Emerging Genres: New Formations of Games

by Joshua Call (Editor), Betsy Brey (Editor), Gerald A. Voorhees (Editor), Matthew Wysocki (Editor)

Overview

This collection expands the analytical framework of digital games by exploring them through the lens of genre analysis-the evaluation of the structural designs that provide the framework for the player's experience. Each chapter in this volume attends to a unique game genre that is newly emerged or revisited, and often new under-addressed in critical scholarship to theorize where games are situated currently and establish new ground in Game Studies for the future.

As video games continue to dominate the media landscape, understanding the structure and form of games is increasingly important. Despite the fluid nature of genre, there remains an intellectual and ideological power for understanding the connective tissue of game genres as creative artifacts through their relational iterations. This volume extends these ideas by considering the current framework for game genres, highlighting the additions and evolutions of the last decade. Each section in this collection revisits the idea of genre as a flexible dynamic to capture the iterative quality of the work by signaling things that exist currently, tracing their emergence and evolution, and theorizing what such affordances might mean for the future.

The first section considers emerging genres as a function of the material conditions of play, and the game experience. The second section examines many of the formal/mechanical elements used to identify genres, highlighting the emergence or evolution of forms that are unique to the current landscape of games. The final section explores the function and construction of genre as affective, highlighting the expressive and persuasive potential of games to shape the audience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798765125618
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/08/2026
Series:	Approaches to Digital Game Studies
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Josh Call is Professor of English at Grand View University, USA. He is a former area chair of the Game Studies Area of the National Popular Culture Association and Managing Editor of the Approaches to Digital Game Studies series for Bloomsbury Press.

Betsy Brey is a PhD Candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She was Editor-in-Chief of online publication First Person Scholar for three years. She has published chapters in several books, as well as articles in The Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric and Rhetor.

Gerald Voorhees is an Associate Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo. He is President of the Canadian Game Studies Association (term ending July 2023) and a former member of the Digital Games Research Association executive board.

Matthew Wysocki serves as coordinator of Media Studies and Film Studies as an Associate Professor at Flagler College, USA. He also is co-area Chair of Game Studies for the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. He has written or co-written numerous chapters on control and player agency, a plethora of them on the BioShock series. He edited CTRL-ALT-PLAY: Essays on Control in Video Gaming (2013) and co-edited Rated M for Mature: Sex and Sexuality in Video Games from Bloomsbury (2015).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Why Genres Matter
Josh Call (Grand View University, USA) and Betsy Brey (University of Waterloo, Canada)

I. Material Conditions
1. Nostalgic Enactment: The Genre of Home Arcade Cabinets
Brent Kice (University of Houston- Clear Lake, USA)
2. The FMV Game: A Genre that Never Existed, But Refuses to Die
Jakub Majewski (Kazimierz Wielki University, Poland) and Scott Knight (Bond University, Australia)
3. Game Modification As Genre-Bending Media
Aleš Ceh (University of Maribor, Slovenia)
4. Teachable Games: Genre Conventions for the University Classroom
Rebecca S. Richards (University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA)
5. Press [space] to Honk, Press [x] to Think: Avatars and Environments in Nonhuman Simulators
Spencer Myers (Bowling Green State University, USA) and Kari Hanlin (Bowling Green State University, USA)

II. Formal and Mechanical Dimensions
6. Questioning Genre Stability In The Current Generation Of Real-Time Strategy Games
Kacper Szozda (University of Western Australia)
7. Video Games of the Absurd
Anna Douglass (UNSW Sydney, Australia)
8. Dad Gaming and “Boomer Shooters:” Changing Demographics in a Shifting Gaming Landscape
Kyle Moody (Fitchburg State University, USA)
9. “You prepared the Great Transcendence for me”: Exploring Inscryption as Meta-Horror
M. Landon (University of Illinois, USA)
10. Toward Eco Video Games
Connor Jackson (Liverpool Hope University, UK)
11. The Fallen Leaves Tell a Story: Elden Ring and the Emergence of the Soulslike Genre
DA Hall (University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, USA)

III. Cultural Meanings
12. From the Cradle to the Game: Dysphoria and Rhetorical Listening in Trans Video Games
Casey O'Ceallaigh (University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, USA)
13. Moral Combat: Metafictional Indie Games
Taylor Orgeron (Southwestern Oklahoma State University, USA)
14. Love and Other Terrors: Intimacy and Vulnerability in English-Language Dating Simulators and Romantic Games
Heather Blakey (University of Western Australia) and Sian Tomkinson (University of Western Australia)
15. Horror, But Make It Cozy: Beacon Pines' Use of Alternative Narrative and Design Strategies for Scary Video Games
Christine Tomlinson (University of California-Irvine, USA)

Index

Editorial Reviews

The study of genres seems to mirror the arrival of a new medium that makes audiences, academics, and producers rethink the idea and reconfigure their understanding of the way that genres speak through the text. Given that video games are the medium of our era, this text comprehensively catalogues emerging genres in a host of games and game genres. The essays in this collection will help fans and scholars alike tease apart our understanding of popular genres like horror games and new ones like cozy games. Conversely, the chapters explore the ways that genre conditions our understanding of the production of identities in and through the genre of a game. Importantly, the essays collected here will also provide scholars in other fields with new ways of understanding established genres through this important look at emerging ones.” —Marc A. Ouellette, Associate Professor of Cultural & Gender Studies, Old Dominion University, USA

“What kinds of games are there? For those of us who care about games, the answer is thankfully always changing. This collection is a valuable spotlight that illuminates the dizzying and exciting contours of the bubbling edges of the digital games industry – the place where new genres coalesce. It is a fresh, forward-looking contribution to game studies that highlights games and how to make sense of them at a scale – genre – that allows for novel insights that push the boundaries of the field.” —José P. Zagal, Professor Lecturing, University of Utah, USA

“Genre is troublesome wherever it is found, but this collection endeavours to establish a series of new frameworks to interpret it within Games Studies. Using a 'min-max' approach, these papers work to interrogate the placement of genre within games, questioning how it can be troublesome, powerful, complex and transgressive.” —Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Professor of Games Studies, University of Staffordshire, UK

From the Publisher