Hi, I’m Andrei! I’m an assistant professor based in the Communications Department at Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada.

My research focuses on the cultural formation of blockbuster games (AAA/AAAA) in the American and European context, and how these games use resonance for (re)producing real-world cultures, from a decolonial perspective. In parallel, I research the legitimation of games through the uses of “global” or American awards (The Game Awards/VGA/VGX/Cybermania ‘94/DICE/BAFTA), festivals (SXSW/IGF) and trade shows (E3/Gamescom/Summer Game Fest). I study this through the continuous invocation of American blockbuster cinema from the 1950s to today, through individual hit films, like Ben Hur and Avatar, auteur directions, like Christopher Nolan and Jordan Peele, as well as the cultural capital of stars, like Timothée Chalamet, Al Pacino and Samuel L. Jackson. In short, I’m interested in large scale American and Western European game production and its ties to classical and modern Hollywood culture.

Some current outcomes of this research include critical breakdown of the VGA/VGX/TGA pipeline presented at SCMS 2024, analysis of Cybermania ‘94 (Convergence, forthcoming), a theoretical framework for understanding blockbuster games as an emerging genre (Bloomsbury, forthcoming), a franchise overview of the representation women in Assassin’s Creed (Games and Culture, forthcoming) and the cultural impact of the Witcher series for Balkan representation at a global scale (De Gruyter, forthcoming). In parallel Lastly, I also study the political economy of game distribution, and its monetization/gamblification, which I’ve detailed in pieces for New Media and Society, and the Journal of Consumer Culture. My recently completed doctoral research, covers the blockbuster-scale simulation of real world locales from classical antiquity in blockbuster games, in two case study series: Assassin’s Creed and Magic: The Gathering. I discuss how corporate strategies and game franchises shape each other, and in turn perpetuate (and sometimes challenge) mechanisms of cultural/ethnic/racial stereotyping, in the context of colonialist global cultural flows.

In the classroom, I teach a range of undergraduate and graduate diploma lecture and seminar classes including: Mass Media, Games Media and Culture, Television Studies, Communication Culture and Popular Art, Visual Communication and Culture, and lastly International Communication. These classes are tailored to provide students with the critical thinking and conceptual knowledge to help them succeed professionally and academically across a modern media contexts.

If you’d like to get in touch, you can find a contact link below, or reach me through socials listed above.