Pieter Van den Heede

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

Mooie bijdrage!

Hmmm I don't know

I feel someone should rewrite Der Prozess with Belgium as its setting, and then Belgium would finally have its own massive extended cinematic universe

The most exhausting thing about Game Studies *by far* is all the rampant Columbusing that happens, both within and beyond the field (like when someone outside the field fails to even mention prior work on a particular game...)

My article "The Separation of Analog and Digital Game Studies" has now been published as part of this mammoth 781-page edited volume Historiographies of Game Studies.

Congrats to the editors and fellow authors for getting this into the world!

punctumbooks.com/titles/histo...

Voorpagina Trouw #Gaza

Embed With Games is now available in this little ebook bundle for a limited time, pay what you want

🤯 He made those? Awesome!

He sure was talented, in so many ways.

Mooi!

Hmm ok, so what if I taunt myself when starting my writing day

YouTube video by Amazon MGM Studios JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961) | Dr. Janning's Testimony | MGM

Nou, ik heb wel een film-suggestie:

Judgment at Nuremberg, uit 1961.

Een 3+ uur lange zit in de rechtzaal. Maar: wat een film.

De 3 uur waren voor mij ook zo voorbij. Puur door het retorische talent van de acteurs.

Héél veel stof tot nadenken - zeker ook nu.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQic...

😂

Damn it! And I don't even have a proper Christian Bale growl-voice

This is a very good point ❤️😍

YouTube video by Trailer Vault Raid on Taihoku - Trailer

Another day, another eat-write book-sleep cycle.

What if I could just say: hey look, game, and then boom, it just flows like a river

@kristofsmeyers.bsky.social, any cope-tips

Anyway, here's a trailer for Raid on Taihoku, one of the WWII-games I'll be writing about today

youtu.be/p6m2Tos0o2g?...

I just cannot wrap my head around people not recognizing this for what it is.

(Or, well, not wanting to recognize it.)

Any person who knows at least a bit about the history of the Holocaust should scream with the loudest voice possible to make this stop.

19/
So, to sum up, when it comes to citation politics, I would consider these points:

There is not only a duty to scope the field and the inevitable intervention of demarcation. There should also be a possibility to not engage, when substantiated.

End of additional ramble.

18/
There's a quote on the game Deus Ex that says:
'Every time someone mentions Deus Ex, at least someone will reinstall it.'

It's a bit ridiculous. But I do think a broader version of this logic does exist.

I mention Clash here to make a point. But I'd rather not talk about Clash at all again.

17/
It even applies to this post (in a way). By naming the book, I reactivated it again.

16/
Now, the sad thing is: the book is still being used! In the critical way I described above: to critique his work.

But, as I said, I genuinely think this formula often unfolds in practice:

"Work + Critique = Perpetuation of Work."

15/
At the same time, I think Huntington's book should not be used as a contemporary frame of reference at all anymore. At all!

Because I think it genuinely did cause a lot of damage in the world.

Talk about books that can kill - Clash is definitely one of those.

YouTube video by Seaquence If Books Could Kill - Episode 9: The Clash of Civilizations

14/
To name an example: I love this episode on Samual Huntington's Class of Civilizations, from @ifbookspod.bsky.social.

It's a great listen, and from a historical perspective, assessing Huntington's work is actually useful and relevant.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C56a...

13/
Sometimes, a conceptual framework, characterization,... is simply not good. It has blatant blind spots, causes actual harm, etc.

In that case, I do want to have the ability to ignore this body of work.

So not critically engage with it. Simply not discuss it at all.

12/
Because in some cases, re-engaging with a work can reactivate it and again make it prominent, in a harmful way.

Here, you could use the following equation:

"Work + Critique = Perpetuation of Work".

11/
There's an additional layer. In some cases, I genuinely believe it is better to not engage with a body of scholarship at all, and just let it remain dormant, to be left ignored, in the void of time.

10/
In direct connection to the situation here:

Claiming "I'm the first to do it" is then also a no-go. It is probably not true, and you will ultimately never know for sure.

9/
Put differently: one should do their due diligence to scope a field.

But, at some point, it is also a matter of demarcation: this is what I consulted, and this is what I'll use to develop my argument. That is ok, and ultimately, inevitable.

Scientists are drowning in COVID-19 papers. Can new tools keep them afloat? The hunt is on for better ways to collect and search pandemic studies

8/
That said: today, we find ourselves in an environment of abundance. There is a lot of scholarship, and it is easy to miss things.

I would even argue that there is a genuine epistemological crisis today in this regard, for scholarship as a whole.

I remember this one from a few years ago:

7/
This is the case for work on Red Dead in particular, and for (historical) games in general. So this approach is unacceptable. For all the reasons that @whitakeralmanac.bsky.social has listed in his review.

6/
For starters: if Olsson does not cite any game scholarship at all, that is genuinely damning.

Because it is ultimately easy to find, certainly when you work at a university in North America/Europe/the West.

5/
Now, that being said, I have been thinking about citation politics a lot lately, and I think there is more to unpack.