Editor's Introduction: It Isn't Difficult to Find Feminist Game Studies, but Can We Find a Feminist Game History?

In 2012 Nina Huntemann wrote, “It isn't difficult to find feminist game studies, or feminist gamers.”¹ This is no less true eight years later. It isn't difficult to find feminist game studies. Academics—like me and the contributors to this special issue—produce articles, monographs, special issues, and edited collections with steady regularity, and the broader community of game critics digs in with video essays, podcasts, and op-eds. Those working in industry participate in this discourse as well, as evidenced for instance by panels and events at the Game Developers Conference. Feminist thinkers have been tackling the tangled knot of games culture for at least twenty years. The now-classic From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games (1998) launched multiple follow-up anthologies.² Game developers like Brenda Laurel, Sheri Graner Ray, and Megan Gaiser helped spearhead a movement to take girls seriously as players in the mid-1990s and have continued...