OOIR: Observatory of International Research

Papers

(The TQCC of Games and Culture is 3. The table below lists those papers that are above that threshold based on CrossRef citation counts [max. 250 papers]. The publications cover those that have been published in the past four years, i.e., from 2021-07-01 to 2025-07-01.)

Article	Citations
Social Realism in Red Orchestra 2 (2011)	56
Uses and Gratifications of Biophilic Simulation Games	30
Horror Video Games and the “Active-Passive” Debate	25
Machina ex Dea, Dea ex Machina: Gaia/GAIA/All-Mother and Lugones’ “World”—Traveling in Horizon Zero Dawn (2017)	25
The Practice of Oldhammer: Re-Membering a Past Through Craft and Play	19
Survey on Localization From the Development Perspective	17
Erratum	17
“A Definition of Enchantment”: A New Approach to the Analysis of Magic Systems in Fantasy Games	15
Mask of the Translator: Walter Benjamin and Metal Gear Solid’s Difficult Relationship with Localization	15
“Fear the Old Blood”: The Gothicism of Bloodborne	14
Virtual Allies: Why Allyship is Critical to Diversification of Virtual Reality Gaming?	14
High Fantasy RPGs and the Materiality of the Medieval Book	14
Livestreaming History: The Streamer-Historian and Historical Games Outreach	14
Esports Cannot Defeat Homophobia With Capitalism	13
Identifying Playfulness: An Empirical Study on How Adults Recognize and Define Playfulness Across Culture	13
Exploring Player Understandings of Historical Accuracy and Historical Authenticity in Video Games	13
Problematic Gaming at a Crossroad: Exploring the Interplay Between Internet Gaming Disorder, Toxic Attitudes, and Empathy in Digital Entertainment	11
Identification of Memorable Game Experiences: Analysis of Escape Rooms Visitors’ Experiences	11
Hey, You! The Importance of Pragmatics in Localizations of Mass Effect in French and Spanish	11
The MTGO Virtual Economy: A Case Study on a “Play-to-Earn” Game That has Existed Since Before Cryptocurrency Was Even Invented	10
To the Center of Nowhere: Deep Mapping Digital Games’ Paratextual Geographies	10
“What are you Bringing to the Table?”: The Something Awful Let’s Play Community as a Serious Leisure Subculture	10
Esports as a Cultural Microcosm for Studying Psycholinguistics	10
“As if Possessed by a Demon”: Subjectivity, Possession, and Undeadness in Metal Gear Solid	10
The Rise of Gaming Nations	10

