I recently contributed an article entitled “Theme Parks Go Virtual: An Analysis of Gaming Simulations of Theme Parks” to In Media Res as a part of their dedicated week on scholarship around Theme Parks. You can check out the post here, and the entire week of content here.
This was a super fun article to write, despite not having an extensive background in theory surrounding theme parks. It was fun returning to some of the games mentioned, with an eye towards how they were representing physical theme park space. The word limit on the post was only around 350 words, so there were plenty of more games and depictions that had to be left out. Maybe when I get a chance I’ll turn this small piece into a full length article and include defunct online-games like Virtual Magic Kingdom and more fantastical depictions such as Adventure of Tokyo Disney Sea.
The Sociology of Videogames 