This episode we speak with Dr Brendan Keogh, discussing his new book The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist: Why We Should Think Beyond Commercial Game Production (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545402/the-videogame-industry-does-not-exist/). I

Keywords in Play Episode 30 - Xavier Ho

Jul 27th, 2023 37m 35s

This episode we speak with Dr. Xavier Ho, discussing his data visualisation and design research, as well as the curation process of the thoughtful queer indie games exhibition ‘Pride at Play’ (https://prideatplay.org/). It is part 5 of a specia

Keywords in Play Episode 29 - Stephanie Harkin

Jul 24th, 2023 28m 9s

This episode we speak with Dr. Stephanie Harkin, discussing the concept of “techno-femininity” from her award winning PhD Thesis (2022) Girlhood Games: Gender, Identity, and Coming of Age in Videogames. You can read her PhD here: https://resear

Keywords in Play Episode 28 - Felania Liu

Jul 17th, 2023 33m 56s

This episode we speak with Dr. Felania Liu. The episode is part 3 of a special 6-episode Season of Keywords in Play, exploring intersections and exchanges between Chinese and Australian game studies scholarship. This project has been assisted b

Keywords in Play Episode 27 - Tingting Liu

Jul 3rd, 2023 21m 2s

This episode we speak with Dr. Tingting Liu, discussing her research as a cultural anthropologist examining digital intimacies, gender, platforms and gaming in China. It is part 2 of a special 6-episode Season of Keywords in Play, exploring int

Keywords in Play Episode 26 - Gejun Huang

Jun 12th, 2023 23m 13s

This episode marks the beginning of a special 6-episode Season of Keywords in Play, exploring intersections and exchanges between Chinese and Australian game studies scholarship. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government throu

Keywords in Play Episode 25: Florence Smith-Nicholls

Dec 16th, 2022 30m 30s

This epsiode we speak with Florence Smith-Nicholls about the paper "The Dark Souls of Archaeology: Recording Elden Ring" https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.10949. Florence is a game AI PhD researcher based in London. They also work as a Story Tech, a m

Keywords in Play Episode 24: Mahli-Ann Butt, Amanda Cote, Emil Lunedal Hammar and Cody Mejeur

Nov 10th, 2022 29m 46s

This episode we are doing something a little bit different - interviewing a group of scholars about their Call for Papers on "The Post-Gamer Turn", which can be found here: https://postgamerturn.wordpress.com/ . Abstract submissions of 500-800

Keywords in Play Ep. 23: Everest Pipkin

Sep 26th, 2022 42m 38s

Everest Pipkin is a writer, game developer and software artist from Central Texas whose work follows themes of ecology, information theory, and system collapse. As an artist and as a theorist, they fundamentally believe in the liberatory capaci

Keywords in Play Ep. 22: Alesha Serada

Jul 15th, 2022 30m 59s

Alesha Serada is a PhD student and a researcher at the University of Vaasa, Finland. Their dissertation, supported by the Nissi Foundation, discusses construction of value in games and art on blockchain. Inspired by their Belarusian origin, the

Keywords in Play Ep. 21: Gregory Whistance-Smith

Jun 17th, 2022 34m 6s

In this episode we talk with Gregory Whistance-Smith, an independent scholar based in Edmonton, Canada. The discussion focuses on the book "Expressive Space: Embodying Meaning in Video Game Environments" https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/1

Keywords in Play Episode 20 - Jaroslav Švelch

May 13th, 2022 25m 24s

Jaroslav Švelch is an assistant professor at Charles University, Prague. He is the author of the recent monograph Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games (MIT Press, 2

Keywords in Play Episode 19 - Regina Seiwald and Ed Vollans - Paratexts

Apr 22nd, 2022 34m 15s

In this episode we speak with Regina Seiwald and Ed Vollans on paratexts and their forthcoming collaboration "Not in the Game: History, Paratext and Games", soon to be published with De Gruyter.Regina Seiwald is highly interested in the relati

Keywords in Play Episode 18 - Esther Wright on Rockstar and History

Mar 11th, 2022 39m 11s

Esther Wright is Lecturer in Digital History at Cardiff University. Her work is situated within the field of Historical Game Studies, critically examining how digital representations of the past found in popular visual media have the potential

Keywords in Play Episode 17 - April Tyack on Ordinary Player Experience

Feb 11th, 2022 20m 59s

April Tyack is a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University and vice-president of DiGRA Australia. April researches player experience and how games facilitate different types of experiences. In this episode, April discusses the paper Off-Peak:

Keywords in Play Episode 16 - Felan Parker on Cutural Intermediaries

Nov 19th, 2021 33m 3s

This episode we speak with Felan Parker about his work on cultural intermediaries and indie games. Felan is Assistant Professor of Book & Media Studies at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, and a scholar of media industries and

Keywords in Play Episode 15 - Leon Xiao

Oct 15th, 2021 26m 38s

This episode we speak with Leon Xiao about the paper "What are the odds? Lower compliance with Western loot box probability disclosure industry self-regulation than Chinese legal regulation", co-authored with Laura Henderson and Philip Newall.

Keywords in Play Episode 14 - Adrienne Shaw

Sep 17th, 2021 29m 47s

This episode we speak with Adrienne Shaw about the paper "Encoding and decoding affordances: Stuart Hall and interactive media technologies". This paper brings Stuart Hall's concepts of encoding and decoding into proximity with ideas of afforda

Episode 13 - Alenda Y. Chang

Jun 11th, 2021 29m 9s

This episode we speak with Alenda Y. Chang about games, ecology, literature, and environmental relations. Alenda is an Associate Professor in Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara. With a multidisciplinary background in biology, literature

Keywords in Play Episode 12 - Aaron Trammell

May 14th, 2021 35m 31s

This episode we talk with Aaron Trammell about challenging canonical thinkers, race, torture and TTRPGs, with special reference to his open-access piece "Torture, Play and the Black Experience" https://www.gamejournal.it/torture-play/. Aaron is

Keywords in Play Episode 11 - Victor Navarro-Remesal and Thiago Falcão

Apr 14th, 2021 34m 56s

Víctor Navarro-Remesal is a media scholar specialized in games. He teaches History of Videogames and Interactive Narrative at Tecnocampus, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and Game Design at UOC. He’s the author of ‘Libertad dirigida: Una gramática de

Keywords in Play Episode 10 - Thi Nguyen

Mar 12th, 2021 27m 49s

C. Thi Nguyen is a former food writer, now a philosophy professor at University of Utah. He writes about trust, art, games, and communities, and is interested in the ways that our social structures and technologies shape how we think and what w

Keywords in Play Episode 9: Sonia Fizek

Dec 11th, 2020 20m 47s

This episode's guest is Sonia Fizek, to discuss a forthcoming book on 'delegated' and 'interpassive' play. Sonia is a digital wanderer and a ludic thinker. On a more formal note, a professor at Cologne Game Lab in media and game studies and a c

Keywords in Play Episode 8 - Lindsay Grace

Nov 13th, 2020 37m 14s

This episode we speak with Lindsay Grace about love and affection in games. Lindsay is Knight Chair in Interactive Media and an associate professor at the University of Miami School of Communication. He is Vice President for the Higher Educatio

Keywords in Play Episode 7 - Malath Abbas

Oct 16th, 2020 29m 17s

This episode we speak with Mal Abbas, an independent game designer, artist and producer working on experimental and meaningful games. Malath established Scotland's first game collective and co-working space Biome Collective, a diverse, inclusiv