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In 2017, the American game designer Momo Pixel released the single-player, browser-based game Hair Nah. In this game, you play as Aeva, a Black woman taking trips to locations that include Osaka, Havana, and the Santa Monica Pier. As you move through levels on your journey—taking a taxi ride, traversing airport security, sitting on an airplane—you must slap away increasingly aggressive white hands that reach into the frame to touch your hair. Though Hair Nah taps into the genre of a casual button-mashing game, this interactive experience also explores the topic of microaggressions via unwanted hair touching. If you slap away enough hands on your travels, you reach a screen welcoming you to your destination with the message “YOU WIN!” but the caveat, “The game is over, but this experience isn’t. This is an issue that black women face daily. So a note to those who do it STOP THAT SHIT.”

This article discusses the popular video game Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) by Rockstar Games, which follows Arthur Morgan, a white outlaw, during the decline of the “Wild West” in 1898 and 1899. Taking up conversations of fugitivity in critical ethnic studies, this article maintains that fugitivity operates as a rhetorical trope that stands in for racial identity where the logic of postracialism denies investments in race. Analyzing the narrative, spatial, and kinesthetic elements of the game, this article argues that Morgan, and by extension the player, is aligned with historically and geographically racialized others through a fugitive relationship to space. While Rockstar, as a video game studio, may not see itself explicitly intervening in a racialized and racializing political imaginary in its fictional worldbuilding, the kinesthetic, narrative, and cartographic strategies the studio employs respond to a set of cultural assumptions rooted in the rhetoric of postracialism. As such, Red Dead Redemption 2 serves as a multifaceted text through which to interrogate the dynamics of that rhetoric as it is mobilized in representations of fugitivity and identity.

This article considers the cultural politics of frustrated potential for diverse representation in games by examining developer comments on the 1995 digital game I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, adapted from Harlan Ellison’s 1967 science fiction story of the same name. While Ellison’s story featured a gay man named Benny among the protagonists, the game developers adapted Benny without his original sexual identity. In a 2012 Game Informer magazine article, however, the developers reflected on their version of Benny as a “lost opportunity” for exploring gay identity. Rooted in discussion of this frustrated potential for a gay in-game Benny, this article interrogates a logic of lost opportunity for diverse representation present in game-development discourse, which manifests in a longing for more diverse characters that could have been but never came to be. This logic suggests particular ways that developers might conceive of diverse representation as simply a design issue under neoliberal logics of economic opportunity, commercial risk, and fetishized innovation—without meaningful consideration of political significance. Opposing this instrumentalization of frustrated diverse representation, this article draws on queer game studies and speculative design and literature to explore the possible contours and implications of diverse characters that never were more seriously than such comments typically do. Doing so demands more than romanticized longings for lost opportunities for diverse representation that treat this longing as the end in itself.

This paper argues that video games expose the presumptions separating “Asian America” and “Asia” in the traditional senses of isolation, origination, and presumed distance. It does so by focusing on the most “Asiatic” genre of video games today, the North American visual novel, which offers a counterdiscourse to normative modes of play and attempts to offer utopic spaces to reflect upon the “real” genres of race and neo–Cold War geopolitics. Using theories of performance from Dorinne Kondo and others, the author shows how queer indie visual novels are primarily aspirational, in that they build queer, utopic, and seemingly anti-racist worlds through the Asiatic space of the visual novel form. In so doing, they also allow players to explore the Asiatic as a means of repairing the traumas and distances of American imperial cultures. The article analyzes four visual novels to make this argument: three by non-racially-identifying North American designers—Doki Doki Literature Club! (2017) by Dan Salvato, Analogue: A Hate Story (2012) by Christine Love, and Heaven Will Be Mine (2018) by Aevee Bee—and Butterfly Soup (2017), a game by the queer Asian/American designer Brianna Lei. If games make the boundaries of Asia and America irrelevant, visual novels explore this irrelevance through Asiatic irreverence.

This article addresses the seeming absence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in video games from the 1980s and 1990s, the height of the US AIDS crisis. As Adrienne Shaw and Christopher Persaud have noted, stories about HIV/AIDS were pervasive across American popular media during this period, which also represented a boom in video game development. However, documentation remains of only a handful of early video games that mention HIV/AIDS. This article argues that, far from being absent from video game history, HIV/AIDS and the US AIDS crisis were actually influential in shaping a number of the design elements and narrative genres that have become important to contemporary video games. Scholars like Cait McKinney have demonstrated how people living with HIV/AIDS in America played a crucial part in the evolution of internet technologies that now form the backbone of video games. Through a comparative reading of two games by C. M. Ralph, Caper in the Castro (1989) and Murder on Main Street (1989), this article demonstrates how HIV/AIDS has also manifested in the content and form of video games, even (and perhaps especially) when it seems absent. Derritt Mason has explained how Caper in the Castro, widely celebrated as the first LGBTQ video game, contains clear echoes of the AIDS crisis. Yet, as this article demonstrates, HIV/AIDS remains a powerful presence even in Murder on Main Street, Ralph’s “straight version” of the game. Together, these games offer a microcosm through which to explore larger tensions between HIV/AIDS and video games, with the AIDS crisis representing a key element of what Cody Mejeur has termed the “present absence of queerness in video games.”

