Embedded Files
Counterplay & Cultural Games Studies
Research Cluster at UC Davis
2025 Digital Humanities Institute Working Group
What is Critical Hit?
Critical Hit: Counterplay & Cultural Games Studies at UC Davis promotes scholarship considering the role and influence of video games and other games media in social, political, racial, and other intersectional contexts. This research cluster intervenes in the gap between the public impact of games on global culture and the rising field of academic game studies. Participants develop new research on video games and games media, forge interdisciplinary connections among faculty and students, and host working and collaborative events to foster a diverse community of scholars of all levels across UC Davis.
Critical Hit is a committed group of faculty and graduate students who work with a large population of engaged undergraduate students. Game studies is a rapidly growing field, and video games are one of the most important, wide-reaching, and impactful artistic media of the twenty-first century—yet access to research materials and avenues for generative academic collaboration remain available only in exclusive pockets. This research cluster aims to position UC Davis at the forefront of game studies as a source for new research, new models of scholarly community, and new connections between our campus, scholars in the field, and institutions around the world.
What Do We Do?
We host a lot of events at UC Davis about games. We believe that the best way to think about games is to talk about games, and the best way to talk about games is while you’re playing games.
So we host events for talking about and playing games!
Ongoing Events
Ongoing Events
Research Workshops
Research Workshops
every other week since Fall 2023
ongoing series of structured discussions where we present ongoing research, hold game studies reading group discussions, workshop papers & presentations, and brainstorm critical approaches to new games topics
Discord Critical Play Days
Discord Critical Play Days
every other week since Fall 2023
less structured conversations following a loose theme (simulator games, games where you can pause time, the mid-2000s indie/flash game revolution, etc.) with critical plays streamed live by participants
The Backlog
The Backlog
quarterly since Winter 2024
full-day critical play deep-dive sessions into a single game for hands-on experience playing and thinking about major works; Backlog events emphasize thinking about games in their historical, social, and artistic context and playing games on original hardware
Winter 2024: Adventure & RPGs with Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), AI Dungeon (2019), Final Fantasy VII (1997) & Final Fantasy VII: Remake (2020)
Spring 2024: Sega Special with Sonic Adventure (1998), Space Channel 5 (1999), & Space Channel 5 VR (2020)
Special Events
Special Events
Game Night at the MU!
Game Night at the MU!
October 24, 2023
co-hosted with the Graduate Students of Color+ (GSoC+)
a community event fostering academic connections between scholars across disciplinary boundaries that uses games as a bridge for support between scholars of all backgrounds and experiences
Year-End Symposium!
Year-End Symposium!
April 26, 2024
Special presentations, research reviews, games community events, a keynote speaker, and more!
See more on our Events page.
Who’s Are We?
We are a collection of students and faculty, community memers and scholars, and people of all stripes united by our shared interest in playing and talking about games.
We were founded by a group of graduate students at UC Davis interested in fostering community between people interested in games. We want to break down the barriers that keep people in silos—we’re people making space for everyone to play games and think about games in ways that are new and interesting for all of us.
No expertise required—we do things with games together!
Report abuse