Austin Anderson, PhD

Studying a work of literature is distinct from reading, and literary studies has developed techniques ranging from close reading to historicism to computational analysis in order to study and teach works of literature. Similar techniques are required when studying and teaching video games. As part of the inaugural programming for the Critical Game Studies Lab, this workshop introduces the technique of close playing as a method for analytically playing video games. Originally developed by Ed Chang and Timothy Welsh and subsequently iterated upon by the field of game studies, close playing involves analyzing how the structures of games—visual design, audio cues, mechanics, player interaction, generic conventions, and more—generate meaning within video games. This interactive workshop will focus on gaming pedagogy by looking at three excerpts of games and asking participants to close play them. We will leave the workshop with a better understanding of the study of games and the key techniques required for gaming pedagogy. 

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About the Speaker

Austin Anderson (he/him) is a Provostial Fellow, housed in the English Department, at Stanford University who studies video games, race, and class. His first book project, Racial Recursivity: Play, Race, and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Video Games, creates a ludic-textual framework for reading video games as racial cultural projects. His work has appeared in the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, The Comparatist, Popular Culture Review, and other outlets. He is currently is co-organizing a volume (with David Hall) that explores Japanese videogame perspectives on Western aesthetics. He received his PhD in English from Howard University in 2025.