Dom Ford

3 Postdoctoral Researchers (cultural game studies) / 3 tutkijatohtoria (kulttuurinen pelitutkimus)

Come work with us! We are hiring 3 postdoctoral researchers working in cultural game studies from the beginning of 2026 until the end of 2027. Read more and apply by 31.10.2025 (at 23.59.00 EET / UTC+2):

Creating AI avatars of dead people needs to become an absolute societal taboo.

📯PUBLICATION NEWS📯
@amayer.bsky.social, Knut Wormstädt and I are happy to announce that our @gamevironments.bsky.social special issue Peripheral Religions and Games is officially out now! Here's the link, but we want to talk about every article and report for a minute: tinyurl.com/2txajt3m

Smart and delightful book, equally enjoyable @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social interview. @domford.bsky.social Mytholudics: Games and Myth @degruyterbrill.bsky.social
#GameTheory#Folklore #Myth #PopularCulture
newbooksnetwork.com/mytholudics

My first paper, "Fictional Videogames as Framing Devices: Suicide Communication in MMOs," is out now on Eludamos.

In the paper, I argue that the use of fictional MMOs as framing devices serves as a reflexive narrative tool that suggests MMOs as spaces with their own internal rules of communication.

Recently, I was interviewed about my book for @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social by @janalena.bsky.social! If you want to hear me talk about games and myth for about an hour, please check it out.

newbooksnetwork.com/mytholudics

The future dystopian Rome of Lucio Fulci's Warriors of the Year 2072 (1984). My paper on the film's use of the gladiatorial combat trope has just been published in @gua-le-ni.com @domford.bsky.social and Riccardo Fassone's special issue of Eludamos on fictional games. eludamos.org/index.php/el...

Very happy to announce that next week, I'll be joining the University of Zürich as part of the URPP Digital Religion(s), working on the project "Synthetic Realities. Generative AI and Digital Visual Literacy" alongside @bildoperationen.bsky.social. Exciting!!

Image of a ten-sided die. Text overlay: What is it like being a man in game culture? Take part in a study at bit.ly/pelikulttuuri The study is intended for men aged 15 or more and either Finnish or living in Finland. There is a Tampere University logo at the bottom.

Are you a man, at least 15 years old and either Finnish or living in Finland?

Do you participate in game culture by e.g. playing video games, RPGs or miniature games, watching videos or through activities like cosplay?

Take the questionnaire in Finnish or English at bit.ly/pelikulttuuri

Hooooooly social mirroring 😂

Hey, thanks for using this legal e-reader to access an academic book through your uni library instead of just grabbing the pdf on libgen. Here's a sloppy AI summary of the book. We've defaulted your view to an epub without page numbers but feel free to reload the whole page if you want to change it.

👩‍🍳 𝐂𝐅𝐏: 𝐂𝐇Æ𝐅 - 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞 & 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐅𝐨𝐨𝐝
Want to talk about your favourite dish or latest culinary faux pas? 🍕🍍 Or reflect on how food is represented in art? 🍰
Submit an idea by 6 June and join us in Tilburg in August!
👉More info: nelevandemosselaer.wordpress.com/chaef-cultur...

Thanks, Poppy 🙏

Neuer Lesestoff für derzeit zu kalt Abende. @johannesfranzen.bsky.social @domford.bsky.social

Submit now: CfP for our next Special Issue "BEYOND PLAY: THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF DIGITAL GAMING IN A DEEPLY MEDIATIZED SOCIETY" is out now! Abstract submission deadline: 31.05.2025 journals.suub.uni-bremen.de/index.php/ga... #gamevironments #gaming #academics #cfp

Having taken a quick look at the demo document, this seems much more like a Notion alternative than a Google Docs alternative. No font selection, set formatting, etc. etc. That's cool - I'm looking for a Notion alternative - but I'm desperate for Google Docs to die too.

If you want me to give a talk, do an interview, be on a podcast or anything like that to do with the book, please get in touch (:

I recently finished reading this and it's a straight banger. Plus, the book is beautiful and small - it fits in a large pocket, so it's perfect for taking on the bus. It even comes with its own bookmark!!!!!! But seriously, this is an excellent novel.

'What We Owe the Dead' is the title of my new #scifi novel.

In the aftermath of a climate catastrophe, the book follows strange detective case and deals with themes such as the notion of personhood and the social use of #games.

> www.setmargins.press/books/what-w... <

(photos by Annette Behrens)

always a joy to find others working in this space ❤️

omg I didn't even notice that. That's a new one!!

And thank you for all the support along the way <3

Mytholudics Games create worlds made of many different elements, but also of rules, systems and structures for how we act in them. So how can we make sense of them? Mytholudics: Games and Myth lays out an approac...

So, if you or someone you know is interesting in games and myth, I hope this book helps. And don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions for me - I'm very happy to hear from people about this!

doi.org/10.1515/9783...

But I'm very happy to see this out in the world now. It's been a long time in the making, starting officially in 2019 with my PhD but based on ideas I'd been turning over since at least 2015. There are lots of people to thank, but you can read the acknowledgements for that.

The book is, unfortunately, prohibitively expensive. That's academic publishing for you. Maybe you have institutional access to the ebook, or else requesting it in your library is also a good option. I'm told there will be an affordable paperback later down the line.

What games you ask? Well, through the lens of heroism, we're talking Call of Duty, Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, Heaven's Vault and Horizon Zero Dawn. For monstrosity, Doom, Pokémon, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifive, Ghost of Tsushima and The Witcher.

It's long, but designed to be a bit modular. You can just read the section that lays out mytholudics, or you can take any of the game examples as standalone analyses. I don't usually read academic books cover to cover, and so I didn't write this like that either.

I think it helps us to see games as a whole: as stories, yes, but also as systems, as worlds, as social environments. Myth helps with this because it too is comprised of many different kinds of things, from stories to rituals to taboos to ways of relating to people.

Mytholudics Games create worlds made of many different elements, but also of rules, systems and structures for how we act in them. So how can we make sense of them? Mytholudics: Games and Myth lays out an approac...

📖My book is out!

My book Mytholudics: Games and Myth is now available.

In it, I propose a way of understanding and analysing games as and through myth.

@degruyterbrill.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1515/9783...

I thought we were past pretending that articles just popped into existence out of nowhere, written by no one. That reads far more "oddly" to me.