Papers – Understand. Think. Then write.

Paper #6: Scholarly Identity, or “Wait, You Can Get a Degree In That?!”

Shakespeare....because Shakespeare is fun, at least if you're me. — Shakespeare….because Shakespeare is fun, at least if you’re me.

My journey to becoming a PhD student in English focusing on Game Studies has been convoluted. As a Master’s student, I focused on Professional Writing because that was my career, and Renaissance Drama because…well, because I enjoyed it. After a successful career that included game development, web design, professional writing/editing, and corporate communications, I started teaching first-year composition. When the opportunity arose to start a PhD program, my thought was to combine my teaching experience with my background in game design to develop educational games that would teach critical thinking skills. My investigations into this field have complicated matters, but I believe there is still a path toward that goal. However, it is one no less convoluted than the one that has led me here.

“Game Studies,” specifically the study of video games, is a relatively new field, one that has attracted scholars from many different disciplines. Formal study as a coherent field is typically traced to Aarseth’s “Computer Game Studies: Year One” article, which stakes out a place for games as an “emerging, viable, international academic field.” As such, a knowledge of professional practices and theory, which served me well in professional writing, is not enough. Likewise, knowing theater, literature, theory, and history, which I used effectively in Renaissance drama studies, is of little help here. My particular flavor of game studies may require a knowledge of composition theory, theories of learning and development, literary theory, psychology, and education (especially common core and the politics thereof), but also game design theory as a whole, the “canon” of popular and niche games, computer programming, visual rhetoric, digital rhetoric, and a host of other fields. Of course, few if any people can claim mastery of all these things, and I don’t claim that I will in the next fifteen or so semesters. But as an interdisciplinary field, unless I am going to stay in one tiny corner (which many successful scholars admittedly do), I need to have at least a passing familiarity with the majority of those subjects.

Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace

There are many objects of study that can serve as a focus for game studies from an English studies perspective. My initial interest long before I applied for this program was the changing nature of “narrative,” in an environment where the reader/player/end-user is an active participant in the creation of the story. Janet Murray’s book Hamlet on the Holodeck (1999) is one of the works that kicked off Game Studies as a field of formal academic study, and it remains an area I am very interested in. The kind of skills I want to teach – research and critical thinking – benefit from an engaging, immersive narrative, where the player/student feels that their choices have real meaning and impact. Without narrative (and in some cases, even with it), we are left with little more than a low-stakes multiple choice test, the pedagogical utility of which is a subject of much debate and skepticism.
Other English/Game Studies scholars have focused on the role of writing in games, such as Dr. Kevin Moberly. However, as he rightly notes in his article, “

Other English/Game Studies scholars have focused on the role of writing in games, such as Dr. Kevin Moberly. However, as he rightly notes in his article, “Composition, Computer Games, and the Absence of Writing,” with the development and prevalence of more sophisticated VOIP technologies, the written word is becoming scarce in gameplay as players and designers alike rely more on the spoken word and sound design to convey messages among and to other players. There are many auxiliary texts to games, such as message boards, strategy guides, and player-created resources like wikis, and they may be useful subjects of analysis to see how players generate written content about gameplay, but it remains to be seen how relevant these informal documents are to gauging the average player’s skill with more formal writing or problem solving, since these tend to be created by only the most hardcore fans of a game.

Relatively late in this course, I discovered the world of Dr. Ian Bogost of Georgia Tech, through a mutual acquaintance. I confess to being more than a little embarrassed at having not been more familiar with his contributions to the field, and my only excuse is that I had been more laser-focused on articles than books. I have since remedied that, and found that his work on “procedural rhetoric” to be relevant to my own interests in a number of ways, not least of which is the way games have a rhetorical message to the player, whether intended or not. I believe that further study of his work may yield important insights into how educational games can be used to teach skills like critical thinking, and I look forward to delving further into this idea.

While I have encountered resistance to the idea of games in education in discussions with game developers, educators and game scholars alike, I see their objections more as obstacles to be overcome than brick walls. Gaming professionals have found it difficult to generate interest from schools or the general public in educational games beyond the preschool level, but I found in discussing this with developers at the SIEGE Atlanta ’16 conference that few of them had an understanding of core curriculum standards for different subjects and grade levels, and thus could not demonstrate and apples to apples correlation between the skills presented in their game and the skills students were required to master in particular classes. With an understanding of both game development and education, I believe that this is something that I can address more effectively than those who are only familiar with a single perspective.

