Formal Board Game Studies

[SamVS]

http://analoggamestudies.org/

http://analoggamestudies.org/about/our-mission/

Analog Game Studies is a journal dedicated to the academic and popular study of games containing a substantial analog component.

The goals of the journal are:
• to provide a platform for the documentation and analysis of games that use dice, cards, boards, pencil, paper, tokens, and/or performative elements.
• to provide peer-review services and help cultivate an interested audience for such material.
• to encourage the development of analog game studies theory and methods across disciplines.

Scholarship on role-playing games, traditional games (chess, go, backgammon), parlor games, strategy board games, collectible card games, larp and similar material will be the central focus of our journal.

Why choose analog games as objects of academic study?

Analog games are interesting in their accessibility, their innovative potential, and the already lively current discourse surrounding these games’ design and implementation. Anyone can design an analog game, as opposed to hardware-intensive video games, which often require massive programming teams with specialized skill-sets. Thanks to these games’ accessibility and agility, game studies scholars frequently use analog games to teach specific game principles, from the act of removing pieces in chess to building a character inDungeons & Dragons. Yet serious studies of these games’ logics, affordances and constraints are scarce in the game studies community. We intend for the journal to help tease out broader socio-cultural meanings at stake in analog game design and play. Analog games ultimately permit designers to explore concepts and systems that would be otherwise impractical or hard to implement on a digital platform. Rather than conceiving of analog games as a “pure” game form, we recognize their specific histories, trajectories, and potential. We also recognize that much has already been said about analog game studies within design communities, and this forum will help us maintain a shared language across these mostly private networks and across disciplines such as history, psychology, media studies, sociology, anthropology and literary studies. Bridging these diverse networks is the purpose and reason for existence for this journal.

Volume 1, Issue 1: http://analoggamestudies.org/volume-i-issue-i/

A PDF of Volume 2: http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1065&context=etcpress

Haven't looked through it yet. No idea if there is anything interesting or useful there (actually, I suspect most of it is rubbish), but thought I would post it here anyway in case it interests anyone.

[BeardyTom]

I'll have a look at that later.

[SamVS]

Some more. These look a tad more interesting to me. Some board game history, looks at ancient games for example, and some psychology too, just from glancing at the titles.

http://bgsj.ludus-opuscula.org/

Board Games Studies was first published in 1998, an initiative inspired by the colloquia on board games held at Leiden University, the Netherlands, in 1995 and 1997. Five institutions affiliated themselves with the journal: the Institut für Spielforschung und Spielpädagogik in Salzburg, the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden, the Russian Chess Museum in Moscow, the British Museum in London, and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maastricht. The journal, which was published by CNWS Publications in Leiden on a yearly basis, was partially funded through the assistance of patrons and boasted a modern layout, trilingual summaries and color plates.

The broad ambition of this journal required a continuous commitment from the editors, who reviewed contributions in German, French and English, provided translations of summaries for each article and, in several cases, collaborated extensively with authors to develop manuscripts that were to the academic standards of the publication.

The journal had a trial run of three years, after which the format, content and review process was evaluated. The authors of the articles integrated wide-ranging literature necessary for a comprehensive understanding of particular games.

Contributions from different disciplines — including psychology, computer science, philology, classical archaeology and history — allowed for a better historical and systematic understanding of board games to emerge. Starting in 2000, a section with a translation of primary sources was added. Book reviews and research notes further complemented the multi-facetted contents. Its first ambition, to serve as a platform for the publication of board games research, was met quickly, while gradually the journal gained prominence among researchers by publishing seminal historical overviews.

The colloquia continued from 1995 onwards, moving from a biennial to a yearly schedule. The host institution was expanded beyond Leiden to universities and museums throughout Europe as well as Jerusalem, Philadelphia and, in 2013, the Azores. The colloquia continue to gather an enthusiastic group of scholars, players and collectors.

Despite the institutional affiliations and a group of patrons, the production of the journal became financially and logistically problematic with CNWS no longer able to serve as a publisher. Reluctantly, the paper version of the journal was discontinued after volume 7 was published in 2004.

The possibility of an online version of the journal had been explored with the online publication of the first issues, a decision that greatly assisted the dissemination of knowledge accumulated in those early volumes. The next step, an online journal that operates again as a platform for recent board games research, was not far away but required the skills and enthusiasm of previous and new editors to materialize.

In these last fifteen years, the study of board games has gained momentum and this journal will not only showcase new results but, most of all, will encourage and publicize the work of the dedicated researchers in this field.

http://www.parlettgames.uk/games/bgs.html

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