British digital game studies

Crawford, G; MacCallum-Stewart, E; Ruffino, P

Abstract

This paper provides a short and potted recent history of digital games research in Great Britain. We begin this story in 2001. Though a substantial amount of research and writing on digital games was taking in Britain since at least the 1980s, for us the turn of the new millennium makes a logical starting point for our recent history. This is because this was not only the year that Aarseth (2001) marked as 'year one' for 'computer game research', but it was also the year that the first major international conference on digital games took place in the UK (in Bristol), and the first time a major British government grant was awarded to undertake research on digital gaming. The paper then charts the significant role Britain played in hosting major early international gatherings of (now leading) games researchers, such as those in Bristol and also Manchester. As well as the important crop of early British authored (text)books that helped shape the direction of this new emerging discipline. What we then see is a significant growth in British digital games studies focused around a number of key events, research clusters, and publications, and the development of a particular framing of digital games within a wider social, cultural, and political context. It is this, we would suggest, which has given British digital game studies its particular flavour and also its important global role in pushing forward research, theory, and key debates.

Citation

Crawford, G., MacCallum-Stewart, E., & Ruffino, P. (2018). British digital game studies. ToDiGRA (Online), 3(3), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.26503/todigra.v3i3.76

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 20, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Apr 1, 2018
• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Feb 22, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 14, 2018
• Journal: ToDiGRA: Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association
• Print ISSN: 2328-9414
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 1-11
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.26503/todigra.v3i3.76
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.26503/todigra.v3i3.76
• Related Public URLs: http://todigra.org/index.php/todigra/index
• Additional Information: Access Information : Published version reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NonDerivative 2.5 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/)