Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture
Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture (ISSN: 1866-6124) is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the critical academic study of games and play across media. The journal is published at Septentrio Academic Publishing at UiT The Arctic University of Norway under a CC-BY-4.0 diamond open access license. The journal is owned by the Dept. of Language & Culture at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, with support from the Center for Digital Narrative at University of Bergen. Eludamos is included in the PKP Private LOCKSS Network and indexed at Scopus, ERIH PLUS, and the DOAJ. The journal is a member of the Radical Open Access Collective (ROAC).
Cozy games, risen in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic, are generally characterized by their easy mechanics, prosocial narratives, lack of violence, and overall feelings of comfort, safety, abundance, and softness. While academic research primarily focuses on defining cozy games and exploring their impact during the pandemic, little is known about who plays them and why. Therefore, we conducted an online survey of 277 cozy game players, examining players’ game motives and their Light and Dark Triad personality traits. Results show key reasons to play cozy games, including moral self-reflection (i.e., seeing cozy gameplay as a morally sensible activity), agency (i.e., having the freedom and control to make decisions and pursue actions according to players’ own desires or goals), escapism (i.e., escaping from daily reality into a safe virtual environment), experiencing eudaimonic emotions (i.e., feeling moved, awe, and having elevating or heartwarming or feelings), and an interest in the game’s narrative. Additionally, players scored significantly higher on Light Triad personality traits, with those scoring high on Humanism being more motivated by eudaimonic and social reasons. This study provides novel insights into the study of cozy games, the (eudaimonic) motives to play them, and cozy game players’ personality traits.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rowan Daneels, Kato Maes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper provides an introduction to fake games. Based on the concept of fictional games, or non-actual games that are presented to be imagined, I define fake games as non-actual games that are presented with the intention to trigger false beliefs in the existence of the game or its presented mechanics and story. First, I clarify the notion of fake games by comparing it to fictional games. I discuss how some representations of non-existent games blur the boundaries between fiction and lies. Such games are not clearly embedded within works of fiction and are presented without a clear context to help readers decide whether they should believe or imagine the game to exist. I discuss games that are represented through fake/fictional gameplay, paraludic material, or metaludic material. Lastly, I clarify the potential purposes fake games can serve. I distinguish darkly designed fake game representations from deceptively designed ones. The former have the intention of deceiving people into making certain decisions. Fake game advertisements, for example, aim to trick people into downloading mobile games that lack the features showcased in the ad. Deceptively designed fake game representations, on the other hand, deceive players with the aim of giving rise to aesthetically valuable experiences. Players’ false beliefs could, for example, give rise to interesting emotional responses.
Copyright (c) 2025 Nele Van de Mosselaer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Multiplayer gaming highly depends on teamwork, making the spatial arrangement of players an important design factor. This study examines how two seating configurations—linear seating and stellate polygonal seating—affect multiplayer performance, communication, and overall collaborative experience. Twenty-four participants played in teams under both arrangements, followed by surveys from sixteen participants evaluating eight aspects of teamwork and interaction. While linear seating resulted in higher kill counts and thus stronger quantitative performance, players consistently rated stellate polygonal seating more positively, emphasizing its advantages for communication and team-centric engagement. These findings note the complex relationship between spatial layout and team effectiveness in gaming environments and suggest that optimal multiplayer setups require balancing functional performance with social and spatial dynamics. Future work should explore additional spatial variables that may further enhance collaborative gameplay.
Copyright (c) 2025 Geunyoung Kim https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper investigates how players engage with and reflect on the construction of the nation and its place in history in the turn-based strategy game series Civilization (1991­–2025). The Civilization series has been studied extensively concerning portrayals of history and nationhood within the games, mainly through their rule systems. This study’s purpose is to add a player-centered perspective to this body of scholarship and thereby critically challenge assumptions about players’ reception of the games’ portrayals of the nation throughout history. For this purpose, a structuring qualitative content analysis was conducted to analyze player discussions on the largest German-speaking Civilization forum. As this study demonstrates, players neither simply internalize nor ignore the games’ ideological underpinnings inherent to the structure of their rules as previous literature assumes. Rather, players negotiate Civilization’s portrayal of the nation throughout history in complex ways that are, most of all, dependent on their own national identities and feelings of belonging. The study thereby speaks to broader disciplinary discourses within game studies by critically investigating whether or how ideologies ingrained within games’ rule systems are perceived, discussed, negotiated, or sometimes even subverted by players.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kathrin Trattner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism by Robert Houghton (D. S. Brewer, 2024)
A review of Robert Houghton’s book The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism. Published by D. S. Brewer, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-84384-729-8, 355 pages.
