Genre as Gamevironment: Epistemic Genres Beyond Play

"Genre as Gamevironment: Epistemic Genres Beyond Play" argues that game genres should be understood not as fixed textual categories but as socially and culturally situated practices. Building on Radde-Antweiler's gamevironments framework and Voorhees and Call's notion of epistemic genres as constellations of games, the authors propose that genres are co-constructed through shared codes, community consensus, and the affordances that players and designers bring to them. Magic: The Gathering serves as a central exemplar, with its knowledge systems extending well beyond game mechanics into fan discourse, tournament culture, and play communities, and its shift from tabletop to digital play offering further illustration.

The article's central contention is that genre operates as a boundary-drawing frame. Such frames make some participants recognizable and welcome while excluding others. Drawing on Butler and on decolonial critiques, the authors argue that genre has functioned as a tool of epistemic colonialism within game studies, most visibly in the narratology-versus-ludology debate, which they note drove many diverse scholars out of the field. Evidence that the first-person shooter genre skews male and is designed around male users supports their claim that genres colonize their borders, often leaving women to face hostility and ostracism. Emerging examples such as "friendslop," cooperative indie titles like Lethal Company and Peak, are cited as cases where genres remain fluid and hybrid.

The authors conclude by applying the same framework reflexively to academic genres and to their own collaborative, digitally mediated scholarship. The article is presented as a "bid for community," a call for more fluid, inclusive, and welcoming definitions of genre across both game cultures and scholarly practice. The scope is primarily conceptual and theoretical, drawing on game studies and media theory, with case analysis centered on contemporary digital and tabletop games rather than systematic empirical data.