Dr. Emma Vossen

I hope this book can be a lifeboat for students studying games around the world—especially those who feel lost, confused, or misunderstood.

While I think anyone studying games can benefit from the book, it was assembled first and foremost for students. For the five years we worked on the book, I was thinking about my time as a student and how unnecessarily combative and competitive it was. I was always one foot out of #gamestudies.

I am sure I am not the only person who still prefers to read a physical book with pen and Post-it note in hand. As a grad student, it was so informative and valuable to my research to be able to physically hold and mark up books as well as accessing (and never marking up!!!) books from the library.

2) I've always hated the idea that some academic books are priced for libraries and not for scholars. Even though the book is free online, it is essential that physical copies are not astronomically priced. $35 USD for a physical copy is an AMAZING price for a print copy of a 780-page academic book!

Before I get into the chapters themselves, I want to highlight a few things.

1) From the get-go, we all agreed that we were not interested in any version of this project that wasn't OA. We did NOT know it was going to be 800 pages 😬😳 @punctumbooks.bsky.social is INCREDIBLE for making it work!

Over the past month, I have been in the process of both starting a new job and moving my family to a new city! Now that we are relocated, I am hoping to share a bit about each chapter in this book via this thread in the coming days/weeks! I want to unpack HOGS for you as I unpack my literal boxes.

After 5 years of hard work by @sparklebliss.bsky.social, @cmejeur.bsky.social, @onlyalishak.bsky.social, myself, our contributors, and the lovely people at @punctumbooks.bsky.social Historiographies of Game Studies is out NOW! You can read all 780 pages for FREE. 🔓
punctumbooks.com/titles/histo...

Thank you for sharing our book! Happy to chat with you more about it if you are interested! DMs are open!

The Video Game Library Newsletter - Vol. #019 The LONGEST Newsletter yet! A sarcastic amount of Video Game Book announcements, lots of community collaborations, and an awesome interview with the VGMuseum!

ICYMI - Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be from @punctumbooks.bsky.social has released, featuring contributions from an incredible lineup of scholars.

780 pages of #GameStudies goodness entirely for FREE! Just one of many stories in this week's Newsletter 👇

When did game studies start? And what & WHO is at the core of game studies? Fields are defined as much by what they are NOT as by what they are & their borderlands can be hotly contested spaces.

Download for FREE this 780-page BRICK of an #OpenAccess book & press PLAY.

tinyurl.com/2ucxjy8a

PIXELLATE THIS!

780 pages of the HISTORIOGRAPHIES OF GAME STUDIES: Where It Has Been, What It Could Be & #OpenAccess to boot, which = FREE to read!

This book lays bare how a field gets made & who gets to decide & who & what is repelled. This is also a blueprint for change.

tinyurl.com/2ucxjy8a

I'm old enough to remember a year or two ago when both "we're not killing journalists that's illegal!" and "We're not bombing *hospitals* for god's sake" were major talking points. Violations of these things now no longer seem to even register.

Christ.

Thank you so much for reading and sharing! ♥️♥️♥️

also started reading this today on stream and the chapter by Emma Vossen made me cry.

"I hope that the future of game studies looks completely different. I hope that marginalized scholars no longer have to fight to be accepted. I hope that people see the work we do has value."

<3

The military takeover of Washington is not a “distraction” from Epstein. It’s a military takeover of Washington, which is an even bigger deal, and those of us who kill brain cells reporting on this stuff knows it’s been an explicit goal since before the election.

My first keynote, "Narratology vs Ludology: the Debate that Has Haunted Game Studies for Two Decades… and Counting," went so well! Thank you to everyone who talked to me after. MANY people said they were less confused about game studies, and one person said it was like "group therapy," haha.

The book is out now! Free to download! punctumbooks.com/titles/histo...

PUBLISHED #OpenAccess!

HISTORIOGRAPHIES OF GAME STUDIES: What It Has Been, What it Could Be

780 pages of disciplinary self-care, otherwise known as intellectual history. Come for the pixels, stay for the resolutions.

#VideoGames #MediaStudies

@cmejeur.bsky.social @emmavphd.bsky.social

I have a chapter in this FANTASTIC collection edited by @cmejeur.bsky.social @sparklebliss.bsky.social @emmavphd.bsky.social and Alisha Karabinus!

It’s *OPEN ACCESS* so you can read it for free!
punctumbooks.com/titles/histo...

#gamestudies #historyofgames #gamescholarship

Cover of Historiographies of Game Studies

Check out the amazing new collection edited by our very own @emmavphd.bsky.social! Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be is free to access here:
punctumbooks.com/titles/histo... #brocku

The FBI's Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Had Nearly 3 Minutes Cut Out Metadata from the “raw” Epstein prison video shows approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds were removed from one of two stitched-together clips. The cut starts right at the “missing minute.”

NEW: Metadata from the “raw” Epstein prison video shows approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds were removed from one of two stitched-together clips. The cut starts right at the “missing minute.”

the coolest part about the elmo hacked posts is that the most insane people online are treating elmo like he’s a real guy

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc. There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation. There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely. Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual. As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone. Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism. No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get: The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

I think it's now possible to make a poli-sci course that equips one for modern political analysis better than most classic theory and has a syllabus sourced entirely from random internet posts.

Text 1. Wilhoit's Law, born as part of a 2018 blog comment
crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l...

Tweet by @emmahvossen: 12:11 PM · Jun 12, 2019 Gamers are still convinced that there are only: Two races: white and "political" Two genders: Male and "political" Two hair styles for women: long and "political" Two sexualities: straight and "political" Two body types: normative and "political" Quoted Tweet by shitty gamer takes/whatever i feel like posting (@GamerTakes) A screenshot of Animal Crossing News: "NEWS: Kotaku has confirmed Animal Crossing: New Horizons will be the first main series game to feature selectable skin tones!" Reply by a user with an erased handle and a clown emoji over their PFP: So you can customize your character. That's cool. It's a fun game and I'm glad you can make a character that looks like yourself. ..but I hate this type of baiting on social political issues.

Text 70. gamers (derogatory) by @emmavphd.bsky.social

xcancel.com/emmahvossen/...

(h/t @clockworklady.bsky.social)

What happened with Polygon today is so fucked. Vox Media has made some atrocious decisions in my six years here but this is really something else. And to do this in the middle of us bargaining a new union contract, where they scold us for asking for better protections, is just unconscionable.

They’re so worthless that their product wouldn’t work without them. But this is nothing new: corporations always try to pretend the value of labor is worthless so they can maximize their profits when they lay claim to that labor by coercion, force, or theft.

Historians: Quibbling Over Exact Definition Of Concentration Camp Sign Of Healthy Society NEW HAVEN, CT—Calling such concern for linguistic precision a clear indicator of a thriving country, a panel of historians from Yale University issued a statement Thursday announcing that quibbling ov...

Historians: Quibbling Over Exact Definition Of Concentration Camp Sign Of Healthy Society

Simplicity by Mattie Lubchansky The future is hauntingly familiar and hilariously horrific in the ambitious latest from Lubchansky (Boys Weekend). In the year 2...

Use this amazing review as a reminder to preorder Simplicity by @mattielubchansky.com!!!!! www.publishersweekly.com/9780593701126

If you're wondering why blood is spurting from my eyes, ears, and nose, I don't have some kind of novel disease, it's because I read this story this morning and my blood rage cannot be contained to my body

I'm currently planning a meta-analysis of scholars and scholarship related to Historical Game Studies. If you're interested in participating, feel free to reply/DM me! I'm interested in things like people's scholarly background, affiliation/job title, publishers/journals you usually submit to, etc.