Copyright (c) 2025 Evan Moore https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Playing on the double-meaning of the abbreviation DOA as referring to both diamond open access and dead-on-arrival, the editorial presents the rationale, politics, and not least severe challenges connected to Eludamos’s radical open access practices. Given the recent growth of the journal, we need to balance our publishing policies against the threats of (self-) exploitation and exhaustion of our reviewers and team of editors. We argue that institutional embedding and strategic logistical and financial support is crucial for the success of any DOA publishing project and point to a promising recent initiative taken by the university library at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.
Copyright (c) 2025 Holger Pötzsch, Kristine Jørgensen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Monstrosity in Games and Play: A Multidisciplinary Examination of the Monstrous in Contemporary Cultures, edited by Sarah Stang, Mikko Meriläinen, Joleen Blom, and Lobna Hassan (Amsterdam University Press 2025)
A review of Sarah Stang, Mikko Meriläinen, Joleen Blom, and Lobna Hassan’s edited volume Monstrosity in Games and Play: A Multidisciplinary Examination of the Monstrous in Contemporary Cultures. Published by Amsterdam University Press, 2024. ISBN: 978-9-46372-568-2, 294 pages.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jaroslav Švelch https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The state of Native representation in videogames
This commentary examines the state of Native representation in videogames from a Native perspective. Also, this commentary offers examples of Native Representation in Videogames from 1971 to 2025. Furthermore, I provide decolonizing and indigenizing examples of Natives in videogames. The paper also contains recommendations for further research and suggests good practices for videogame developers to facilitate design of positive Native representation as a decolonizing practice of indigeneity. This commentary closes with a call for positive representation, as seen in Never Alone (Upper One Games, 2014), the first videogame made by an indigenous-owned videogame studio.
Copyright (c) 2025 Thomas James Reed | Lukwe’tiyó, Oneida for “He is a Good Man” https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Rise of the Roguelite: Inside a Gaming Phenomenon, edited by James Cartlidge (CRC Press, 2025).
A review of James Cartlidge's edited volume, The Rise of the Roguelite: Inside a Gaming Phenomenon. Published by CRC Press, 2025. ISBN: 978-1-00341-547-3, 200 pages.
Copyright (c) 2025 David Matencio Durán https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article examines a particular relationship between game authors and players: the possibility for game authors to co-opt the role of players in the very game they created. Among the various ways in which this can occur, the article concentrates on ‘antagonistic game design’: the creation of games meant to frustrate and provoke their players. Player engagement, I argue, does not solely arise from the pleasure of overcoming in-game obstacles, participating in the unfolding of the game’s narrative or defeating other players, but can also emerge from resisting and opposing an imagined persona: the off-putting and often sadistic (implied) author behind the work. By projecting an unsympathetic and adversarial attitude towards players, antagonistically designed games can establish an asynchronous adversarial relationship with them and foster distinctive avenues for meaning-making and the self-validation of players.
Copyright (c) 2025 Stefano Gualeni https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
On fictional games and fictional game studies
We explain the concept of fictional games and the theoretical and disciplinary progression that this special issue represents. We summarise the issue and the contributions within it.
Copyright (c) 2025 Stefano Gualeni, Riccardo Fassone, Dom Ford https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Nowadays, an increasing number of videogames have incorporated cultural heritage elements that belong to a wide variety of regions. This has prompted a growing body of academic research regarding this topic. This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review, investigating how different aspects of cultural heritage are represented in entertainment videogames. A thematic analysis of 80 publications was conducted, categorising the studied cultural heritage elements into tangible and intangible themes of cultural heritage. Our review revealed that existing publications have extensively explored the representation of tangible cultural heritage in games, especially architecture and artefacts. In contrast, the representation of intangible cultural heritage has received significantly less attention, such as religious rituals, folklore, and symbolic references. Moreover, we observed that game designers tend to select cultural heritage elements familiar to their target audiences, which lied in depictions of historical periods, notable historical figures, and architectural styles. Finally, this review highlights gaps in current research including a narrow focus on certain game genres and a lack of in-depth study on the representation of intangible cultural heritage.
Copyright (c) 2025 Yixiang Que, Teresa De La Hera, Jeroen Jansz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right by Adrienne L. Massanari (The MIT Press, 2024)
A Review of Adrienne L. Massanari’s Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right. Published by The MIT Press, 2024. ISBN: 9780262380331, 238 pages.
