Morgan Romine

Welcome to the recycling bin for my random and sometimes academic curiosities.


I am a techno anthropologist studying culture in online games. I recently retired from my role as the Team Captain of the Frag Dolls (an all-female professional gaming team), and am now daylighting as the eSports Maven for Red 5 Studios. We are making Firefall, the game and fieldsite of my dreams.

Gamers know me as "Rhoulette".



For more about my research, see Games, Virtual Worlds, and CyberSociality, a group in Computer and Information Science, Social Sciences, Design on Mendeley.

Recent Tweets @Rhoulette
Posts I Like

This article just keeps on giving me happy theoretical footholds. Not to mention funny cross-cultural double entendres.

The Cock

I LOVE LATOUR! I’m fond of Graham Harman’s treatment of him, too. Good Sunday reading. I mean, I should be writing, but this is as justifiable a distraction as I can get.

Prince of Networks

Our friends @ExtraCreditz have done another great piece of commentary, this time about a topic I know well: Harassment in Online Games. Thanks for the topic, suggestions, and a mention! I am happy to have contributed.

He’s written fascinating pieces about game studies as informed by aesthetic or comparative literature approaches, including Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. I’ve been particularly enjoying his 2007 Games and Culture article Game Classification and Game Design: Construction Through Critical Analysis, but for an intro to his work, check out www.gamestudies.org

Game studies

TL Taylor’s “Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming” just came out last month!

Raising the Stakes

TL is one of my favorite game studies researchers, and this book couldn’t better represent the overlap of my professional and academic interests. 

and stoked to be revisiting so many awesome Games Studies books. Especially helpful this week: Salen & Zimmerman’s Rules of Play.

Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals

How I often socialize at house parties.

Excellent recap of the growth of eSports in 2011. For those who aren’t familiar with what I am helping to build as Red 5 Studios’ “eSports Maven”, this is my professional world in a nutshell.

… though I’m not sure if Mr. T and the A Team counts as “geek”. Still awesome.