Czech Appeal: Why and How National Game Productions Use Local Themes and Settings	9
Players Just Want to Have Fun? An Exploratory Survey on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Game Motives	9
“We're All Mad Here!”: Becoming God in Bloodborne	9
Emotions in Game Data Work	9
Perceived Foolishness: How Does the Saltybet Community Construct AI vs AI Spectatorship?	8
Gameplay Bricks Model, a Theoretical Framework to Match Game Mechanics and Cognitive Functions	8
Designing the Future? The Metaverse, NFTs, & the Future as Defined by Unity Users	8
A Typology of Metagamers: Identifying Player Types Based on Beyond the Game Activities	8
“The Sense of Wonder”: Gaming Capital and Nostalgia for Inexperience in Magic: The Gathering	8
“A Crown is Warranted With Strength”: Bosses, Fantasy, and Democracy in Elden Ring	8
I Play, Therefore I Think: Procedural Philosophy in Remedy Entertainment's Alan Wake 2 (2023)	8
Returning to Azeroth: Nostalgia, Sense of Place, and Social Presence in World of Warcraft Classic	8
Play and Misinformation: How America's Conspiracy Culture Became Gamified	7
Understanding How Marginal National Video Game Industries Differ	7
Streamers as Arts Educators: Exploring Their Streaming Approaches as Pedagogical Practices	7
Virtual Heterotopias and the Contested Histories of Kowloon Walled City	7
The Stupid, the Ridiculous, the Camp: How Goat Simulator's “Messy” Design Facilitates Queer Play	7
Beyond the Game Itself: Understanding Authorial Intent, Player Agency, and Materiality as Degrees of Paratextuality	7
Fantasies of Adequacy: Mythologies of Capital in Dark Souls	6
Serious Games and Game Performance Before and During the Israel-Hamas War: The Case of Fact Finders and PeaceMaker	6
The Problem of Memory in the Assassin's Creed Series (2007–2020)	6
“I think I Get Why y’all do this Now”: Reckoning With Elden Ring 's Difficulty in an Online Affinity Space	6
FORGE: A Framework for Organizing Rewards in Gamified Environments	6
Finish—Spare the Shame: Realism of Hellish Quart and Alt-Sarmatian Ideology	6
Metamodern Nature of Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding Synopsis and Gameplay	5
A Conservative Metric of Power Creep	5
MeetDurian: Can Location-Based Games be Used to Improve COVID-19 Hygiene Habits?	5
Corrigendum to “It's Not a Game! Rules of Notice and Hermeneutics of Suspicion in Contemporary FMV Games”	5
The Ones Who Walk Away from Hallownest: Hollow Knight's Radical Response to the Omelas Dilemma	5
Exoplanetary Exploration and the End of the World in 22 Minutes: Philosofiction in Outer Wilds	5
Peace in the Valley: A Media and Discourse Analysis of Eric Barone's Stardew Valley Through Utopian Theory	5
Analog Simulation and the Indian Wars: Encountering the Other Through Board Wargames	5
Taxonomy of Studies on the Use of Video Games in Entrepreneurship Education: A Systematic Literature Review with a Textometric Analysis	5
The ‘First Person Shooter’ Perspective: A Different View on First Person Shooters, Gamification, and First Person Terrorist Propaganda	5
Response: In and Out of the Game, as Usual	4
Beyond Game Blocks: Adolescent Girl Players' Perspectives During COVID-19	4
Introduction: Reconsidering Paratext as a Received Concept	4
The Business of Play: Financialization and Optimization in World of Warcraft	4
Critical Nostalgia and the Utopian Impulse in UFO 50	4
The Table and the Tomb: Positioning Trans Power and Play Amid Fantasy Realism in Dungeons & Dragons	4
Failing to See a Difference: Closing a Gender Gap in a Challenging Video Game	4
“Go. Just take him.”: PTSD and the Player-Character Relationship in The Last of Us Part II	4
“A Legend From Before You Were Born”: Final Fantasy VII, Folklore, and Popular Culture	4
The Moral Service of Trans NPCs: Examining the Roles of Transgender Non-Player Characters in Role-Playing Video Games	4
‘You Game Like a Girl’: Perceptions of Gender and Competence in Gaming	3
The Beautiful Rule: Thinking the Aesthetics of Game Rules	3
Gaming Capital on Overwatch's Official Forums	3
Blockchain Potentials for the Game Industry: A Review	3
Mutants and Zombies Everywhere! Or Villains, Violence, and Selfishness: Questions of Humanity in the Post-apocalyptic (Pandemic) Video Game	3
Experience in Videogame Display: An Extension of the Matrix Model	3

How Does Exposure to General and Sexual Harassment Relate to Female Gamers’ Coping Strategies and Mental Health?	3
The Ground Floor Approach to Video Game Accessibility: Identifying Design Features Prioritized by Accessibility Reviews	3
The Data-Driven Myth and the Deceptive Futurity of “the World’s Fastest Growing Games Region”: Selling the Southeast Asian Games Market via Game Analytics	3
Thought Experiments in Video Games: Exploring the (Un)Ethics of Motherhood in Frictional Games’ Amnesia: Rebirth	3
The Game-Like Experience of Virtual Reality Art: Sensational Players and Critical Audiences	3
Gaming I, II, and III: Arcades, Video Game Systems, and Modern Game Streaming Services	3
Translation Solutions in Professional Video Game Localization in Iran	3
Playing with Character: A Framework of Characterization in Video Games	3
“You’ve Been Living Here For as Long as You Can Remember”: Trauma in OMORI's Environmental Design	3
Among the Casters: A Qualitative Study of Work and Play in Nottingham's Lead Belt	3
Reshaping the Battlefield: The International Committee of the Red Cross, Video Games, and Public Relations	3
The Doors of Perception: Horror Video Games and the Ideological Implications of Ludic Virtual Reality	3
‘Born of the Blood, Made Men by the Blood, Undone by the Blood’: Bloodborne as a Critical Reflection of Ghosts of the Anthropocene	3
How Accessible is This Video Game? An Analysis Tool in Two Steps	3
Exploring the Etymology of YouXi: A Chinese Perspective on the Concept of Game	3