Copyright (c) 2025 Megan Condis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Not All Fun and Games: Videogame Labour, Project-based Workplaces, and the New Citizenship at Work by Marie-Josée Legault and Johanna Weststar (Concordia University Press, 2024)
A review of Johanna Weststar’s and Marie-Josée Legault’s book Not All Fun and Games: Videogame Labour, Project-based Workplaces, and the New Citizenship at Work. Published by Concordia University Press, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-98811-149-0, 408 pages.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jan Houška https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Lies of P and a real boy in fake Bloodborne
Nostalgia as a longing for a place or time can simultaneously act as an invitation toward belonging and also as a barrier that divides. Utilizing Svetlana Boym’s (2001) framework of restorative and reflective nostalgia, this study undertakes an analysis of press coverage (n=8) and fan comments on YouTube videos (n=400) addressing the digital videogame Lies of P (2023) as a nostalgic trigger. Understanding Lies of P, both in press coverage and fan discussion was often laden with nostalgia for the 2014 videogame Bloodborne and various adaptions of the children’s story The Adventures of Pinocchio. In the case of fan comments in particular, reflective nostalgia, which allows for the possibility of both longing and critical thought to manifest together, emerges strongly as fans contest their understandings of videogames and childhood stories. Lies of P as a nostalgic trigger precipitates fan participation in analysis and critical reflection of media they might otherwise consider above critique. Understanding such gaming and gaming-adjacent spaces where critique and affection blends offers further insight into the social and technical structures that facilitates boundary maintenance.
Copyright (c) 2025 Indira Neill Hoch https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In so many ways the vision of the future imagined in the Star Trek universe seems painfully distant. Perhaps, the closest the show has come to anticipating the world as it is today, however, can be found in its depiction of the holodeck as the crew’s primary space for leisure. This article focuses on episode 21, season 3 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, ‘Hollow Pursuits’, in which we meet Reginald Barclay, a nervous engineer who becomes addicted to the ship’s virtual reality simulator. Taking its cue from Janet Murray’s book, Hamlet on the Holodeck, writing on the Enterprise’s leisure technology has tended to explore the holodeck’s role as a theatrical story-telling device. However, in ‘Hollow Pursuits’, I argue, Barclay’s use of the software resonates far more with its closest comparator today: virtual reality videogaming. For Barclay the holodeck blurs the line between the virtual world and reality in ways that make other crew members uncomfortable. In doing so, as this paper demonstrates, it also reveals flaws in The Next Generation’s utopia particularly in relation to desire, addiction, therapy, and ‘play’.
Copyright (c) 2025 Matthew Leggatt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Metroidvania games are characterized by highly interconnected levels that open up as the player acquires new skills or knowledge of the game world. In this article, we argue that the spatial interconnectedness of the Metroidvania genre strongly resonates with ecological theories foregrounding human–nonhuman enmeshment as well as nonhuman autonomy. Discussing two recent Metroidvania titles, Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017) and Rain World (Videocult, 2017), we show how these games consistently challenge the player’s environmental imagination, and particularly notions of human mastery over the nonhuman world. They do so on multiple levels: by evoking rich postapocalyptic settings that resist the player’s attempts to project anthropocentric assumptions onto the games; by confronting players with nonhuman characters and lore that remain unreadable and opaque; and by creating dynamically evolving game worlds in which nonhuman behavior feels unruly and unpredictable. Most importantly, though, the two games suggest ecosystemic interconnectedness by defamiliarizing the players’ understanding of exploration as the linear traversal of spaces that can be fully controlled and depleted. Through this discussion, we aim to situate Metroidvania games within the growing archive of ecogaming, explaining what is so unique about the genre’s approach to the environmental imagination.
Copyright (c) 2025 Angelo Maria Andriano, Marco Caracciolo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This essay will focus on a case study, a particular fictional game that has given rise to variants across both literature and film: the Hellraiser puzzle box. We focus on Clive Barker’s short story The Hellbound Heart and two films from the film franchise: the 1987 Hellraiser and its reboot, the 2022 Hellraiser, which fleshes out (pun intended) the mythos. In addition to discussing the overt horror genre framing and themes through the lenses of literary analysis and film studies, we also propose an analogy with the literary genre that most notably straddles the same nexus of body-puzzle-space, closely intertwining the three: that of detective fiction. Its similarities with and differences from the Hellraiser puzzle box will be used to elaborate the interpretation of its design, functioning, and (il?)logic.
