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Thomas H. Apperley. Genre and Game Studies: Toward a Critical Approach to Video Game Genres. Simulation & Gaming, March 2006; vol. 37, 1: pp. 6–23.

This article examines the notion of genre in video games. The main argument is that the market-based categories of genre that have been developed in the context of video games obscure the new medium's crucial defining feature, by dividing them into categories loosely organized by their similarities to prior forms of mediation. The article explores the inherent tension between the conception of video games as a unified new media form, and the current fragmented genre-based approach that explicitly or implicitly concatenates video games with prior media forms. This tension reflects the current debate, within the fledgling discipline of Game Studies, between those who advocate narrative as the primary tool for understanding video games, “narratologists,” and those that oppose this notion, “ludologists.” In reference to this tension, the article argues that video game genres be examined in order to assess what kind of assumptions stem from the uncritical acceptance of genre as a descriptive category. Through a critical examination of the key game genres, this article demonstrates how the clearly defined genre boundaries collapse to reveal structural similarities between the genres that exist within the current genre system, defined within the context of visual aesthetic or narrative structure.

Holly Kruse. Betting on News Corporation: Interactive Media, Gambling, and Global Information Flows. Television & New Media, March 2009; vol. 10, 2: pp. 179–194.

The desire by media companies in the United States to promote interactive television technologies despite the lack of success of previous interactive TV trials persists in the early twenty-first century. Multinational conglomerates are exploiting services like horse race wagering as a profitable platform for enticing users to sign up for interactive TV. News Corporation, for instance, offers interactive wagering services via the Television Games Network (TVG) in the United States, as well as services on its Sky Network in Australia, and BSkyB in the United Kingdom, thus allowing wagering on races held across the world. The use of interactive wagering technology to create global information flows has proven highly successful for News Corp. Its role as part of conglomerates' global strategies to create and control interactive media users deserves serious attention and is examined in this article.