The games I have enjoyed as a player, and have worked on as a developer, are highly immersive and require a significant investment of time on the part of the player. This time can be shortened to some degree with good design, but to achieve genuine engagement with the game itself requires more time than is typically available in a grade 6-12 class period, and educators might be understandably concerned about assigning hours of gameplay as homework. I think this can be overcome, however, especially as more content is delivered electronically and expectations for screen time as part of education continue to expand. To set up an interesting scenario takes time, and

Telltale Games' — Telltale Games’ “The Walking Dead” takes an average of 12.5 hours to complete

if the game is not enjoyable, at least to some degree, playing it will be just another rote exercise that students do not want to do. But perhaps that is part of the disconnect between designers and educators – the relationship between time invested willingly vs. unwillingly, engaged or obliged. In “The Motivation of Gameplay,” Marc Prensky states, “Remember, game designers focus primarily on motivation; educators don’t. The most important thing that educators can learn from game designers is how they keep the player engaged.” And that may be the area in which I can contribute the most.

I think ODU’s program is uniquely suited to the subjects I need to learn more about to pursue this path as a scholar, allowing me to delve deeply into both the composition pedagogy and new media areas I need to learn more about. However, I am going to have to do significant work above and beyond my coursework – learning Unity and/or Unreal, getting familiar with the “canon” of games, and learning as much as I can about the business and development of games, as well as the scholarly literature. The good news is that, as a game designer myself as well as a scholar, I already have some degree of credibility with both sides of that divide, and a significant network of contacts to draw on. There is a lot of work to do, but I feel like I have both a plan for how to get there, and more importantly, a real contribution that I can make to both scholarship and industry. I know there are frustrating times ahead, and more work than I have ever had in my academic career. But I have now what I have lacked in other programs: a genuine purpose, and a calling.

Aarseth, Espen. “Computer Game Studies – Year One.” Game Studies, vol. 1, issue 1, 2001. Web. 20 Sept. 2016.

Moberly, Kevin. “Composition, Computer Games, and the Absence of Writing.” Computers and Composition 25.3 (2008): 284–299. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

Prensky, Marc. “The motivation of gameplay or, the REAL 21st-century learning revolution.” On The Horizon, vol. 10, no. 1 (2002). Web. 14 Dec. 2016.

Paper #4: Theories and Methods

Because the field of Game Studies includes scholars from many different disciplines, the methods and theories of research are as varied as the approaches. It is, therefore, impossible to select a single theory or method of analysis as being dominant. A mathematician who studies their field’s version of game theory may focus on probabilities, analyzing the game engine’s method of determining failure or success in any given conflict. An economist may look at the out-of-game impact of Korean gold farmers on both the in-game and out-of-game economies. Sociologists have found fertile ground in gaming communities to study how the anonymity of online gaming impacts harassment, or how in-game gender effects interactions among characters. All of these are equally legitimate and authoritative within their own communities, and it is evident from the way that game scholars reference work in other fields that it enriches the interdisciplinary nature of the field. However, it seems that the “home” discipline from which a scholar approaches game studies largely determines what methodologies and theories they will apply to their chosen objects of study. While Aarseth’s dream of a “native” theory of game studies, divorced from its component fields, is not realized, we have traveled further in recent years than it seemed possible at first.

Of course, my own approach is grounded in English Studies, so the same theories common in analyzing literature are often applied: semiotics, discourse analysis, Marxist-tinged analyses of economies of power relationships, feminist or queer theory approaches to the gender of players and characters alike, and many more. Discourse analysis is one useful tool for studying interactions within games, and the way those interactions shape the player’s experience of the game world. Although Hendricks’ “Incorporative Discourse Strategies in Tabletop Fantasy Role-Playing Gaming” focuses on tabletop RPGs, he uses Fairclough’s model of discourse analysis to explore the way that players interact to collectively create a narrative, codeswitching between player and character speech and adopting an almost improvisational “yes and” approach to world building. Similarly, Bourgonjon, et al utilize Burke’s Pentad of dramatic analysis to explore meaning-making and narrative, also drawing on Bogost’s procedural rhetoric as a means of analyzing how game mechanics communicate meaning to players, and the ways designers can use mechanics to steer players down a particular narrative path.

