DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist #37
– 3 min read
The Game Studies Watchlist newsletter of games research association DiGRA GSA is published weekly on GamesMarkt, curated by Prof Dr Rudolf Inderst. This time with Rituals of Play, Roblox as an adult and more.
Ahoi there, game studies operators!
Now, I would not go so far as to call this newsletter a "human revolution", but who am I to judge?
Max Derrat on the other hand has quite a story to tell about Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Therefore, this week I recommend his video essay about this cyberpunk action-RPG that blends first-person shooting, stealth, and role-playing systems within a branching narrative about human augmentation, corporate power, and social inequality. Oh, and of course you can also add re-watch of hbomberguy's analysis of the game (2022).
(https://youtu.be/MRuUVLGCza0?si=oDDBoznCS2AZVhQd)
Max Derrat frames Deus Ex: Human Revolution as a revealing case of what might be called the “aesthetics of compromise”. Positioned between the systemic openness of the 2000 original and the commercial imperatives of AAA development in 2011, the game balances accessibility and depth while sacrificing some of the immersive sim’s philosophical and mechanical ambition. Its streamlined mechanics, ammo scarcity, stealth systems, cover shooting, hacking minigames, show how concessions to mainstream design can both broaden appeal and dilute complexity, while its narrative focus on augmentation reduces the conspiratorial breadth that once defined the series.
What emerges is, following Derrat, a media text that succeeds precisely because of its hybridity, and fails for the same reason: at once an impressive work of speculative fiction and a narrowed vision of what Deus Ex could be. For scholars, it exemplifies how games embody industrial tensions, negotiating between niche subcultural ideals and mass-market logics, and in doing so become metacommentaries on the conditions of their own production.
Rituals of Play is the theme for Multiplatform 2025, the annual MGC symposium dedicated to analogue and video game studies, organized by The Manchester Game Center. This year’s event is a collaboration with DVRK - the Dark Arts Research Kollective - at Manchester Metropolitan University. This DVRK edition of Multiplatform explores the intersections between games and occulture, investigating the transformative potential of games as forms of rituals to explore alternative histories and speculate on radical futures. They uploaded a playlist on YouTube with 14 talks of this wonderful gathering.
As an avid reader of the Web Curios newsletter, I would like to take this opportunity to share a suggestion from it: "A REALLY good piece in New York Magazine in which Sam Biddle spends a week hanging out in Roblox as an adult and shares his experiences. I’ve been of the opinion for a few years now that Roblox is going to have a Facebook moment at some point in the not-too-distant future where we collectively realise a) how many people use it; and b) that we don’t really know what they are doing there or what it is doing to them [...]."
I had the great pleasure to talk to Zhenya Luchaninau and Anders Kjellberg about The Great Gambit, a classroom-ready strategy game that challenges students not to “guess the past,” but to live through its dilemmas. Here's our conversation for TITEL kulturmagazin and I also had a exciting chat with Alisha Karabinus, Carly A. Kocurek, Cody Mejeur, Emma Vossen about their game studies anthology Historiographies of Game Studies. What It Has Been, What It Could Be on my podcast Game Studies.
... before I let you go, there’s one last question I can’t help but raise: in what order do you actually read EDGE? Cover to cover, skipping to the reviews first, or dipping in wherever the mood takes you? It feels strangely important to know.
Cheers and stay healthy,
Rudolf
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