Copyright (c) 2025 Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone, Stefano Caselli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper conducts a textual analysis of the animated comedic web miniseries Box Peek, analysing it as a general parody of transmedial gaming franchises, particularly the Pokémon TV series. The show features the fictional game of Box Peek, which is used as a device to not only provide drama and motivation for the show’s characters, but also to parody the games and associated conceits that are central to these franchises, often for the sake of humour. This discussion makes use of theories of fiction and parody, cultural analyses of Pokémon and children’s media, as well as Box Peek’s creator’s own commentary to understand how fictional[ised] games create meaning for an audience. It concludes having discussed two major threads of analysis. The first concerning the rules of the game, which implies questions of strategy and technology, which eventually concerns fictional world-building, exploiting the fictional and ludic inconsistencies that exist in transmedial game franchises for humour. The second is the way in which Box Peek, after formally parodying shows like Pokémon, then extends this parody by answering the questions it raises. In so doing it is argued that Box Peek is simultaneously imitating the childlike tone of Pokémon before progressing to a more reflective, adult perspective on the enjoyment of these series by the audience themselves. This leads the (presumed millennial) audience to a retrospective self-assessment of how, now in adulthood, they regard transmedial gaming franchises of their childhood in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rory Summerley https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper explores the arena of The Hunger Games series (2008–2010) as game space, focusing on power dynamics between the Capitol and the tributes. The Hunger Games, as a televised deathmatch, exemplifies a battle royale setting orchestrated by a totalitarian regime to maintain control over subjugated districts through a brutal spectacle. This analysis examines the Capitol’s oppressive control, reflected in the meticulously designed arena—a setting where tributes are subjected to constant surveillance and manipulated by the Gamemakers to maximize entertainment value. Using Michael Nitsche’s framework of video game spaces, the analysis dissects the arena as rule-based, mediated, fictional, social, and play space, each aspect reinforcing the Capitol’s authority. In spite of this, tributes like Katniss Everdeen reclaim limited agency through acts of defiance and exploitation of the arena’s inherent flaws, allowing resistance from within the game system through cheating and deception.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anh-Thu Nguyen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Traditionally, theories of play and games have drawn a clear distinction between two different forms of activity; play and labour. Over the last two decades, the concept of playbour has challenged this division, with empirical studies and observations showing the intertwining of play and labour. This article offers an analysis of playbour through different perspectives of Critical Theory and explores its theoretical implications. The novel concept of reified gameplay is presented to understand the alienating tendencies of playbour, using the games EVE Online and CryptoKitties as key examples. Reified gameplay is a form of gameplay action shaped by processes of reification and rationalisation within and as part of the culture industry.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tuomas Manninen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Distinguishing the players of the digital field
This article explores the field of contemporary gaming practices and preferences among players of various social backgrounds. From a Bourdieusian perspective based on the notion of different capital forms (economic, social, and cultural), the socialisation process of Swedish players of digital games (n=1019) is investigated through a multiple correspondence analysis on questionnaire data. The findings show that the contemporary Swedish gaming culture is clearly divided by gender and age, but not as visibly by social class, birthplace, or upbringing. The article concludes that the contemporary gaming culture restricts present dispositions and future trajectories among the agents of the gaming field.
Copyright (c) 2024 Tim Timvig https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This narrative literature review discusses peer-reviewed research articles connecting queer gender identities and videogames. Its main purpose is to describe directions of research on connections between queer gender identities and videogames, and to indicate gaps and missing connections in existing studies. The analysed material was collected in April–August 2023 using Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus databases. Three major thematic categories were identified in the publications: representation of queer gender identities in videogames; player–avatar connections and gender dysphoria; and queer gender identities in game-related spaces. The main finding of the review is that articles focused on queer people do not tend to address the inherent queerness of videogames. Queer temporality and spatiality are not sufficiently studied in interaction with queer players, and narrative and/or visual elements remain in focus, even when potentially interactive activities like avatar creation are being researched.
Copyright (c) 2024 Mark Maletska https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Partying is a widespread, understudied, and playful phenomena. Game Studies has seen great value from defining important concepts related to games since its inception. Foundational play and game scholars urged for a need to analyze parties and celebrations as a form of playfulness, yet there is little empirical Game Studies work enabling a deeper understanding of partying. Partying bears striking resemblances to games: inefficient use of resources, arbitrary rules, cultural group formation, and ongoing moral panics. There are also practical overlaps: games occur at parties and digital party games are quite popular. This work contributes to a deeper understanding of parties by analyzing 33 semi-structured interviews where individuals from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds had highly playful experiences at parties. A new theoretical conception of partying as a form of playfulness is proposed as a “phenomenon that creates an experience of social connection in a group mediated through a shared engagement-prioritizing activity”. This work concludes with a call for party studies to become a sub-field in game studies.
