2025

Play Story Press is excited to release Roll with Advantage: Creative, Collaborative, and Critical Responses to Dungeons & Dragons, edited by Edmond Chang and Suzanne Richardson Roll with Advantage: Creative, Collaborative, and Critical Responses to Dungeons & Dragons is an interdisciplinary, multi-genre, mixed-form anthology featuring poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, personal essays, interviews, and analytical scholarship about and inspired by D&D—the game, the legends, the media, and the people. The book is a playful, imaginative, and critical response to D&D’s pop cultural renaissance, particularly during and after the global pandemic, with its appearances on television shows like Stranger Things, Community, and...

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Play Story Press is excited to release The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: The Elder Scrolls, edited by Amelia Herbst, PhD. Hail and well met! Do you have what it takes to be the Dragonborn? The Elder Scrolls is an award-winning high fantasy video game series that has allowed players to explore the dynamic continent of Tamriel for over 30 years. Players are thrust into the role of the hero while having the agency to forge their destiny- whether it is fighting dragons, exploring lost civilizations, or joining nefarious factions. The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: The Elder Scrolls dives into the...

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Play Story Press is excited to release The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: The Last of Us, edited by Adrienne Domasin, PhD. The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: The Last of Us explores the psychological themes at the heart of The Last of Us franchise. Authors from media, culture, and fandom studies explore how trauma, grief, morality, survival, and revenge shape the story’s characters and influence their choices. This book examines these themes across both video games (The Last of Us and The Last of Us 2) and HBO television adaptation, focusing on their unique approaches to telling the same emotionally resonant...

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BIPOC Game Studies and Play Story Press are excited to release Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Game Studies Conference, edited by Lindsay Grace, Stephen Jacobs, Akil Fletcher, and Krystal Cooper. The inaugural Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Game Studies Conference was held from September 12–14, 2025, at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. The event brought together scholars, designers, and industry leaders to share research, showcase games, and discuss the future of game studies through the lens of BIPOC experiences. Each day featured keynote talks from influential figures such as Stanley Pierre-Louis,...

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Play Story Press is excited to release The Cultural Gutter, by Carol Borden, Ian Driscoll, Jim Munroe, James Schellenberg, Chris Szego. Science fiction, fantasy, comics, romance, genre movies, games all drain into the Cultural Gutter, a website dedicated to thoughtful articles about disreputable art—media and genres that are a little embarrassing. Irredeemable. Worthy of Note, but rolling like errant pennies back into the gutter. The Cultural Gutter is dangerous because we have a philosophy. We try to balance enthusiasm with clear-eyed, honest engagement with the material and with our readers. This book expands on our mission with 10 articles each...

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Play Story Press is excited to release Gathering of Gamers, by Matt Shoemaker. Gen Con is the largest and oldest continuously running convention that is focused on analog games. It has been an important fixture in the development of modern tabletop games not just for role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, but also boardgames, collectible card games, miniature games, live action role-playing games, and others. Each year over 70,000 people make a pilgrimage to Indianapolis, Indiana to celebrate and play these games. Gathering of Gamers explores the convention through a year-by-year history from 1967 through 2022. The book not only...

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Play Story Press is excited to release Teacher Pioneers, edited by Caro Williams-Pierce. Teachers work with students, parents, administrators, coaches, camp counselors, education researchers, postsecondary institutions, teachers of other grades and other subjects—in short, teachers accomplish their daily miracles through collaboration by asking questions about what they don’t know and sharing what they do. This book was written by teacher pioneers to share their collaborating, their designing, and their exploring. Teacher Pioneers: Visions from the Edge of the Map

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World of Warcraft released in 2004 and quickly became both a genre and era defining game. It played a pivotal role in mainstreaming PC gaming and brought massively multiplayer online games to the masses. Though WoW reached its player peak in 2010 with an estimated 12 million subscribers, it still remains an active and resonant game for players old and new alike. WoW’s influence can still be felt across gaming to this day as countless players, streamers, and developers grew up in WoW’s online world, complete with its own distinct cultures, communities, and families. Twenty-one years after its release, WoW...

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Play Story Press is excited to release The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: Warhammer, edited by Ioannis Costas Batlle, PhD. Warhammer may be seen as a niche hobby, yet it captivates millions of fans globally. What makes it so emotionally powerful? The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: Warhammer journeys through the vast and epic Warhammer universe to reveal why there’s more to it than meets the eye. Blending insights from psychology, sociology and game studies, this book delves into tabletop gaming, miniature collecting, rich lore, and vibrant communities. Written for curious newcomers and seasoned veterans alike, gamers, painters, and lore-buffs can savour...

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Play Story Press is excited to release the Learning, Education & Games, Volumes 1-4, which were written and edited by members of the Learning, Education, and Games (LEG) special interest group of the IGDA (International Game Developers Association). The books provide research-driven best practices for using and designing games for learning; covering curricular and design, bringing games into educational contexts, and recommendations for specific games. Learning, Education & Games

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