Media and Culture Studies
Game studies has been part of the field of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University since around 2000 in both research and education. From this disciplinary perspective, games, gameplay, and game culture are studied as cultural phenomena with ever-changing form and meaning which give shape not just to game culture but our media culture at large.
Playing the Archive
Old games don’t play on modern equipment. To retain this part of our cultural heritage, we took action.
Game Research Magazine
In 2017, a special issue titled Game Research – Games that Change your Mind was published about the research projects of the Utrecht Center for Game Research.
Symposium: Let’s play Dutch game history
On November 18 2016, Utrecht University and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision organized a joint symposium on the challenges of creating an archive for the history of Dutch games and game development as national cultural heritage.
Ludomusicology – Approaches to Video Game Music
The last half-decade has seen the rapid and expansive development of video game music studies. As with any new area of study, this significant sub-discipline is still tackling fundamental questions concerning how video game music should be approached. In this volume, experts in game music provide their responses to these issues. This book suggests a variety of new approaches to the study of game music.
Playful Identities – The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures
The edited volume Playful Identities Digital deals with media technologies that increasingly shape how people relate to the world, to other people and to themselves. This prompts questions about present-day mediations of identity.
History of Game Research at Utrecht University
An overview of key moments in the history of game research at Utrecht University.