Approaching Game-Studies: Towards a Reflexive Methodology of Games as Situated Cultures

This paper argues that the study of games as cultural practice requires a methodology grounded in reflexivity and situatedness, two complementary tools that together keep play at the center of inquiry while situating the researcher and the game within local and cultural contexts. Building on Espen Aarseth's call for a methodology that accounts for the researcher's position as player, the author refines this proposal by drawing on anthropologist Tom Boellstorff's advocacy of participant observation. The central claim is that any approach to games should acknowledge their intrinsic qualities, particularly play, while remaining open to interdisciplinary methods borrowed from anthropology and related fields.

The paper critically examines Aarseth's framework of gameplay, game-structure, and game-world, and his adaptation of Bartle's player typologies, arguing that these categories risk being overly universal and Eurocentric when applied without attention to local cultural variation. Boellstorff's critique of culture-as-rules is presented as a complementary corrective, emphasizing culture as lived, intersubjective practice. The author finds substantial overlap between the two positions, both stressing the unavoidable involvement of the researcher with the research material, while noting that anthropology may be too predetermined as a framework and that its tools must be adapted to remain faithful to what games are.

The paper's conclusion is that reflexivity, which renders the researcher's involvement visible, and situatedness, which embeds both agent and game in local and embodied social practice, are indispensable for cultural game studies. Illustrated through a discussion of gender and gaming research, the analysis is largely conceptual and theoretical rather than based on empirical data, surveys, or a defined sample. Its scope is primarily within game studies in the humanities, drawing on work from media studies, anthropology, feminist science studies, and cognitive science.