As a woman who is both a player and a designer, I am not blind to the impact of my gender on my own experience, and the experience of other women who play and create games. As a result, a feminist critical perspective can also provide important insights into gaming, as a player, a designer and a scholar. While studies have reported similar results on what percentage of all gamers are women (48% in 2014 according to a Wall Street Journal article, and a 47:53 female to male ratio according to a 2012 Entertainment Software Association survey), a level of harassment and sexism exists in the gaming industry that is shocking enough that it has made national news, in the form of “Gamergate”. But for all the women who play games, and the amount of outrage on social and mainstream media, there

Adrienne Shaw's "Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture" — Adrienne Shaw’s “Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture”

remains a paucity of clearly feminist-aligned game criticism (as opposed to cultural criticism) in the field. Shaw’s Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture , for example, addresses gaming from the perspective of cultural studies and feminism – essentially, studying gamer culture but not games themselves. Due to a host of cultural factors, men and women may experience gameplay, and certainly experience game culture, in different ways. Even if my own work does not explicitly address gender, understanding the feminist criticism that exists – and the reasons why there is not more of it – will inform and enrich my own scholarship.

Part of what makes Game Studies such an exciting field is the depth and breadth of disciplinary approaches to the objects of study. As a scholar of English Studies, and one with an especial interest in utilizing games as a tool to teach the skills underlying effective writing – critical thinking, research, and communication – the tools I use will no doubt be heavily influenced by my own background as a scholar of literature and a practitioner of writing education, and as my own studies deepen into composition pedagogy, I look forward to adding those theories and methodologies to my tool box as well. If anything, the sheer range of approaches makes the field somewhat intimidating, but the multiplicity of perspectives and approaches means that the field of game studies will continue to evolve alongside the games themselves.

References

Entertainment Software Association. “Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry.” 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2016.

Grundberg, Sven, and Jens Hansegard. “Women Now Make Up Almost Half of Gamers.” Wall Street Journal 20 Aug. 2014. www.wsj.com. Web. 16 Nov. 2016.

Hendricks, Sean Q. “Incorporative Discourse Strategies in Tabletop Fantasy Role-Playing Gaming” in Gaming as Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games (eds. J. Patrick Williams, Sean Q. Hendricks and W. Keith Winkler). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Inc, 2003. Print.

Further Reading – Feminism and Game Studies

Pop culture website The Mary Sue on applying feminist criticism to video games.

For a very different perspective, check out Breitbart’s article on “Feminist Bullies Tearing the Video Game Industry Apart”.

Gaming journalist Anita Sarkeesian’s video on the Feminist Frequency website criticizing female depictions in video games led to her receiving death threats at the height of the Gamergate scandal:

Paper #3: Epistemology

My first job after graduating from Wesleyan University was as a tabletop roleplaying game designer at White Wolf, and it was there that I developed what has remained a pillar of my own approach to game design: namely, the idea that game mechanics – the rules by which the game is played –

Vampire: The Masquerade roleplaying game (1991)

must meld seamlessly with the themes and setting of the game. In the game Vampire: The Masquerade, the core theme is the struggle between “The Beast” (one’s vampire nature), and one’s “Humanity.” These are primarily abstract roleplaying concepts, however, so in order to make the game more than purely narrative, the game assigns two key statistics to each character – their blood pool, and their Humanity score. Let the blood pool go too low (due to wounds, using vampiric abilities, or not feeding), and the character frenzies, loses control, and the evil acts they commit lowers their Humanity score. Of course, this is a simplification, but the core mechanic of the game supports the theme, determines the kinds of stories that will be told, and guides the player’s roleplaying.

How does this relate to epistemology? When game studies were formalized as a field of academic study, the two opposing camps were narratology and ludology – in essence, focus on story or mechanics. The latter does not preclude the presence of story in games, but it does require there to be game elements there for something to be considered a game. Of these two epistemological perspectives, I align myself more closely with narratology, as ultimately I find the story more interesting. Coming from an English studies background, that is the toolbox I am accustomed to using.

