OOIR: Observatory of International Research

Papers

(The TQCC of Games and Culture is 5. 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 2022-01-01 to 2026-01-01.)

Article	Citations
Mask of the Translator: Walter Benjamin and Metal Gear Solid’s Difficult Relationship with Localization	101
Erratum	35
Social Realism in Red Orchestra 2 (2011)	30
Horror Video Games and the “Active-Passive” Debate	23
Uses and Gratifications of Biophilic Simulation Games	21
Identifying Playfulness: An Empirical Study on How Adults Recognize and Define Playfulness Across Culture	21
Livestreaming History: The Streamer-Historian and Historical Games Outreach	21
Virtual Allies: Why Allyship is Critical to Diversification of Virtual Reality Gaming?	20
High Fantasy RPGs and the Materiality of the Medieval Book	18
Survey on Localization From the Development Perspective	17
Machina ex Dea, Dea ex Machina: Gaia/GAIA/All-Mother and Lugones’ “World”—Traveling in Horizon Zero Dawn (2017)	16
“Fear the Old Blood”: The Gothicism of Bloodborne	15
“A Definition of Enchantment”: A New Approach to the Analysis of Magic Systems in Fantasy Games	15
Esports Cannot Defeat Homophobia With Capitalism	15
Identification of Memorable Game Experiences: Analysis of Escape Rooms Visitors’ Experiences	14
Problematic Gaming at a Crossroad: Exploring the Interplay Between Internet Gaming Disorder, Toxic Attitudes, and Empathy in Digital Entertainment	14
The Rise of Gaming Nations	13
The MTGO Virtual Economy: A Case Study on a “Play-to-Earn” Game That has Existed Since Before Cryptocurrency Was Even Invented	13
Emotions in Game Data Work	12
“As if Possessed by a Demon”: Subjectivity, Possession, and Undeadness in Metal Gear Solid	11
Czech Appeal: Why and How National Game Productions Use Local Themes and Settings	11
“What are you Bringing to the Table?”: The Something Awful Let’s Play Community as a Serious Leisure Subculture	11
Geopolitical Implications of E-Sports	11
“We're All Mad Here!”: Becoming God in Bloodborne	11
To the Center of Nowhere: Deep Mapping Digital Games’ Paratextual Geographies	11

Players Just Want to Have Fun? An Exploratory Survey on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Game Motives	11
Esports as a Cultural Microcosm for Studying Psycholinguistics	11
Hey, You ! The Importance of Pragmatics in Localizations of Mass Effect in French and Spanish	11
“The Sense of Wonder”: Gaming Capital and Nostalgia for Inexperience in Magic: The Gathering	10
Designing the Future? The Metaverse, NFTs, & the Future as Defined by Unity Users	10
A Typology of Metagamers: Identifying Player Types Based on Beyond the Game Activities	10
“A Crown is Warranted With Strength”: Bosses, Fantasy, and Democracy in Elden Ring	10
Gameplay Bricks Model, a Theoretical Framework to Match Game Mechanics and Cognitive Functions	10
Perceived Foolishness: How Does the Saltybet Community Construct AI vs AI Spectatorship?	10
Fantasies of Adequacy: Mythologies of Capital in Dark Souls	9
“I think I Get Why y’all do this Now”: Reckoning With Elden Ring 's Difficulty in an Online Affinity Space	9
Virtual Heterotopias and the Contested Histories of Kowloon Walled City	8
Understanding How Marginal National Video Game Industries Differ	8
Play and Misinformation: How America's Conspiracy Culture Became Gamified	8
Streamers as Arts Educators: Exploring Their Streaming Approaches as Pedagogical Practices	8
Metamodern Nature of Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding Synopsis and Gameplay	7
Algorithmic Uncertainties in Video Game Forests	7
Serious Games and Game Performance Before and During the Israel-Hamas War: The Case of Fact Finders and PeaceMaker	7
The Ones Who Walk Away from Hallownest: Hollow Knight's Radical Response to the Omelas Dilemma	7
Finish—Spare the Shame: Realism of Hellish Quart and Alt-Sarmatian Ideology	7
I Play, Therefore I Think: Procedural Philosophy in Remedy Entertainment's Alan Wake 2 (2023)	7
FORGE: A Framework for Organizing Rewards in Gamified Environments	7
Beyond the Game Itself: Understanding Authorial Intent, Player Agency, and Materiality as Degrees of Paratextuality	7
The Stupid, the Ridiculous, the Camp: How Goat Simulator's “Messy” Design Facilitates Queer Play	7
Corrigendum to “It's Not a Game! Rules of Notice and Hermeneutics of Suspicion in Contemporary FMV Games”	6
Taxonomy of Studies on the Use of Video Games in Entrepreneurship Education: A Systematic Literature Review with a Textometric Analysis	6
The Problem of Memory in the Assassin's Creed Series (2007–2020)	6
MeetDurian: Can Location-Based Games be Used to Improve COVID-19 Hygiene Habits?	6
The Business of Play: Financialization and Optimization in World of Warcraft	6
The ‘First Person Shooter’ Perspective: A Different View on First Person Shooters, Gamification, and First Person Terrorist Propaganda	6
Analog Simulation and the Indian Wars: Encountering the Other Through Board Wargames	6
Beyond Game Blocks: Adolescent Girl Players' Perspectives During COVID-19	5
How Does Exposure to General and Sexual Harassment Relate to Female Gamers’ Coping Strategies and Mental Health?	5
Critical Nostalgia and the Utopian Impulse in UFO 50	5
Peace in the Valley: A Media and Discourse Analysis of Eric Barone's Stardew Valley Through Utopian Theory	5
Exoplanetary Exploration and the End of the World in 22 Minutes: Philosofiction in Outer Wilds	5
“Go. Just take him.”: PTSD and the Player-Character Relationship in The Last of Us Part II	5
Reshaping the Battlefield: The International Committee of the Red Cross, Video Games, and Public Relations	5
‘You Game Like a Girl’: Perceptions of Gender and Competence in Gaming	5
A Conservative Metric of Power Creep	5
Introduction: Reconsidering Paratext as a Received Concept	5
The Table and the Tomb: Positioning Trans Power and Play Amid Fantasy Realism in Dungeons & Dragons	5
Failing to See a Difference: Closing a Gender Gap in a Challenging Video Game	5
“A Legend From Before You Were Born”: Final Fantasy VII, Folklore, and Popular Culture	5
The Moral Service of Trans NPCs: Examining the Roles of Transgender Non-Player Characters in Role-Playing Video Games	5
Character-Driven Storytelling Design for Digital Games: A Scoping Review	5