A community-driven awesome list of resources for gaming scholarship, art, and sciences. Focused on general Game Scholarship Theories, Videogames, and Tabletop games.
This curated list is part of my initiative to Learn Out Loud. It is a curated list of the most important items. I will also share my full Zotero bibliography in the future.
- General Introductions to Game Studies
- History of Gaming
- Scholarship and Theory
- Game Development
- Game Design
- Gaming Culture
- Educational, Therapeutic, and Impact Gaming
- Special and Miscellaneous Topics
- Community: Conferences, Schools, Research Organizations
- Other Lists
Licences and Pricing:
- 🆓 - Free, not open source
- 🎉 - Open Source
- 💰 - Paid
- 💸 - Some of the resources are free. Others are not.
- 📹 - Contains Ads
Content Levels: These are subjective, and specific to the kind of thing it is.
- 😃 Beginner or Introductory
- 😎 Intermediate
- 👩🎓 Advanced
Other Tags:
- 🎨 Art, Music, and Other Assets, for both digital or tabletop games
- 💾 Code, Frameworks, and Engines
- 🏫 Provided by a School (university) or Well-Respected Educational Institution (some you-tube channels, for instance)
- 🎮 Videogames
- 🎲 Table Top Games
- 📚 Book (check the library)
- Extra Credits and older videos at Extra History 😃 | 📹 | 🎮 | One of the premier channels covering all topics of video games. Some videos are also in the list under different sections.
- Crash Course: Games 😃 | 📹 | 🎮 🎲 | A comprehensive introduction to the history of gaming and topics in game studies.
- Introduction to Game Studies by Frans Mäyrä 😎 | 💰 | 📚 🏫 | Standard textbooks for Game Studies Courses.
- Introduction to Game Studies (Syllabus) by Mark Chen 😎 | 🆓 | 🏫
- Working Syllabus for an Introduction to Game Studies course at the University of Washington - Bothell
- Uses Introduction to Game Studies by Frans Mäyrä, which is also on this list
- Introduction to Game Studies: Theory and Design (Iat 210) 😎 | 🆓 | 🏫 🎮 🎲 | Lecture notes from Intro to Game Studies at Simon Frasier University
- The Gaming Historian 😃 | 📹 | 🎮 | YouTube channel chronicling the history of videogames.
- National Video Game Museum 😃 | 💰 | 🎮 | Professional videogame history museum in the United States.
- Video Game History Foundation 😃 | 🆓 💰 | 🎮 | Preservation organization with a digital library spanning the entire history of video games.
(Seeking entries)
This is NOT a list of tools to help you make games. See the excellent Magic Tools list for that.
Game Programming and tutorials is out of scope for this list. There are many other excellent ones out there. I will only list one here because it is not just about making a game or game programming, but includes case studies. A great launcing pad before getting into the nitty-gritty of games programming.
- CS50's Introduction to Game Development 😎 | 🆓 | 🎮 🏫 | Harvard's Introduction to Game Development. Week by week case studies of some of the most successful games and programming assignments.
Professional and Academic resources about game design topics. Not technical programming resources (mostly), but instead breakdowns of topics concerning level design, progression systems, balencing, palyer interaction, etc.
- Game Design Think Tank Report: Progression Systems 😎 | 🆓 | 🏫 | A fantastic introduction to progression systems and their mechanics, design, classification, and betterment. Put together by industry professionals at annual conference.
- Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human 😎 | 💰 | 🎮📚 | A classic and comprehensive ethnography of online multi-player gaming.
- Design and Development of Games for Learning 😎 | 🆓 | 🎮 🏫 | Includes lessons on game design, analysis, and development for education.
- Choosing and Using Digital Games in the Classroom😎 | 💰 | 🎮📚 | Research-based application of digital games n the classroom.
(Seeking entries)
(Seeking Entries for slack groups, meetups, blogs, forums, mailing lists, etc.)
