This Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the latest research on role-playing games (RPGs) across disciplines, cultures, and media in one single, accessible volume. Collaboratively authored by more than 40 key scholars, it traces the history of RPGs, from wargaming precursors to tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons to the rise of live-action role-play and contemporary computer RPG and massively multiplayer online RPG franchises, like Baldur’s Gate, Genshin Impact, and World of Warcraft. Individual chapters survey the perspectives, concepts, and findings on RPGs from key disciplines, like performance studies, sociology, psychology, education, economics, game design, literary studies, and more. Other chapters integrate insights from RPG studies around broadly significant topics, like worldbuilding, immersion, and player-character relations, as well as explore actual play and streaming, diversity, equity, inclusion, jubensha, therapeutic uses of RPGs, and storygames, journaling games, and other forms of text-based RPGs. Each chapter includes definitions of key terms and recommended readings to help students and scholars new to RPG studies find their way into this interdisciplinary field. A comprehensive reference volume ideal for students and scholars of game studies and immersive experiences and those looking to learn more about the ever-growing, interdisciplinary field of RPG studies.

This handbook collects, for the first time, the state of research on role-playing games (RPGs) across disciplines, cultures, and media in a single, accessible volume. Collaboratively authored by more than 50 key scholars, it traces the history of RPGs, from wargaming precursors to tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons to the rise of live action role-play and contemporary computer RPG and massively multiplayer online RPG franchises, like Fallout and World of Warcraft. Individual chapters survey the perspectives, concepts, and findings on RPGs from key disciplines, like performance studies, sociology, psychology, education, economics, game design, literary studies, and more. Other chapters integrate insights from RPG studies around broadly significant topics, like transmedia worldbuilding, immersion, transgressive play, or player–character relations. Each chapter includes definitions of key terms and recommended readings to help fans, students, and scholars new to RPG studies find their way into this new interdisciplinary field.

Role-playing games offer a chance to pretend, make believe, and share fantasy. They often invoke heavy themes into their game play: morality, violence, politics, spirituality, or sexuality. Although interesting moral debates perennially appear in the media and academia concerning the appropriateness of games’ ability to deal with such adult concepts, very little is known about the intersection between games, playfulness, and sexuality and what this might mean for players. This book offers an in-depth, ethnographic look into the phenomenon of erotic role-play through the experiences of players in multiplayer and tabletop role-playing games. Brown explores why participants engage in erotic role-play; discusses the rules involved in erotic role-play; and uncovers what playing with sexuality in ludic environments means for players, their partners, and their everyday lives. Taken together, this book provides a rich, nuanced, and detailed account of a provocative topic.

A definitive guide to contemporary video game studies, this second edition has been fully revised and updated to address the ongoing theoretical and methodological development of game studies. Expertly compiled by well-known video game scholars Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, the Companion includes comprehensive and interdisciplinary models and approaches for analyzing video games, new perspectives on video games both as an art form and cultural phenomenon, explorations of the technical and creative dimensions of video games, and accounts of the political, social, and cultural dynamics of video games. Brand new to this second edition are chapters examining topics such as preservation; augmented, mixed, and virtual reality; eSports; disability; diversity; and identity, as well as a new section that specifically examines the industrial aspects of video games including digital distribution, game labor, triple-A games, indie games, and globalization. Each essay provides a lively and succinct summary of its target area, quickly bringing the reader up-to-date on the pertinent issues surrounding each aspect of the field, including references for further reading. A comprehensive overview of the present state of video game studies that will undoubtedly prove invaluable to students, scholars, and game designers alike.

Despite the rise of computer gaming, millions of adults still play face to face role playing games, which rely in part on social interaction to create stories. This work explores tabletop role playing game (TRPG) as a genre separate from computer role playing games. The relationship of TRPGs to other games is examined, as well as the interaction among the tabletop module, computer game, and novel versions of Dungeons & Dragons. Given particular attention are the narrative and linguistic structures of the gaming session, and the ways that players and gamemasters work together to construct narratives. The text also explores wider cultural influences that surround tabletop gamers.