As I read more deeply on narratology, however, I recalled my own background. You can tell players that it’s important to the story to do something – retain one’s Humanity, for example – but if you do not attach a number, a game mechanic to it, they are free to ignore it. Mechanics are how you tell the player what is important, and what you want them to do. My own approach as a game designer, then, is a melding of narratology and ludology: the mechanics exist to guide the story. As a scholar of English studies, my approach is to look at the mechanics and gameplay through the lens of the story; the way that the game is played is a part of the story, whether that is the narrative being created by the game’s designer, or the self-created narrative of the player: the story of their character’s adventure in the world of the game. While not identical, my method is very similar to that of Harrison Pink, who puts forth a model of game design in which the designer identifies the feeling they want to evoke first, and the rest of the game design process is guided by that.

Of course, not every game has a story, and defining what should be considered a game was one of the earliest disputes among scholars of game studies, and as new forms of games are created this definition must be constantly reevaluated. I enjoy Spider Solitaire and Word Streak with Friends as much as the next GenXer, but when it comes to academic objects of study (OOS), I prefer games that have story as a central element. My ultimate goal is to create games that will teach critical thinking and research/documentation skills, and the best way to do that is by getting the player (student) invested in the story being told. To be successful, the game mechanics have to seamlessly fit the setting and convey to the player what is important, what their goals are, and how to achieve them.

Game journalist Brianna Wu threatened on Twitter during #gamergate

As a secondary approach to study, I somewhat reluctantly align myself with feminist theory. Gender is something of an elephant in the room when it comes to video gaming in particular, whether it deals with who plays what kind of game, design for specific demographic groups, or the industry-wide collective dumpster fire that was Gamergate. As designer, I want to believe that the games I create can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of gender; as a scholar, I know that we have not yet evolved as an industry or a subculture to the point that we can be blind to something that is so divisive in the games and communities I study. To understand the way we play and use games, we first have to understand who “we” is, and gender differences are relevant to this; thus, applying feminist theory will give important insights into the way we play, design, and criticize games.

Pink, Harrison. “Can I Borrow a Feeling?” Gamasutra.com, 3 Mar. 2013. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.

Hartshorn, Jennifer, Ethan Skemp, Mark Rein*Hagen and Kevin Hassal. Vampire: The Dark Ages. Clarkston, GA: White Wolf Publishing, 1996. Print.

Additional Readings:
Extra Credits’ episode on Harassment addresses the issue of bullying in the gaming community, and while it predates Gamergate, the victims of harassment in and out of the game are often women.

Quantic Foundary examines what type of gameplay is most interesting across genders and ages, and finds that the desire for competition is a higher priority for male, younger gamers, while strategy games appeal to people across all age groups and genders.

Vampire: The Dark Ages (1^st Edition) is my most well known game, and adjusts the mechanics of the basic Vampire game to fit a different setting. In it, we sought to make the mechanics and the setting/story meld seamlessly, which shapes my approach to both ludology and narratology.

Wraith: The Oblivion (2^nd Edition) was the first game I developed. Well, not entirely true – first edition is now out of print, which was my game; the second edition was developed by my successor, Richard Dansky. It’s far from the perfect game, but it’s not bad for someone who was new to design.

The Only Guide to Gamergate You Will Ever Need to Read is the Washington Post’s summary of the scandal that rocked the gaming industry and pulled back the covers on the widespread misogyny within the industry and the subculture.

Paper #2: Big Questions

The field of computer game studies is a relative newcomer to the scholarly landscape, but it is not without controversies. Even the words used to define the field have been challenged, defined and redefined – is “computer game” the best term, when many of these games are played on game consoles and phones? Is “game” accurate, if no skill or agency is involved?

