ABSTRACT
By the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, computer games have long discarded the stigma of media non grata. With games studies established as an academic discipline, ludologists have determined –although not always agreed upon –what exactly computer games are (not), particularly vis-à-vis what were often felt to be somewhat intrusive attempts on the part of literary and media studies to impose definitions and theories indebted to, for instance, narratology and film studies. By the same token, since the years leading up to the boost of the gaming industry and the proliferation of commercially oriented, run-of-the-mill genre blockbusters from the 1990s onward, there has been a steady increase in independent game design and development, which has given rise to a wide range of non-commercial artefacts such as art games, online adaptations and parodies of classic platform games and shoot-emups, educational, political and socio-critical browser games.
