ludology
The study of games and other forms of play.
uncountable
It also included Gonzalo Frasca's paper, “Ludologists Love Stories Too: Notes from a Debate that Never Took Place”, in which he comes out in defence of ludology and rejects the most extreme critiques by arguing that ludology's raison d'être is not at all to reject stories, but to focus on games.
Where it comes from
From the Latin ludus (“game”) + -ology. By surface analysis, ludo- + -logy, although the prefix ludo- apparently derives from this word.
Adapted from the Wiktionary entry ludology (CC BY-SA 4.0).