WIAS Visiting Researcher Seminar Series: KEOGH, Brendan
“Digital Games Production Studies” (10/23, 10/30, 11/6, 11/13)
Seminar Series 1: “An introduction to the field of Game Studies and Western digital games culture”
Abstract
This first seminar will draw from Professor Keogh’s 2026 book Game Studies: A Critical Introduction to the Field (Polity Press) to provide a general overview to the field of scholarship known as ‘game studies’. He will provide an overview of its first 25 years of history since the launch of the journal Game Studies in 2001, detail its key debates, and explain its theoretical and methodological legacy. Professor Keogh will detail game studies’ key discoveries about (Western) digital games culture, and lead a discussion about how Japanese games research and games cultures differ from that described by the Western literature.
Date&Time
October 23, 2026 (Fri.) 13:10 – 14:50
Venue
Room #605, Building #11, Waseda Campus, Waseda University
Seminar Series 2: “The Field of Videogame Production”
Abstract
The second seminar will focus on the subfield of research increasingly known as game production studies. Drawing from Professor Keogh’s 2023 book The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist (MIT Press), this seminar will overview the difficulties of understanding videogame production as occurring within a cultural industry, and the complex interplay of commercial and non-commercial imperatives game developers have to navigate in their work. Professor Keogh’s will situate game production studies within the broader history of game studies (introduced in Seminar 1), and then show how his own theoretical contribution, drawing from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, helps us understand the full complexity of videogame production. Similar to Seminar 1, Professor Keogh will lead a discussion with the audience to consider how Japanese game development might challenge the existing English literature, which focuses overwhelmingly on Western modes of production.
Date&Time
October 30, 2026 (Fri.) 13:10 – 14:50
Venue
Room #605, Building #11, Waseda Campus, Waseda University
Seminar Series 3: “Gamemaking as an Artistic Practice”
Abstract
The third seminar will draw from Professor Keogh’s current research, funded by the Australian Research Council, that is exploring how to think about the everyday practices of videogame developers, and how these practices lead to the development of specific games. In Seminar 2, it will be shown how game production studies has extensively looked at game development from the perspective of labour, but not from the perspective of practice. This seminar will introduce ideas such as craft, aesthetics, and software tools to complicate and develop the ways we think about not just games as products, but gamemaking as itself an artistic practice.
Date&Time
November 6, 2026 (Fri.) 13:10 – 14:50
Venue
Room #4, 4th Floor, Building #11, Waseda Campus, Waseda University
Seminar Series 4: “The Game Industry After the Crisis”
Abstract
The final seminar will draw from Professor Keogh’s current in-progress research which intends to provide a Marxist political economic analysis of the contemporary game industry’s current moment of crisis. In the last few years, tens of thousands of developers have lost their jobs, investment has dried up, and many projects have been cancelled. Why has this happened, and what does it mean for the future of digital games? In this seminar Professor Keogh argue that the current crisis can be understood clearly through the laws and tendencies of capitalism first discovered by Karl Marx in the 19th Century, and speculate what this will mean in the years to come. He will lead a discussion that actively seeks alternative views and disagreements on the game industry crisis and what the future might look like.
Date&Time
November 13, 2026 (Fri.) 13:10 – 14:50
Venue
Room #605, Building #11, Waseda Campus, Waseda University
Speakers
KEOGH, Brendan (Associate Professor, School of Communication, Queensland University of Technology)
Prospected Audience
Students, Graduate students, Faculty members, Research members, General Participants
Language
English
Organizer
Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS)
Coordinator: YOSHIMOTO, Mitsuhiro (Professor, Faculty of International Research and Education)
Registration
Free; pre-registration not required.
