First Person Podcast Episode 51 – Best Games of 2021

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  Welcome to the 51st episode of the First-Person Podcast and the annual Best Games episode of 2021! This year we wanted to take this opportunity to introduce the current FPS team, so you will hear some new and old… Continue Reading

First Person Podcast Episode 50 – State of Game Studies

FirstPersonPodcast · First Person Podcast Episode 50: State of Game Studies Welcome to the 50th episode of the First-Person Podcast and the last episode of the year 2021! As this is our 50th episode we wanted to take some time… Continue Reading

Feed-Forward Scholarship

Why Games Studies Needs Middle-State Publishing

In the next few pages I will outline two major forms of scholarship. One relies on feedback and the other on feed-forward. Let’s start with the former. Feedback scholarship shares a number of similarities with cybernetics. The phrase ‘cybernetics’ comes from the Greek word meaning steersman, as in the one who steers a ship. The man or woman steering a ship responds to the environment by adjusting the direction of the boat. In this case, the wind and the water provide feedback and the person steering the boat acts as a homeostatic mechanism, adjusting the course according to the feedback. Increasingly, I get the feeling that Games Studies is focused on maintaining the course but there’s not a lot of focus on the ultimate destination. In other words, Games Studies scholarship is inherently homeostatic. Continue Reading