Contribution to Anthology on Game History/Histories

Published on December 1, 2025 by Nils Bühler, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

The conference proceedings Spielgeschichte(n): Games und Game Studies in medienkulturgeschichtlicher Perspektive (Game History/Histories: Games and Game Studies in Media Cultural Historical Perspective) have just been published by transcript. In my contribution, I discuss the founding myth of Game Studies, according to which research and society did not seriously and impartially engage with digital games before 2001 (the self-proclaimed founding year of Game Studies). I discuss the function this myth had and in part still has for Game Studies, and demonstrate the extent to which it is indeed a myth.