Back in 2009, Critical Distance was founded to answer the question: “Where is all the good writing about games?” Our goal for the last 10 years has always been to facilitate dialogue. Through roundups, roundtables, podcasts, and critical compilations, we provide one place where all the most important discourse is collected together. We aim to build a foundation for ongoing conversations between developers, critics, educators and enthusiasts about critical issues in games culture. We are a compendium of the most incisive, thought-provoking, and remarkable discussion in and around games, keeping it archived for years to come. Our work has helped new writers to find their voice, educators to find resources to help their students develop critical thinking, and developers to become more reflective in their design practice.

"This study sketches some of the various trajectories of digital games in modern Western societies, looking at the growth and persistence of the moral panic that continues to accompany massive public interest in digital games. The book continues with a new phase of games research exemplified by systematic examination of specific aspects of digital games and gaming"--Provided by publisher.

This article presents the ways in which Japanese survival horror employs video games as a tool for cultural representation. First, it analyses the main differences between American and Japanese horror, and how the historical relationships of competition/collaboration between both have led to a constant exchange of cultural references present in their games. This relationship of domination/submission traces back to the post-war period in which the United States began exercising control over Japan. It is as a result of this period that Japanese terror begins to take shape and take its first steps towards the current J-Horror. Second, it analyses the work of game designer Keiichiro Toyama, namely Silent Hill and Siren, as a well-known example of the construction of a cultural identity halfway between the devotion to the Other and the respect for tradition. Finally, the article addresses other examples of Japanese survival horror to analyse more deeply which stance Japanese industry takes in this era of cultural globalization, or hyperculturality, which is seriously transforming our conception of culture in digital media.

Following the exportation of Japanese media products such as TV dramas, Japanese culture and products have swept across many Asian countries, especially Taiwan. Based on the historical background and unique characteristics of games, this study investigates the cultural effect of Japanese video games on players in Taiwan. This study also presents an analysis of the differences between TV and the video game as cultural vehicles. We used both quantitative and qualitative methods. Results indicate a relationship between game-playing behavior and the identification of Japanese culture. However, the relationship between video game playing and consumption was nonsignificant. This shows the power of video games in nation-building but not in nation-branding, in contrast with TV. This study presents a discussion of the findings to shed light on the cultural effects of video games.

This research examined the identity development of Korean adult players in the online game world. Q methodology was used to investigate the subjectivity of self-development in Mabinogi (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game). Thirty-seven adult players sorted 57 behavior statements to reflect the changes in their behaviors from past to present. Three types of self-development were found: achievement-oriented development, control-oriented development, and relational development. The behavior patterns of these three types were compared to identify similarities and differences among them in terms of psychological meanings and values in the online game life. The results illustrate that the online game world can be defined as a new behavioral setting, made possible by digital technology, in which individuals are able to experience three different paths of identity development.

From gold farmers and ‘100 million brain-damaged online gamers’ to the world’s biggest game company and more players than US citizens, China seems like the cabinet of curiosities for the whole world of digital gaming. This article focuses on news coverage around Chinese gaming and presents three phases of such journalism. China’s emerging games market was most prominently featured between 1999 and 2005, while 2006-2011 focused on extreme play behavior in China. Most recently, a discourse of vast business opportunities and stabilizing markets has been presented by Western news media. In total more than 853 news articles are explored in parallel to the theoretical concept of Sinological-orientalism. This article suggests significant historical changes in the ways in which knowledge of Chinese gaming has been produced in English language news media.

Platformed racism offers a unique lens through which to investigate technological structures that enable racism. Online video games, such as EA Sports’ FIFA series — which dominates the soccer video game market share through its touted realism — feature these structures. Like many platforms, FIFA enables representations of real bodies (i.e., professional soccer players). But, unlike many games, FIFA enables game players to directly affect the creation/modification of these representation in the form of player character cards. Analyzing a census of six years of player cards, this study found that platformed racism was enabled because the game’s realism invited racism when players tried to maintain that realism. The study concludes that the catalyst for racism to emerge in FIFA was the drive towards realism.

In Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games author Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall analyzes how films and video games from around the world have depicted slave revolt, focusing on the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). This event, the first successful revolution by enslaved people in modern history, sent shock waves throughout the Atlantic World. Regardless of its historical significance however, this revolution has become less well-known—and appears less often on screen—than most other revolutions; its story, involving enslaved Africans liberating themselves through violence, does not match the suffering-slaves-waiting-for-a-white-hero genre that pervades Hollywood treatments of Black history. Despite Hollywood’s near-silence on this event, some films on the Revolution do exist—from directors in Haiti, the US, France, and elsewhere. Slave Revolt on Screen offers the first-ever comprehensive analysis of Haitian Revolution cinema, including completed films and planned projects that were never made. In addition to studying cinema, this book also breaks ground in examining video games, a pop-culture form long neglected by historians. Sepinwall scrutinizes video game depictions of Haitian slave revolt that appear in games like the Assassin’s Creed series that have reached millions more players than comparable films. In analyzing films and games on the revolution, Slave Revolt on Screen calls attention to the ways that economic legacies of slavery and colonialism warp pop-culture portrayals of the past and leave audiences with distorted understandings.

