This was the paper that started the ongoing growth of academic and business interest in the virtual economics and real-money trading on virtual, game property:
Castronova, Edward (2001) ‘Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier’. CESifo Working Paper No. 618, December 2001. Online: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=294828
This is an interesting study that BBC commissioned from a couple of market research companies (something that you should take into account while looking at its focus and approach), and is packed with interesting glimpses into the role of games in different people’s lives. If only someone would fund academic games research with similar scope!
BBC (2005) ‘Gamers in the UK: Digital Play, Digital Lifestyles’. Commissioned by BBC Creative Research and Development, authored by Rhianna Pratchett. Online: http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/files/bbc_uk_games_research_2005.pdf
An article that is important in discussing the methodological role playing games has or should have for game studies:
Aarseth, Espen (2003) ‘Playing Research: Methodological Approaches to Game Analysis’. Proceedings of DAC 2003. Melbourne: RMIT University. Online: http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Aarseth.pdf
The Escapist has been published since 2005, and has the benefit of being open access, edited games magazine. Note, that this is not an academic journal, but if you are looking for accessible games journalism, and a source of topical information on games cultures, you might be interested to check out The Escapist. See:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/
Eludamos — Journal for Computer Game Culture was established in 2007. It includes introductory articles, academic peer-reviewed game studies articles and reviews of games and books. The journal is interdisciplinary by character. See:
http://eludamos.org
This is an interesting early account of the creation of Spacewar!, one of the earliest digital games:
Brand, Stewart (1972) ‘SPACEWAR: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death among the Computer Bums’. Rolling Stone, 7 December 1972. Online: http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html
This paper presents a ‘semi-structured’ approach into analysing and designing games starting from patterns, basic games’ building blocks:
Björk, Staffan, Sus Lundgren & Jussi Holopainen (2003) ‘Game Design Patterns’. In: Marinka Copier and Joost Raessens (eds), Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings. Utrecht: DiGRA and University of Utrecht. Online:
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05163.15303.pdf
This is the classic paper that is often quoted in studies into online player typologies, online sociology and player psychology:
Bartle, Richard (1996) ‘Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs’. The Journal of Virtual Environments, 1(1). Online:
Mobygames is a website that maintains a database of digital games. The site aims to catalogue all games, and it relies on user contibutions to extend its range. See:
http://www.mobygames.com/
A collaboratively edited encyclopedia, Wikipedia includes several interesting entries that relate to game studies. These include:
Note that the Wikipedia articles might include unverified claims and tilted argumentation, so be cautious, and practice a fair deal of source criticism.
 | Bernie DeKoven on The Well Played Game |
 | imcarelli on Toward a Critical Vocabulary f… |
 | hasserved on What Video Games Have To Teach… |
 | frans on Game Studies Journal |
 | martinpi on Game Studies Journal |
An Introduction to Game Studies 
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