First Person Scholar, the middle-state publication supported and published by the Games Institute, is taking an indefinite hiatus due to a lack of resources. This includes funding cuts to the GI, but also a lack of game studies graduate students with enough funding to allow them time to work on FPS. FPS will remain available as an archive for everyone to access and use.
In the meantime, we encourage you to read the last FPS issue “2025: The Close Readings Issue.”
The essays in this issue have one thing in common. They are all fantastic close readings of specific games. Each author uses their respective case study to reveal the ways that videogames intentionally and unintentionally convey values about their worlds and our own. From triple-A titles whose unquestioned mechanical conventions spoil their loftier and critical thematic aims, to smaller games that unsettle the player through purposeful subversions of interactivity—these essays are testaments to our constantly developing game literacy as academics and players.
Check out the following 5 issues on the FPS website!
A Game within Another Game: the Ethos of Pokemon: Let’s Go by Simon Dor
Interpretation as Interaction and the Horror of Limited Agency in Until Dawn by Julie Veitch
Art for the Periphery of Consciousness: Oikospiel Book 1 by Gurn Group