Role-play as a Heritage Practice is the first book to examine physically performed role-enactments, such as live-action role-play (LARP), tabletop role-playing games (TRPG), and hobbyist historical reenactment (RH), from a combined game studies and heritage studies perspective. Demonstrating that non-digital role-plays, such as TRPG and LARP, share many features with RH, the book contends that all three may be considered as heritage practices. Studying these role-plays as three distinct genres of playful, participatory and performative forms of engagement with cultural heritage, Mochocki demonstrates how an exploration of the affordances of each genre can be valuable. Showing that a player’s engagement with history or heritage material is always multi-layered, the book clarifies that the layers may be conceptualised simultaneously as types of heritage authenticity and as types of in-game immersion. It is also made clear that RH, TRPG and LARP share commonalities with a multitude of other media, including video games, historical fiction and film. Existing within, and contributing to, the fiction and non-fiction mediasphere, these role-enactments are shaped by the same large-scale narratives and discourses that persons, families, communities, and nations use to build memory and identity. Role-play as a Heritage Practice will be of great interest to academics and students engaged in the study of heritage, memory, nostalgia, role-playing, historical games, performance, fans and transmedia narratology.

The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies provides the first overview of significant concepts within reenactment studies. The volume includes a co-authored critical introduction and a comprehensive compilation of key term entries contributed by leading reenactment scholars from Europe, North America, and Australia. Well into the future, this wide-ranging reference work will inform and shape the thinking of researchers, teachers, and students of history and heritage and memory studies, as well as cultural studies, film, theater and performance studies, dance, art history, museum studies, literary criticism, musicology, and anthropology.

In this comprehensive and highly interdisciplinary companion, contributors reflect on remix across the broad spectrum of media and culture, with each chapter offering in-depth reflections on the relationship between remix studies and the digital humanities. The anthology is organized into sections that explore remix studies and digital humanities in relation to topics such as archives, artificial intelligence, cinema, epistemology, gaming, generative art, hacking, pedagogy, sound, and VR, among other subjects of study. Selected chapters focus on practice-based projects produced by artists, designers, remix studies scholars, and digital humanists. With this mix of practical and theoretical chapters, editors Navas, Gallagher, and burrough offer a tapestry of critical reflection on the contemporary cultural and political implications of remix studies and the digital humanities, functioning as an ideal reference manual to these evolving areas of study across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of digital humanities, remix studies, media arts, information studies, interactive arts and technology, and digital media studies.

"This book presents a framework for understanding games for educational purposes while providing a broader sense of current related research. This creative and advanced title is a must-have for those interested in expanding their knowledge of this exciting field of electronic gaming"--Provided by publisher.

An Introduction to Game Studies is the first introductory textbook for students of game studies. It provides a conceptual overview of the cultural, social and economic significance of computer and video games and traces the history of game culture and the emergence of game studies as a field of research. Key concepts and theories are illustrated with discussion of games taken from different historical phases of game culture. Progressing from the simple, yet engaging gameplay of Pong and text-based adventure games to the complex virtual worlds of contemporary online games, the book guides students towards analytical appreciation and critical engagement with gaming and game studies. Students will learn to: - Understand and analyse different aspects of phenomena we recognise as ′game′ and play′ - Identify the key developments in digital game design through discussion of action in games of the 1970s, fiction and adventure in games of the 1980s, three-dimensionality in games of the 1990s, and social aspects of gameplay in contemporary online games - Understand games as dynamic systems of meaning-making - Interpret the context of games as ′culture′ and subculture - Analyse the relationship between technology and interactivity and between ′game′ and ′reality′ - Situate games within the context of digital culture and the information society With further reading suggestions, images, exercises, online resources and a whole chapter devoted to preparing students to do their own game studies project, An Introduction to Game Studies is the complete toolkit for all students pursuing the study of games. The companion website at www.sagepub.co.uk/mayra contains slides and assignments that are suitable for self-study as well as for classroom use. Students will also benefit from online resources at www.gamestudiesbook.net, which will be regularly blogged and updated by the author. Professor Frans Mäyrä is a Professor of Games Studies and Digital Culture at the Hypermedia Laboratory in the University of Tampere, Finland.