Reflections on Video Games and Game History: An Interview with Jesper Juul

This interview with game theorist Jesper Juul traces his intellectual path from literary studies into the academic study of video games, and it reflects on the major themes of his influential books. Juul describes his self-identification as a "ludologist," a term he embraced to insist that games deserve serious critical attention as cultural forms whose rules are themselves expressive and meaningful. He explains that his work is shaped by an interest in how games combine rule systems with fictional worlds, a tension he captures in the concept that video games are "half real." He also discusses the field's interdisciplinary character, which has grown to incorporate sociology, economics, production studies, and attention to online culture and local game histories.

The conversation covers several of Juul's major arguments. He characterizes the 2000s as a "casual revolution," in which game design shifted toward short, interruptible play that suited a broader audience, a trend that accelerated as mobile phones became the dominant gaming platform. He frames failure as the distinctive subject of games, noting that the personal stakes of losing depend on the consequences attached and the social meanings a player assigns. In his study of independent games, he distinguishes financial, aesthetic, and cultural forms of independence and links the movement's appeal to a nostalgic, antimodern desire for authenticity.

Juul's historical work centers on the Commodore 64, which he argues has been unjustly sidelined in standard accounts dominated by North American console history. He presents its five lives, from serious office machine to game platform to underground subculture to enduring retro artifact, as evidence that a device's meaning is continually reshaped by its users.