometric Role-playing Games Norbert Krek (University of Debrecen, Hungary) 16. Moral Combat: Metafictional Games Taylor Orgeron (Southwestern Oklahoma State University, USA) 17. Love and Other Terrors: Vulnerability in English-language Dating Simulators, Romantic Visual Novels, and Otome Games Sian Tomkinson (University of Western Australia) 18. Horror, but Make it Cozy: Beacon Pines’ Use of Alternative Narrative and Design Strategies for Scary Video Games Christine Tomlinson (University of California-Irvine, USA) Index
Josh Call is Professor of English at Grand View University, USA. Betsy Brey is Instructor in Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Gerald Voorhees is an Associate Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Matthew Wysocki is Associate Professor at Flagler College, USA, where he is the Coordinator of Media Studies.
Reviews for Emerging Genres: New Formations of Games
The study of genres seems to mirror the arrival of a new medium that makes audiences, academics, and producers rethink the idea and reconfigure their understanding of the way that genres speak through the text. Given that video games are the medium of our era, this text comprehensively catalogues emerging genres in a host of games and game genres. The essays in this collection will help fans and scholars alike tease apart our understanding of popular genres like horror games and new ones like cozy games. Conversely, the chapters explore the ways that genre conditions our understanding of the production of identities in and through the genre of a game. Importantly, the essays collected here will also provide scholars in other fields with new ways of understanding established genres through this important look at emerging ones. * Marc A. Ouellette, Associate Professor of Cultural & Gender Studies, Old Dominion University, USA *