If we trace the formal study of game studies to the late 90s, as established in my previous paper, one of the earliest conflicts with the field was between the camps of Narratology and Ludology. Jasper Juul, writing in 2001, laid out the differences between games and stories, which essentially came down to the idea of interactivity. A story is something you consume passively, while a game is something in which the player (no longer just a reader) is a co-creator of meaning. He allows that there is a role for the study of narrative in games, but states that, “relying too heavily on existing theories will make us forget what makes games games: such as rules, goals, player activity, the projection of the player’s actions into the game world, the way the game defines the possible actions of the player. It is the unique parts that we need to study now”. When combined with Aarseth’s statement that games are “too important” to be left to the scholars of other areas, the ludologists staked out their territory. Leave narrative, an inessential part of games, to the literature and film studies people. They were going to address the more important aspects of games – the structural elements that helped to define something as a game.

Janet H. Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace focused on the evolving role of narrative, though at that time the struggle between narratologists and ludologists was in full swing. Her title is important, though – she was examining the future of narrative, and already in 1997 allowed for not only the possibility but the necessity of it becoming interactive. Rather than the “game” elements being the main point and any narrative elements merely providing a context or pretense for the gameplay, Murray, although limited by the technology at the time when explaining what was possible at the time, incorporated science fiction elements into her prediction of the future direction of narrative. Cyberspace was a far cry from virtual reality, and further still from Star Trek’s holodeck, and Murray’s book dealt explicitly with interactive stories, which need not necessarily be games. Given the definitions they were working with at the time, the two camps’ positions make sense. But in the nearly two decades since then, our definition of what a narrative is has shifted.

Certainly, there are still people who take an arguably formalist approach and focus on games-for-games-sake, but as the role of storytelling is acknowledged in fields far beyond games – marketing , health literacy, and education – denying the value of storytelling in games becomes more difficult. In the years since ludology was first established in contrast to narratology in the study of games, fewer and fewer articles have been published. The initial conflict – whether or not games had stories – is less of a focus, because the definition of narrative has expanded. While Juul explained some fifteen years ago that games were not simply narratives, because narratives lacked interactive elements, the goalposts have been moved. It is generally accepted that narratives can be interactive. That doesn’t mean that things like mechanics and gameplay do not matter – on the contrary, they have been subsumed as part of the overall definition, and now are the vehicle through which stories are made interactive. Even in Henry Jenkins’ 2006 article “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” the line has blurred, and game elements are pressed into service to create narrative spaces, in which a non-linear narrative can be uncovered by players as they move through the game space.

Carolyn Handler Miller's Digital Storytelling: A Creator's Guide to Interactive Entertainment — Carolyn Handler Miller’s Digital Storytelling: A Creator’s Guide to Interactive Entertainment

Carolyn Handler Miller’s book, Digital Storytelling is subtitled A Creator’s Guide to Interactive Entertainment. Storytelling is now interactive. Narratives can allow for agency on the part of the reader/player/end user. Rather than focusing on games, the book explores the nature of interactive stories, with a primary focus on what you can do with them, and how they can be applied to the burgeoning field of transmedia storytelling.

The more pertinent question now seems to be not whether or not games have stories, but how stories can be used in combination with other game elements to create an immersive experience, in which the player (for lack of a better word) is invested in the outcome. Not only does this deepen the player’s connection to the game’s outcome, this can be transferred to apply to a consumer’s connection to a brand, a student’s desire to master a skill, or countless other interactions that apply to games, but also beyond them. In spite of some early game theorists’ desire to stake out their own territory separate from that of other fields, the floodgates are open, and computer games – which always incorporated multiple disciplines in their creation – now are a part of countless other industries. There is certainly still a role for game theorists, but meaningful contributions can now come from many fields, and the work of game studies scholars has implications far beyond that of entertainment. Game elements and story elements are both pressed into service into the creation of interactive narratives, of which traditional computer games are one among several forms that they can take.

Sources and Further Reading

Aarseth, Espen. “Computer Game Studies – Year One.” Game Studies, vol. 1, issue 1, 2001. http://gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html. Accessed 20 September 2016.

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture”. In The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology, Ed. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. MIT P, Cambridge, MA, 2006.

Miller, Carolyn Handler. Digital Storytelling (3^rd ed.). Focal Press: New York, 2014.

Juul, Jesper. “Games Telling Stories?” Game Studies, vol. 1, Issue 1, 2001. http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/ Accessed 5 October 2016.

