Slightly self indulgent post, but highlighting this book in particular because I have a new paper/book chapter out in it! It's in
Freedom, Oppression, Games and Play, the anthology for the Future and Reality of Games conference 2022, which has just been published. My paper, From Vardzia to Val Royeaux, looks at using medieval Caucasia as an alternative model society to compare to the societal ideas and models used in popular computer role-playing games, and what we might be able to learn from viewing those presentations of medieval and medieval-fantasy societies from a different default angle.
There's also lots of other good papers in there, Katrina Keefer's work on the slave fort of Bunce Island in a gamified context is really interesting, the 'A Walk in the Park' paper relating game design and landscape gardening is fun, and more seriously Nikita Stukilov's work on Russian totalitarianism and gaming culture and their overlaps I think is really important.
If you're interested in having a read, you can get the whole book free here under creative commons license:
https://doi.org/10.48341/ttmb-rz82And if you do take the time to have a read, please do let me know, I'd be interested in any thoughts any of you folks have
