For your theoretical pleasure, here is the latest issue of Game Studies: Game Studies 2011-03.
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A Survey of First-person Shooters and their Avatars
by Michael Hitchens
A survey of over 550 first person shooters, The titles are compared by year of release, platform and game setting. Characteristics of avatars within the surveyed titles are also examined, including race, gender and background, and how these vary across platform and time. The analysis reveals definite trends, both historically and by platform…
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Against Procedurality
by Miguel Sicart
This article proposes a critical review of the literature on procedural rhetoric, from a game design perspective. The goal of the article is to show the limits of procedural rhetorics for the design and analysis of ethics and politics in games. The article will suggest that theories of play can be used to solve these theoretical flaws…
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The pastoral and the sublime in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
by Paul Martin
The landscape in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is seen here as a central aspect of the game’s theme of good versus evil. The analysis looks at the game’s distinction between the pastoral and the industrial realms and the way the player’s encounter with the landscape transforms over the course of the game from the sublime to the picturesque mode…
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Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams: Popular Music, Narrative, and Dystopia in Bioshock
by William Gibbons
The science-fiction world of the video game Bioshock (2K Games, 2007) presents a dystopian vision of mid-century America. The game explores the creation and ultimate destruction of the underwater city of Rapture, an Ayn-Rand-inspired capitalist Utopia. Though the game features an award-winning original score, its soundtrack also borrows…
Perhaps predictably, the Sicart paper seems to have drawn the most online commentary: Daniel Joseph from a political-economy perspective mostly disagrees; I from a “really” proceduralist perspective mostly disagree but propose rephrased points of agreement; and Charles J. Pratt from a play-oriented perspective mostly agrees with Sicart. (Bogost also replies briefly in the comments section of Pratt’s article.)