Rule-based worlds that only fully exist when someone plays them.
Ways in
Ludology, player experiments, platform analysis, ethnography.
The longer story
Video games are systems you interact with—rule-bound spaces producing challenge and meaning through play. Ludology studies games as games (mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics). Narratology examines storytelling. Player research (ethnographic, experimental) asks what people actually do and experience. Game design research studies how games get made. Platform studies examines how hardware and software shape possibility. It's a $180 billion industry, and we're still figuring out how to study it.