Copyright (c) 2024 Leland Masek, Jaakko Stenros https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Through the case study of the mobile title Game of Sultans, this article examines the proliferation of iterative and copycat games through the practice of reskins in the mobile game industry. Based on year-long autoethnographic fieldwork working in a Chinese mobile game company, I provide an on-the-ground perspective of how Orientalist representations in reskinned games are instrumentalized through the roles of “cultural brokers” and the work of localization for Western markets. By taking a theoretical and technological understanding of reskins, I argue that reskinned games, as a form of industrial mimicry, while an important aspect of standardized game production, can also serve as means of subversion against seemingly totalizing control of the US-dominated app economy. This article addresses the dearth of studies in theorizing the industry practice of game reskins beyond just a monetization tool but also its extractive labor process within the global app empire.
Copyright (c) 2024 Yizhou Xu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Changing the game but keeping to the rules
The vulnerabilities faced by social minorities in Brazil, such as women, Black people, and LGBTQ+ people, are also very prevalent in local gaming cultures. Because of this, members of these groups organize collectives through social media to debate strategies and to provide mutual support for their esports initiatives. In the last few years, many of these activist collectives were absorbed by formal esports organizations, with some of their members now leading equality and diversity initiatives for esports in Brazil. Nevertheless, the movement from grassroots activists to PR representatives has contradictions, especially considering how social media platforms mediate the transition between activism and cause marketing. This paper aims to highlight some of these ambivalences, and how they impact the most vulnerable esports workers in Brazil.
Copyright (c) 2024 Beatriz Blanco https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Branding competitive gaming as esports, part of a process known as sportification, has contributed greatly to the wider acceptance of competitive gaming as legitimate leisure and professional activity. However, the social effects of sportification remain largely overlooked in current research. In this paper we argue that in order to understand the normative and formative social effects of sportification of competitive gaming, we need to forefront the bodies in esports. Building on scholarship that highlights inequities in (competitive) gaming and esports, we identify four ways in which bodies are made relevant in esports: 1) the obscuring of the playing body and establishment of an idealized and normative masculine athletic body; 2) the ‘visibility’ of women's bodies as deviant from the norm; 3) the invisibility (and impossibility) of disabled bodies through design (embodied nature of design of both games and gameplay); and 4) the embodied nature of infrastructural issues that cannot be reduced to materiality. We argue for a deconstruction of esports as a social practice that forefronts bodies. Understanding exactly how bodies become relevant will allow us to deconstruct the structural conditions of participation that dictate which bodies are possible or not in esports and move towards more equitable esports practices.
Copyright (c) 2024 Tom Legierse, Maria Ruotsalainen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Equitable forms of participation on a gaming-adjacent platform
To connect with youth online, a non-profit organization in Finland is organizing a youth center on a server on the gaming-adjacent social platform, Discord. We focus on the infrastructuralized platform and study ethnographically how the labor of moderation and technical competencies that platforms require on the part of the youth workers. We want to better understand the technical conditions by which youth workers have to navigate equity in platformized communities. How does the platform and connected infrastructure determine what forms of communication and interaction are and are not permitted and when and to whom? The results indicate that the employment of opening hours and the presence of youth workers who actively moderate the server during those opening hours, seem to create a safe space for a diversity of youth. The moderation, largely invisible and frictionless, becomes an intricate part of the infrastructuralized platform and the socialization on the platform. This infrastructuralized moderation requires technical, pedagogical and psychological knowledge, competence and resources.
Copyright (c) 2024 Fredrik Rusk, Matilda Ståhl, Isac Nyman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article explores how video games, with no apparent connection to the literary rogue, still articulate Picaresque episodes and simulate Picaresque experiences through their intended gameplay and worldbuilding. These experiences are a specific expression of the combination of mechanics, narrative, and the agency of the player around a defined type of character, the rogue. They show how pervasive the influence of Picaresque Literature is, influencing design choices and informing key forms of being and acting in virtual worlds. This paper aims to define what a Picaresque experience in video games is and how it is possible to produce them. To achieve this, three video games will be analysed to show the different specific tools video games use to enable these experiences. The analyses will be supported by a theoretical framework based on existing bibliography about agency, videoludic narrative, mechanics, and Picaresque Literature with the objective of offering a comprehensive description of Picaresque experiences while also explaining them as a transmedia phenomenon that demonstrates the influence of Picaresque Literature in video games.
Copyright (c) 2024 David Matencio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Videogame Formalism: On Form, Aesthetic Experience and Methodology by Alex Mitchell and Jasper van Vught (Amsterdam University Press, 2023)
A review of Alex Mitchell and Jasper van Vught's Videogame Formalism. On Form, Aesthetic Experience and Methodology. Published by Amsterdam University Press, 2023. ISBN: 978-9-048-55423-2, 264 pages,
Copyright (c) 2024 Hans-Joachim Backe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0