Games Research in the Libraries’ Collections and Beyond
by Patrick Williams, Humanities Librarian, Lead Librarian for Digital & Open Scholarship
If you are a member of the Syracuse University community and are interested in games and gaming, you may know about the Libraries’ Game collections, the gaming resources in the Digital Scholarship Space, and the new eSports and Gaming Center in the Schine Student Center. But did you know the Libraries also supports users in researching the history, development, visual design and fan cultures surrounding games? Here are directions for researching games within our Libraries’ collections and beyond.
Historical Access to Gaming Magazines via Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive
We subscribe to ProQuest’s Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive, which provides archival access to periodicals of the stage, screen and music industries, going all the way back to the 19th Century. Our access recently expanded to include a new gaming-related module: Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive 5 Video Gaming. This enables SU users to access the full image and text archives of over 40 titles spanning the 1980s through 2020. Notable titles include:
- Computer & Video Games (1981-2004)
- PC Gamer (1994-2020)
- Edge (1993-2020)
- Nintendo Power (1988 – 2006)
- New Atari User (1989 – 1995)
- Game Buyer (2004 – 2020)
- Retro Gamer (2004 – 2020)
- Ultra Game Players (1996 – 1997)
A full title list and coverage details are available on the ProQuest website.
Secondary sources on Games and Gaming Cultures in our print, ebook and streaming video collections
In Libraries Search, subject terms like GAMES- -- Video & Electronic, Games – Design, Interactive multimedia -- Social aspects and Electronic games industry reveal hundreds of books, ebooks and articles on the topic, including guides and handbooks, biographical and historical material, and scholarship on gaming and gaming culture topics. Here are ten recent titles to explore:
- Bycer, J. (2025). Game design deep dive : real-time strategy (First edition.). CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group.
- King, S. (2023). Digital Character Creation for Video Games and Collectibles(1st edition., Vol. 1). CRC Press.
- Mitchell, A., & Van Vught, J. (2024). Videogame Formalism: On Form, Aesthetic Experience and Methodology (1st ed., Vol. 10). Amsterdam University Press.
- Bridgett, R. (2023). Working with Sound: The Future of Audio Work in Interactive Entertainment (1st edition., Vol. 1). Taylor & Francis.
- Perron, B., Boudreau, K., Wolf, M. J. P., Arsenault, D., & Wolf, M. J. P. (2022). Fifty Key Video Games (1st ed., Vol. 1). Routledge.
- Ellis, K., Leaver, T., & Kent, M. (2023). Gaming Disability: Disability Perspectives on Contemporary Video Games (1st ed., Vol. 1). Routledge.
- Bosman, F. G., & Wieringen, A. L. H. M. van Archibald L. H. M. (2023). Video games as art : a communication-oriented perspective on the relationship between gaming and the art. Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
- Kocurek, C. A. (2017). Brenda Laurel : pioneering games for girls (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.
- Johnson, M. R. (2018). The unpredictability of gameplay. Bloomsbury Academic.
- Cole, A. M., & Zammit, J. (2020). Cooperative gaming : diversity in the games industry and how to cultivate inclusion (1st.). CRC Press.
Our streaming video resources like Kanopy, Academic Video Online and Swank Digital Campus house an impressive collection of gaming films, documentaries and educational videos. For example, Kanopy has its own “video games” tag to help you locate games related titles, and Academic Video Online includes instructional content on development tools like Unreal Engine and Blender, digital storytelling and other game-related activities.
Here are some recommended games-related titles on those platforms:
- The Video Game Crash (2021)
- Not For Resale: A Video Game Store Documentary (2020)
- Geek Girls: The Hidden Half of Fan Culture (2017)
- The Lost Arcade: The History of a Pop Culture Phenomenon (2015)
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
- Tron Legacy (2010)
- The King of Kong (2007)
- Existenz (1999)
- WarGames (1983)
- Tron (1982)
Online Gaming Research Resources on the open web
Of course, there are lots of games resources available on the open web, and two in particular that compliment what is described here are the Video Game History Foundation’s brand new Digital Archive, and the Internet Archive’s deep gaming resources.
The Digital Archive at VGHF Library opened in January 2025 as a digital representation and access point for some of the organization’s incredible archival collections. Users can view materials from several collections currently, and this archive is intended to grow as new digitization projects are completed at the VGHF. Current accessible collections include their Magazine Library (33 titles not held in EIMA), the Electronic Entertainment Expo directories (1995-2006) and FromSoftware promotional materials collection, among others.
The Internet Archive has a number of gaming related software and document collections, including the Internet Arcade, where playable emulations of hundreds of video games produced from the 70s to the 90s can be found. Additionally, the Internet Archive contains essential archives of MS-DOS games, Classic PC Games, Miscellaneous Console Games and Flash Games. You can also locate more gaming magazines, books and other media, as well as interviews, podcasts and gameplay videos on the Archive.
To provide feedback or suggest a title to add to the collection, please complete the Resource Feedback Form.