Jared Hansen

Jared Hansen

jung woo han
School: School of Communication & Design
Department: Game Design
Position: Lecturer
Location: RMIT Saigon South
Email: jared.hansen@rmit.edu.vn
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0757-814X

Jared Hansen earned his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon and studied the communities of players still playing Star Wars Galaxies nearly 13 years after the servers closed. His research interests are the history of video games and retro development. He is also a solo developer who has made games for retro hardware, as well as designed rules for TTRPGs and miniatures for wargaming. He is currently working on a book about the history of homebrew development during the height of the Nintendo DS.

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  • Ph.D. Media Studies, University of Oregon 
  • MA Mass Communication, Brigham Young University
  • BA Mass Communication, Brigham Young University

  • Video game history 
  • Game cultures 
  • Theory of game design 
  • Game art 
  • Analog game design

  • Video game history 
  • Homebrew games  
  • Gaming nostalgia 
  • MMO communities

Published games

  • Brookwood: Pocket Tactics (2024) https://jaredchansen.itch.io/brookwood-pocket-tactics 
  • Palisade: A Stakes and Devilry Roleplaying Game (2023) https://jaredchansen.itch.io/palisade-a-stakes-and-devilry-roleplaying-game 
  • Ferntree Hollow: A Campaign Setting for Mausritter (2023) https://jaredchansen.itch.io/ferntree-hollow 
  • Hansen, J. (2022) Ghostly Labyrinth 2 [Video game]. Eugene, OR: Werebear Games. Available to play: https://jaredchansen.itch.io/ghostly-labyrinth-2
  • Hansen, J. (2020) Ghostly Labyrinth [Video game]. Eugene, OR: Werebear Games. Available to play: https://jaredchansen.itch.io/ghostly-labyrinth 

Peer reviewed articles

  • Cote, A., Wilson, A., Hansen. J., Harris, B., Rahman, M., Can, O., Fickle, T., and Foxman, M. (2023) Taking Care of Toxicity: Challenges and Strategies for Inclusion in U.S. Collegiate Esports Programs. Journal of Electronic Gaming and Esports. 
  • Cote, A., Can, O., Foxman, M., Harris, B., Hansen, J., Rahman, W. Fickle, T. (2022). The COVID season: U.S. Collegiate Esports Programs’ Material Challenges and Opportunities During the 2020-21 Pandemic. Games and Culture. 
  • Harris, B., Hansen, J., Can, O., Rahmen, W., Foxman, M., Cote, A., Fickle, T. (2022). “Starting from scratch to looking really clean and professional”: How students’ productive labor legitimizes college esports. Critical studies of Media Communication. 
  • Hansen, J. (2021). The Reliquaries of Hyrule: A semiotic and iconographic analysis of sacred architecture within Ocarina of Time. Press Start, 7(1). 
  • Hansen, J. (2020). An Abundance of Fruit Trees: A garbology of the artifacts in Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Loading…,13(22), 23-38. 

Conference presentations 

  • Hansen, J. (2022). Packaging video game nostalgia: How clone consoles sell new experiences for old games. Paper presented at the Data / Media / Digital Graduate Student Symposium. Eugene, OR, USA. 
  • Cote, A., Hansen, J., Harris, B., Rahman, W., Can, O., Fickle, T., Foxman, M. (2021). Taking Care of Toxicity: Challenges and Strategies for Inclusion in Collegiate Esports Programs. Paper presented at the 71st Annual International Communication Association Conference, Virtual, May, 2021. 
  • Harris, B., Hansen, J., Can, O. Rahman, W., Fickle, T., Cote A., Foxman, M. (2021). The legitimizing labor of collegiate esports students: Critical insights for continued institutionalization. Paper presented at the 71st Annual International Communication Association Conference, Virtual, May, 2021. 
  • Hansen, J. (2020, September 11). The crash and burn of Auto Assault: The history of a failed MMORPG and its nostalgic memory. Paper presented at the Workshop on Forgetting and Remembering of the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) conference. Malta. 
  • Hansen, J. (2020, May 2). Video game hardware as embodiment of nostalgia: A subaltern history of clone consoles and their design genealogy. Paper presented at the What is Information? cyber-conference. Eugene, Oregon. 
  • Hansen, J. (2019, August 6). Nostalgic Game Communities: A PhD on Older MMORPGs. Paper presented at the Doctoral Consortium for the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) conference. Kyoto, Japan. 
  • Hansen, J. (2019, May 24). Hacking for Nostalgia. Paper presented at Games + Communication Ante-Conference for the International Communication Association (ICA) conference. Washington DC. 
  • Hansen, J. (2018, November 8). Community driven phantasy: Player motivations for engaging with the abandoned game Phantasy Star Online. Paper presented at the National Communication Association (NCA) conference. Salt Lake City, UT. 
  • Hansen, J., and Church, S. H. (2018, May 24). Many hands make Pokémon work: Conceptualizing the Twitch Plays Pokémon Event as Gamesourcing, a Type of Open Source Co-Creation. Paper presented at the Games Everywhere, Gaming Everywhere pre-conference for the International Communication Association (ICA) conference. Prague, Czech Republic.

  • Solo game developer 
  • Published game designer

University of Oregon

  • Lecturer of Media Production 
  • Lecturer of Video Game History 
  • Research assistant 

Brigham Young University 

  • Research assistant