The authors explore children's symbolic play that involves themes of fear and darkness, and they investigate the nature of children's binary oppositions, particularly between self and other. Their account is based on a year-long qualitative study they conducted with seven children, four to ten years of age. They observed the children engage with…

Christopher Bensch is vice president for collections and chief curator at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. He oversees the acquisition of and care for the world's most comprehensive collection of playthings. He also serves as the primary spokesperson for the National Toy Hall of Fame. Andrew Borman is digital games curator at…

T. L.Taylor is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and cofounder and Director of Research for AnyKey, an organization dedicated to supporting and developing fair and inclusive esports. She is a qualitative sociologist who has focused on internet and game studies for over two decades, and her…

The authors provide a deep reading of the fictional small American town of Possum Springs in the 2017 adventure game "Night in the Woods" ("NiTW") to demonstrate how game architecture and environments have become richer and more complex spaces for narrative development and storytelling. The act of navigating the game's town,…

Investigating the potential of video games as an aid to community mapping and participatory architectural design, the author discusses the use of the sandbox game "Minecraft" by the Block by Block Foundation in collaboration with Mojang Studios, Microsoft, and UN-Habitat for three projects--Model Street (Dandora Phase 2, in Nairobi,…

In this excerpt from the author's new book, "Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming," (Princeton University Press, 2018), she discusses some of the work game live streamers undertake to convert their private play into public entertainment. She details the layers involved in a typical broadcast and argues that this…

The author asks what has occurred in game history scholarship to warrant the use of the adjective "new" in "New Video Game History" and suggests an awareness of process may now be influencing the study of games. In support of this observation, he organizes the article along two interrelated fronts. The first speaks to the…

The author retells the origin story of Sierra On-Line and its historic first product, the graphical adventure game "Mystery House." She reviews the academic and journalistic writing that placed the story almost exclusively inside a narrative about early computer games, treating it as a saga of the competition between the graphic…

Whether kids should be encouraged to play video games remains a topic of debate among many parents, who often entertain some of the myths associated with video game play. The authors review the latest scientific evidence to dispel worries that video game play contributes to obesity, desensitizes players to real-world violence, and causes…

The authors discuss the impact of interactive digital games on the lives and the play of young children in terms of "Sesame Street"'s express mission to help children become smarter, stronger, and kinder. They conclude that such games have much the same effect as other types of play and call for more research to help use it.

Jon-Paul C. Dyson is vice president for exhibits and director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) at The Strong. Trained as a cultural and intellectual historian, he joined The Strong in 1998 and has worked on and supervised the development of dozens of exhibits on play and video games. He initiated the museum's…

Game design offers a unique but often misunderstood pedagogical opportunity. The author draws on learning theory, feminist epistemology, and game studies to analyze a novel genre of games capable of realizing this opportunity by mobilizing knowledge through play--praxis games--founded on the concept of situated praxis. Situated praxis encourages…

The author discusses how, in practice, historians often obscure the effect of women's lives, work, and contributions on their topic, and she takes special note of video game history. Using both history and film studies as examples, she argues that games historians can and should adopt feminist viewpoints to help ensure a fuller, more diverse…

As the popularity of video games has risen so too has the worry about the problems associated with playing them. The authors review the research concerning problem gaming, its similarity to some clinical addictions like gambling and drug and alcohol abuse, and current treatment options. They conclude that, regardless of how researchers and medical…

The informal setting of online multiplayer video games may offer safe spots for speakers of other languages learning English to practice their communication skills and reduce their anxiety about using a second language. In this study, the author examined the relationship between both these concerns and the time spent playing such games by basic…