Epistemic Genres

New Formations of Play

By: Betsy Brey (Editor), Joshua Call (Editor), Gerald A. Voorhees (Editor), Dr. Matthew Wysocki (Editor)

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Hardcover | 5 March 2026

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Hardcover
288 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.0 x 14.6 x 2.6

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This edited volume brings together emerging and established scholars from around the world to theorize and explicate "epistemic genres" of digital games, which are defined by the social uses and meanings attributed to different constellations of games by communities of players.

Game studies has experienced a cultural turn in the last decade, centering the social dimensions of games and play. What resources for theorizing game genres emerge from this cultural turn? How might the critical theories of race and culture, intersectional feminism, queer theory, post-colonial and decolonial approaches, and mad/crip interventions of the past decade suggest new ways of thinking about game genres? The chapters in this anthology make a case for "epistemic genres" that are distinguished primarily by their social context and use. The notion of epistemic genre in this collection centers the player's experience and the meanings that emerge from distinct communities of play. Epistemic game genres are those constellations of games that overflow and cut-across the genre boundaries of the commercial game industry and mainstream gaming culture.

The first section examines epistemic genres as they are constituted by different scholarly lenses. Here, the contributors consider how certain scholarly theories allow us to see the connections between seemingly disparate games. The second section examines epistemic genres as products of specific (material and discursive) social contexts. The third section examines epistemic genres defined by the specific interpretive frames of communities of players that share a cultural lexicon, symbol system, or grammar.In the main, these chapters make the case for understanding game genres as formations shaped by communities of play, as much as the qualities of the games themselves.

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