- Meaningful Play at Michigan State University 👩🎓 💰 | 🏫 (Annually) | "Meaningful Play is a conference about theory, research, and game design innovations, principles and practices. Meaningful Play brings scholars and industry professionals together to understand and improve upon games to entertain, inform, educate, and persuade in meaningful ways."
- Games for Change Festival 👩🎓 | 💰 | "The largest industry-facing games event in NYC, discover how games can impact education, healthcare, research, civics, and social issues."
- Popular Arts Conference 👩🎓 | 💰 | "an annual academic conference for the studies of the popular arts, including science/speculative fiction and fantasy literature, film, and other media, comic books, manga, graphic novels, anime, gaming, etc. PAC presentations are peer reviewed, based in scholarly research."
- American University Game Lab 👩🎓 | 💸 | 🏫
- Undergraduate and Graduate degrees in Game Design and Interactivity.
- Focus on Meaningful or Impact Games.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology 👩🎓 |💸 | 🏫
- MIT Education Arcade: Research Lab and Teacher Education focusing on innovation around Games for Learning, Simulation and Programming tools, Teacher Licensure, Professional Development and Curriculum Development.
- MIT Game Lab: "The MIT Game Lab brings together scholars, creators, and technologists to teach, conduct research, and develop new approaches for applied game design and construction."
- MIT Lifelong Kindergarten: "The Lifelong Kindergarten group develops new technologies and activities that, in the spirit of the blocks and finger paint of kindergarten, engage people in creative learning experiences. Our ultimate goal is a world full of playfully creative people, who are constantly inventing new possibilities for themselves and their communities."
- Michigan State University 👩🎓 | 💸 |🏫
- Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab: "The mission is to design innovative prototypes, techniques, and complete games for entertainment and learning and to advance state of the art knowledge about social and individual effects of digital games."
- iVerse Lab: Researches Virtual Reality Design, Creative Activities, Game Design and Development, and other Game Studies topics.
- Inclusive GameDev Institute: "Inclusive Game Dev is a cross-institutional program hosted by Michigan State University to increase all forms of diversity in game design and development through talks, workshops, game showcases, and gaming + reading groups."
- New York University: Tisch 👩🎓 | 💸 | 🏫
- Game Center: "The NYU Game Center is dedicated to the exploration of games as a cultural form and game design as creative practice." Offers art and research degrees.
- University of Washington 👩🎓 | 💸 | 🏫
- Center for Game Science: "The Center for Game Science at the University of Washington focuses on solving hard problems facing humanity today in a game based environment. Our focus is on scientific discovery games, games that discover optimal learning pathways for STEM education, cognitive skill training games, games that promote human creativity, games that explore collective over individual intelligence, and many more."
- Works on some of the most successful and innovative impact games in history, like FoldIt
- Critical Gaming Project: "he CGP is a collaborative, interdisciplinary working group and community of players at UW dedicated to the critical study and teaching of games."
- Center for Game Science: "The Center for Game Science at the University of Washington focuses on solving hard problems facing humanity today in a game based environment. Our focus is on scientific discovery games, games that discover optimal learning pathways for STEM education, cognitive skill training games, games that promote human creativity, games that explore collective over individual intelligence, and many more."
- Games for Change 😎 | 💸 | 🏫 (Non-Profit associated with several schools) | Empowers game creators and social innovators to drive real-world change using games that help people to learn, improve their communities, and contribute to make the world a better place.
- Project Horseshoe 😎 | 💸 | Annual conference and think tank of industry professionals that meet to collaborate to "solve game design's toughest problems" and publish reports. Good resources.
- Video Game History Foundation 😃 | 🆓 💰 | 🎮 | Preservation organization with a digital library spanning the entire history of video games.
- Games Do Good | Sources that show how games can have a positive impact on people and society
- Magic Tools: Game Development Awesome List 🎮 💾
- Computer Science Courses 💾
- Awesome Lists | An Awesome List of Awesome Lists
Contributions welcome! Read the contribution guidelines first.
To the extent possible under law, Michael Wilson has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.