This article proposes a reflexive approach on the scientific production in the field of game studies in recent years. It relies on a sociology of science perspective to answer the question: What are game studies really about? Relying on scientometric and lexicometric tools, we analyze the metadata and content of a corpus of articles from the journals Games Studies and Games & Culture and of Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) proceedings. We show that published researches have been studying only a limited set of game genres and that they especially focus on online games. We then expose the different ways game studies are talking about games through a topic model analysis of our corpus. We test two hypotheses to explain the concentration of research on singular objects: path dependence and trading zone. We describe integrative properties of the focus on common objects but stress also the scientific limits met by this tendency.
AbendG.PetreC.SauderM. (2013). Styles of causal thought. An empirical investigation. American Journal of Sociology, 119, 1–53.
3.
ApperleyT. (2006). Genre and game studies. Toward a critical approach to video game genres. Simulation & Gaming, 37, 6–23.
4.
ArsenaultD. (2009), Video game genre, evolution and innovation. Eludamos, 3, 149–176.
5.
BeckerH. (1982). Art worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
6.
BleiD. M.LaffertyJ. D. (2009). Topic models. In SrivastavaA. N.SahamiM. (Eds.), Text mining. Classification, clustering and applications (pp. 71–94). Boca Raton, FL: Chapman and Hall/CRC.
7.
BourdieuP. (1984). Distinction. A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
8.
BoutetM.CoavouxS.RufatS.Ter MinassianH. (2013). Situating play cultures: A survey on videogames and culture in France. 5th global conference “videogame cultures & the future of interactive entertainment”, 14–16 July 2013, Mansfield College, Oxford, England.
9.
CoavouxS.GerberD. (2016). Les pratiques ludiques des adultes entre affinities electives et sociabilités familiales. Sociologie, 6, 133–151.
10.
ClearwaterD. (2011). What defines video game genres? Thinking about genre study after the great divide. Loading, 5, 29–49.
11.
CraneD. (1967). The gatekeepers of science: Some factors affecting the selection of articles for scientific journals. The American Sociologist, 2, 195–201.
12.
FrascaG. (2003). Ludologists love stories, too: Notes from a debate that never took place. In CopierM.RaessensJ. (Eds.), Level up: Digital games research conference proceedings. Utrecht, the Netherlands: Utrecht University. Consulted March 2, 2012. Retrieved fromhttp://www.digra.org/dl/db/05163.01125
13.
GalisonP. (1997). Image & logic: A material culture of microphysics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
14.
GormanM. E. (Ed.). (2010). Trading zones and interactional expertise, creating new kinds of collaboration. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
15.
Knorr-CetinaK. (1999). Epistemic cultures: How the sciences make knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
16.
LowoodH. (2006). Game studies now, history of science then. Games and Culture1, 78–82.
17.
MäyräF. (2015). Inter and multidisciplinarity of game studies: The expanding challenges. Communication at the Game Studies: “à la française!” conference, ed. 2015: Les supports du jeu vidéo.
18.
MelcerE.NguyenT.ChenZ.CanossaA.Seif El-NasrM.IsbisterK. (2015). Games research today: Analyzing the academic landscape 2000-2014. In the Proceedings of the 10th international conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2015), June 22–25, 2015, Pacific Grove, CA, USA.
19.
OllionÉ. (2011). De la sociologie en Amérique. Éléments pour une sociologie de la sociologie états-unienne. Sociologie, 2, 277–94.
20.
PiersonP. (2000). Increasing returns, path dependence and the study of politics. The American Political Science Review, 94, 251–67.
21.
QuandtT.Van LooyJ.VogekgesangJ.ElsonM.IvoryJ. D.ConsalvoM.MäyräF. (2015). Digital games research: A survey study on an emerging field and its prevalent debates. Journal of Communication, 65, 975–996.
