The Game Studies Watchlist newsletter, curated by Prof. Dr Rudolf Inderst, is published weekly on GamesMarkt. This week's topics include the X-Files, a podcast on Artgames after GamerGate and climate-related games.
AHOI there, game studies operators!
No, no, don't worry, your calendars are fine; we're just appearing a day late today. It was exam time at our university until yesterday, so students and lecturers alike were busy. But don't worry – everything has worked out now.
As a sci-fi enthusiast at school with parents who did not oppose this passion in a pseudo-bourgeois manner (but rather secretly encouraged it, and sometimes even celebrated it), it was not particularly difficult for me to discover the television series The X-Files. I regularly watched and enjoyed the eerie cases of the two FBI agents on Pro 7. How convenient then that CMck has taken up the appropriate game in his latest essay.
I wanted to make a video about the X-Files videogame from 1998. It's always been one of those games that I feel means more than it is fun to play, if that makes any sense.
The X-Files game for the PlayStation (1998) is a particularly interesting title for Game Studies since it sits at the intersection of television seriality, transmedia storytelling, and late-1990s game design experimentation. Rather than offering a conventional adaptation, the game positions itself as a canonical extension of the TV series, using full-motion video, original actors, and an episodic investigative structure that mirrors the show’s narrative logic. This raises productive questions about authorship, canonicity, and player agency within licensed games, especially in relation to passive viewing versus active investigation.
At the same time, its reliance on FMV, puzzle-driven progression, and a largely non-combat approach foregrounds issues of technological constraint, affect, and immersion that are central to understanding how games of the era negotiated cinematic aspiration and interactive form.
The ACM journal Games: Research and Practice has become a significant and inclusive venue for game studies, and it is currently seeking a new editor-in-chief. The call for nominations can be located here: https://dl.acm.org/pb-assets/static_journal_pages/games/pdf/ACM-GAMES-EiC-CfN-1768511371200.pdf
How can theories of care help us understand how games address climate change and the future? In an open-access paper in FUTURES, carien moossdorff and Joost Vervoort analyze 287 climate-related games across genres to examine how they engage with future-oriented care. The study identifies a range of approaches—from systemic and narrative designs to worldbuilding—while also highlighting underexplored design spaces, particularly games that teach concrete practices of care or develop their future worlds in greater depth.
I had the great pleasure to talk to Rob Gallagher about his latest book Artgames after GamerGate on my podcast Game Studies. We discuss how artgames respond to the cultural fallout of GamerGate, the politics of play, and what experimental games can tell us about power, authorship, and resistance in contemporary game culture. Enjoy listening!
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Cheers and stay healthy, Rudolf