Paper #1 – History of Game Studies

The academic study of video game design has deep roots in many disciplines, stretching across the humanities, the social sciences, and computer science. Since it is a truly interdisciplinary field, there are as many claims to being the “first” to study them as there are subspecialties within it. Although my own area of interest draws strongly from composition studies and pedagogy as well as game studies, it is dependent on the idea of computer games having the potential to be immersive stories, and as such, much of the seminal work on this dates to the late 1990s.

Aarseth's Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature — Aarseth’s Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature

In Volume 1, issue 1 of Game Studies, Espen Aarseth states “2001 can be seen as the Year One of Computer Game Studies as an emerging, viable, international, academic field.” His book, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature predates his “year one” by four years, as does Janet Murray’s seminal Hamlet on the Holodeck. While not the first works to ever explore the interactive potential for fiction, their work is among the most influential long-form explorations, which laid thegroundwork for more widespread acceptance and formalized study.

Two of the first universities to begin interdisciplinary programs to study computer games were, unsurprisingly, MIT and Georgia Tech. Hamlet on the Holodeck was written while Murray was at MIT, where she began teaching “interactive fiction” in 1992 (Murray, Hamlet ix). She later went on to lead the Information Design and Technology program at Georgia Tech, among the first graduate programs of its kind (Murray “From Game-Story…” 6). Both these schools, sharing both a rigorous program of study in fields that fed into game studies and a student body with a passion for roleplaying games (live and tabletop) as well as computer games, proved fertile ground for new research programs. Over time, degrees in “Game Design” have sprung up at colleges and universities at all levels. However, most focus primarily on the art and technology that go into the creation of games, with analysis being pragmatic and not theoretical.

The high level of interest on the part of students, and the increasing demand for highly skilled workers in the ever-expanding field of video game design and production, has led to the development of these programs as a means of credentialing and training students to fill these roles. Beyond the notion of filling a market demand on the part of students and industry, Aarseth states a more philosophical imperative for the establishment of formalized video game studies, stating, “Today…we have a billion dollar industry with almost no basic research, we have the most fascinating cultural material to appear in a very long time, and we have the chance of uniting aesthetic, cultural and technical design aspects in a single discipline.”
However, some designers, like “Extra Credits” James Portnow, argue that game design programs often fail to provide the broad humanities base necessary to prepare students to be professional designers (Extra Credits). Turf wars over the disciplinary relationship between game studies and more established departments must take into account the primary purpose of schools, after all – the teaching of students. There exists a potential conflict between what is best for students (broad-based undergraduate programs with a strong liberal arts component, and more specialized, in-depth graduate study of games) and what may be best for career academics, who have a career imperative to carve out their own niche and identity as researchers.

I would argue, however, that for a well-rounded understanding of the field, study – whether formal or informal – of multiple disciplines is necessary. Individual disciplines may provide a theoretical framework for analysis, as well as their own rich traditions of the many elements that make up game design. And while Aarseth allows that “games should also be studied within existing fields and departments, such as Media Studies, Sociology and English,” he then goes on to say that “games are too important to be left to these fields.”

The demand on the part of students and industry for game design programs means that departments will continue to exist at least as long as the tuition dollars are there, and they have an important research contribution to make to the university community as well. There will be scholars who identify with these departments exclusively, and see researchers from related disciplines as interlopers. Such is the nature of interdisciplinary studies and departments, and Game Studies is not the first, nor will it be the last, to experience this conflict.

In the case of English Studies, studies of game design and game narrative open up new possibilities to explore issues underlying writing pedagogy, as well as an evolving definition of narrative that allows for agency on the part of the “reader” as well as the writer. Scholars of English Studies have much that they can contribute, and much that they can learn as well from this burgeoning field…if disputes over who has the “right” to study games do not get in the way.

Aarseth, Espen. “Computer Game Studies, Year One”. Game Studies. July 2001. http://gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html.

Extra Credits. “Educating Game Designers – Too Much “Game” at Game Schools – Extra Credits.” YouTube. YouTube, 20 Apr. 2016. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.

Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck. MIT P, 1997.

Murray, Janet. “From Game-Story to Cyberdrama” in First Person, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. MIT P, 2004, p. 2-11.