

These often use more interpretative methods, such as close reading, textual analysis, and audience theory, methods shared with other media disciplines such as television and film studies. " Humanities-based" approaches emphasise how games generate meanings and reflect or subvert wider social and cultural discourses. There are now a number of strands within game studies: " social science" approaches explore how games function in society, and their interactions with human psychology, often using empirical methods such as surveys and controlled lab experiments.

However, with the development and spread of video games, games studies has diversified methodologically, to include approaches from sociology, psychology, and other fields. Game studies is oftentimes confused with the study of video games, but this is only one area of focus in reality game studies encompasses all types of gaming, including sports, board games, etc.īefore video games, game studies was rooted primarily in anthropology. This field of research utilizes the tactics of, at least, folkloristics and cultural heritage, sociology and psychology, while examining aspects of the design of the game, the players in the game, and the role the game plays in its society or culture. It is a field of cultural studies that deals with all types of games throughout history. Game studies, also known as ludology (from ludus, "game", and -logia, "study", "research"), is the study of games, the act of playing them, and the players and cultures surrounding them. For the mathematical study of optimizing agents, see Game theory. This article is about the study of playing games for entertainment.