Peut-on envisager une autre histoire du jeu vidéo ?

Qualifié parfois de « dixième art », après que les jeux de rôles sur table (comme Donjons & Dragons) eurent commencé à céder du terrain dans les loisirs de la jeunesse à partir du mil…

Aucune étude n’a jamais démontré que les formes médiatiques disposeraient d’un pouvoir direct de transformation des réalités sociales. Une approche critique un peu sérieuse préférera ainsi appréhender le jeu vidéo comme le site d’un ensemble de rapports de pouvoir opérant au sein de la culture dominante, traversé, à l’instar d’autres formes culturelles, par des contradictions, des résistances et des réappropriations – autrement dit par des circulations dans la production de sens, les formes et les affects, qui viennent renforcer, nuancer ou déstabiliser les normes de l’hégémonie culturelle. Depuis le début des années 2010 et en particulier la polémique du #GamerGate en 2014, la communauté vidéoludique ne peut plus ignorer le sexisme. Les féministes n’ont pourtant pas attendu si longtemps pour se manifester. Mais c’est peut-être l’année 2012 qui marqua un réel tournant, lorsque Anita Sarkeesian lança une campagne de crowdfunding pour une série de vidéos sur sa chaîne YouTube feministfrequency. Sa démarche déclencha une vague de cyberharcèlement qui alla des insultes aux menaces de mort et jusqu’à la publication de données personnelles. Ce modèle de violence sexiste s’est reproduit à de multiples reprises, notamment en France en 2013 à l’encontre de la créatrice de jeu et féministe Mar_Lard, attaquée pour sa critique argumentée du sexisme dans la culture geek. Elle revenait en particulier sur des propos plus que complaisants d’un journaliste à propos d’une séquence où le personnage de Lara Croft, héroïne du mythique je…

The popularity and visibility of video games within American popular culture is prompted debates within from a spectrum of institutions, ranging from the media and the academy to Main Street and the political sphere. Erasing the complexity, much of the discourse focuses instead on questions of violence and the impact of gaming culture on (White) American youth. While focusing on Grand Theft: San Andreas specifically, this essay explores the culture wars surrounding American video game culture, arguing that the moral panics directed at video games and the defenses/celebrations of virtual reality operate through dominant discourses and hegemonic ideologies of race. Erasing their racial content and textual support for state violence directed at communities of color, the dominant discourse concerning youth and video games rationalizes the fear and policing of Black and Brown communities.

En 2007, le monde du jeu vidéo est secoué par une violente polémique au sujet du jeu vidéo Resident Evil 5. Ce dernier est accusé de faire commerce du racisme, en invitant à se glisser dans la peau d'un américain blanc body-buildé, missionné dans une région africaine anonyme, et tuant des dizaines d'hommes et de femmes noires présentées comme de dangereux zombies infectés du virus T. Depuis, la communauté des joueurs et joueuses de jeux vidéo interpelle régulièrement les créateurs et créatrices des jeux sur les questions du racisme et du sexisme.Dans son ouvrage, Mehdi Derfoufi analyse les rapports de force qui structurent l'industrie du jeu vidéo, dévoilant comment le racisme se niche parfois insidieusement au cœur de scénarios de jeux vidéo à succès. Il nous invite à nous questionner. Quels sont les pays qui pèsent sur les milliards d'euros du marché mondial du jeu vidéo ? Qui sont les game designers et auteurs des jeux ? Comment les représentations racistes sont-elles véhiculées à travers les personnageset les imaginaires vidéoludiques ? L'auteur nous dévoile avec brio les logiques racialisantes à l’œuvre au sein d’un marché économique très concurrentiel où des stéréotypes exotisants servent régulièrement à faire vendre un jeu. Il nous montre aussi comment la division internationale du travail et la hiérarchie économico-politique Nord/Sud pèse sur le marché du jeu vidéo et ralentit l’émergence de nouvelles représentations. Pourtant, de nombreux espoirs, notamment dans les pays du Sud participent au renouvellement de la culture geek : face aux violences racistes, la riposte s’organise.

Seeking ways to understand video games beyond their imperial logics, Patterson turns to erotics to re-invigorate the potential passions and pleasures of play.

This book uncovers popular games' key role in the cultural construction of modern racial fictions. It argues that gaming provides the lens, language, and logic - in short, the authority - behind racial boundary making, reinforcing and at times subverting beliefs about where people racially and spatially belong. It focuses specifically on the experience of Asian Americans and the longer history of ludo-Orientalism, wherein play, the creation of games, and the use of game theory shape how East-West relations are imagined and reinforce notions of foreignness and perceptions of racial difference.