*Not in charge of directed research due to sabbatical leave from March 2026 to March 2027.
*Application for April 2026 entry is closed.
- Title：Associate Professor
- Degree：Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies (University of California, Los Angeles)
- Directed Research：Game and New Media
- Research Field：Media Industry Studies
Biography
My research concentrates on the history and culture of new media forms and industries, with a focus on Japan. My main current research interest is in video game studies. My book, Hideo Kojima: Progressive Design from Metal Gear to Death Stranding (Bloomsbury 2023) examines the design processes, technological affordances, and socio-industrial context behind the games of director/designer Hideo Kojima and his teams at Konami and beyond. I have written several articles on development and licensing in the mobile games industry as well, where I worked as a game planner.
My work also explores the cultural dynamics and transmedial flows of media franchises and media mix ecosystems. My anthology, The Franchise Era: Managing Media in the Digital Economy (co-edited with James Fleury and Steve Mamber, Edinburgh University Press 2019), analyzes the production, management, marketing, and distribution of tentpole films, television platforms, animation series, and video games to argue that franchises have become the dominant global media-making mode in the 21st century.
Finally, I am especially interested in the production cultures of the anime and manga industries, having written about these networks and ecologies as a reporter and participant observer. Connected to this, I am currently the guest editor for a special issue on media industries and platforms for Mechademia, the pre-eminent journal anthology for analysis of the popular culture of Japan and broader East Asia (University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming fall 2024).
Major Works / Publications Awards
Details of a Researcher – HARTZHEIM, Bryan Hikari (waseda.jp)
Directed Research
This seminar will engage with new media forms and cultures broadly, though students who have a strong interest in digital games, media industries, or the popular culture of Japan are particularly encouraged to apply. Game studies, specifically, is a sort of composite discipline, combining interpretive text-based analytical approaches that emerge from literature, film, and television studies with more empirical approaches to studying the sociological or psychological effects of play. This seminar will attempt something similar – though with a heavier focus on qualitative analysis – combining ethnographic and cultural-economic approaches with traditional formal and historical textual analysis in order to map and make sense of media as culturally and institutionally produced forms. To do so, we will use theories and methods drawn from both cultural studies and political economy that examine media as complex multiplatform texts, labor arrangements, and/or holistic systems of control. Potential research topics could include archival histories of animation studios or computational platforms, ethnographic studies of game development or player cultures, discourses of marginalized communities in reaction to changes in media policies or regulation, or the infrastructural and environmental impact of changing distribution technologies in different global regions.
