Keywords:
Epistemic Genres, Game Studies, Magic: The Gathering, Friendslop, Genre Theory, Affordance Theory, gamevironments
Abstract
This contribution to the Gamevironments “Beyond Play” special issue places the concept of epistemic genres in dialogue with gamevironments. Responding to Radde-Antweiler’s (2024) call for a critical revision of gamevironments, we argue that genre can be understood as a socially and culturally situated practice that offers a complementary framework for examining the lived contexts of digital game play. Building on Voorhees and Call’s (forthcoming) definition of epistemic genres as constellations of games shaped by players’ historical, cultural, and experiential positioning, we explore how genre operates as a collaborative environment that structures play and circulates within broader gaming cultures. By highlighting how epistemic genres cut across conventional industry and academic categories, we demonstrate how they help to explain the social functions and contextualized uses of games. As an article that was formed through a series of digitally-mediated roundtable discussions, our method parallels our argument by enabling an expansive, collaborative exploration of how epistemic genres can refine and enrich the critical utility of gamevironments within game studies.
Author Biographies
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Alexander Hurezeanu, George Brown College
Dr. Alexander Hurezeanu is a full-time faculty member in the Department of English and Communication at George Brown Polytechnic in Toronto, Ontario (Canada). He teaches a variety of communication and game studies courses and currently serves as the English and Communication Coordinator at George Brown’s School of Design. Alexander’s research examines cultural production and representation in video games. He is particularly interested in how gameplay experiences facilitate new opportunities for transcultural aesthetics and transcultural communication in Eastern and Western cultural contexts.
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Mark Nunes, Appalachian State University
Dr. Mark Nunes teaches courses in media and cultural studies at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, USA, where he is Professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies. He is the author of Cyberspaces of Everyday Life (Minnesota 2006), editor of and contributor to Error: Glitch, Jam, and Noise in New Media Cultures (Bloomsbury 2014), and co-editor of and co-contributor to “You’re Muted”: Performance, Precarity, and the Logic of Zoom (Bloomsbury 2024). He has also written over two dozen chapters and articles on the role and place of networks, platforms, and digital devices in everyday life.
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Pamela Maria Schmidt, University of Toronto
Pamela Maria Schmidt is a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information whose current research explores the use of horror as a communication tool, video games as information systems, and the intersection between wicked problems, history, and monsters. This work builds upon “Horror As Medium: An Examination of Environmental Horror in Video Games,” co-written with S. Heeg as part of the collection Epistemic Genres: New Formations in Digital Game Genres (January 2026). Her previous Master’s research focused on ambient and apocalyptic rhetoric, the use of dread by mass media, and climate change. During this time, she was also a narrative designer, developer, and project manager on the knowledge mobilisation game Illuminate, an educational simulation game that teaches young children the impacts of climate change during her time as the Games Institute’s Interdisciplinary Project and Communications Manager.
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S. Heeg, University of Waterloo
S. Heeg is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Waterloo in the Sustainability Management program. Heeg is an interdisciplinary scholar whose main work revolves around mis- and disinformation in rural farming communities. As a social media specialist who straddles rhetoric, media studies, and narrative interpretation, they have published in media studies, games studies, and in Canadian and global Indigenous literatures, focusing on the decolonisation of genres and the intangibility of cultural heritage. They have co-presented on the topic of deconstructing horror as a genre within video games alongside collaborator Pamela Maria Schmidt at the 2023 and 2025 installments of the International Conference on Games and Narratives and the 2025 Mythological Game Studies conference.
