mildly_asking

First, thank you for this AMA. This is not what I expected when I peeked on Reddit while avoiding Uni assignments.

My question would be: any tips for a literature undergrad with interest in games?

I am an undergraduate student of literature, with a deep interest in game studies. For around a year, I've sought out anything I came across that was connected to the academic study of games, as long as it was vaguely in the humanities and vaguely in my area. I'd like to claim that I am aware of most literature that might come up in an introductory course, but I'm not exactly sure where to go from here and advice is always nice to scoop up.approaches I knew or know little about.

Bonus Question: is Davey Wredens The beginner's guide a game, and should one care about such questions?

Thanks for the answer!

"Game Studies" is open source and has lots of good stuff generally

It absolutely does!

hard to make blanket recommendations.

I'd say my interests would be

myth/story/world-building as process/decoding, especially as a community (Dark Souls and such),

self-referential games/meta-games (metaprocedural, metaludic, metafictional, whatever one might call them Stanley Parable/Beginner's guide and such),

space and fiction within games (Dark Souls and Stanley Parable fit both here). Maybe my interest should be in focusing my interests somewhat. Most of them are coming vaguely from a literary scholarship perspective though.

I'll also accept an interesting pitch not connected to those if you've got a personal favorite! Game suggestions are welcome too!

^{LOL to your bonus question.}

^{Game definition questions seem to be a great conversation starter/ nasty bait, no matter if asked during an academic conference or a social media fight!}

^{My answer would be that, at least in research, it's pretty good to be keenly aware of what your subject of study is. I've read a few papers that, at least to my undergrad brain, claimed to be about games while they ended up being about human-computer interaction in general, and they were weaker for it. When talking about "The beginner's guide", it seems to me a pretty interesting distinction if I could argue that game-stuff is discussed within a non-game(or non-traditional-game-? or gamic essay?)form that presents me with short, experimental game} (^{?) snippets. I'd be perfectly comfortable with other approaches too, though.}

^{Not that I'd attach value judgments to those distinctions or anything.}