Starting in 2013, DiGRA began publishing, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University's ETC Press, an open access refereed journal called Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDiGRA).

The conference is not conceived as a significant revenue stream for the organization, but rather as a mechanism for encouraging and disseminating interest and scholarship in game studies.

While the organization's board determines where the conference will be held each year, it is the result of a process that begins with an open "Call for Hosts".

FDG emerged in 2009 from the previous Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development in Computer Science Education (GDCSE), which started in 2006.

The journal is refereed, open access, and dedicated to furthering the aims of the organization by disseminating "the wide variety of research within the game studies community combining, for example, humane science with sociology, technology with design, and empirics with theory".

In 2014, during the Gamergate controversy, DiGRA became the subject of a conspiracy theory promoted by YouTuber Carl Benjamin, who claimed that it was being co-opted by feminists.