Here is a link to the write-up for the last Keywords for Video Game Studies session on “FANTASY” (which was co-presented by the Medieval Studies Graduate Interest Group):
Sharing Fantasies: Keywords Follow-Up
by Edmond Y. Chang and Sarah Kate Moore
Many thanks to everyone that attended last week’s Keywords session on “fantasy” and games. Special thanks to the Medieval Studies Graduate Interest Group (MSGIG) for co-presenting and co-sponsoring!
The afternoon’s discussion opened with a set of provocations from the suggested readings starting with Gary Alan Fine’s “Introduction” to Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. We raised initial questions about what is “fantasy,” what is the value of fantasy, and why the preoccupation and perpetuation of certain kinds of fantasy, reaching back toward the first games including text adventures like Adventure and Zork and analog games like Dungeons and Dragons and military simulation board games. The conversation then explored the further antecedents of these games locating them in a genealogy that includes J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novels, fairy tales, fables, and mythology, and the (a)historical desire for the “medieval.”
Full text here: https://depts.washington.edu/critgame/wordpress/2013/02/fantasy-keywords-follow-up/