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This chapter explores the ways in which the portrayal of children in Palestinian screen content compares with the positioning of children in leading pan-Arab children’s channels. Using critical discourse analysis, it compares the definition and representation of childhood in three Arabic language texts (two magazine shows and one animation), and examines the ways in which the texts construct narratives of childhood and whether they reproduce or challenge hegemonic definitions of childhood. The chapter analyses the language used to address the child audience and the ways in which adult–child relations are depicted. The chapter concludes that while there are some characteristics unique to Palestinian programming, the positioning of children and the “modes of address” are similar in all three programmes, and there are common assumptions and idealizations of childhood. However, there is some evidence that the Emirati animation analysed challenges dominant (adult-generated) definitions of childhood present in Arab societies by presenting childhood as a dynamic space of empowerment

The present paper discusses questions related to the histories of videogames, more specifically in how we approach videogames in Global South. By using Zeebo, a Brazilian console produced in the late 2000s as an epistemic tool, I discuss the limitations of universalist, mainstream-centric epistemological models for exploring videogames as cultural phenomena. By investigating Zeebo’s discourses about piracy and players in the Global South, I argue that this platform can be seen as a partial decolonial project, destabilising conventional historical narratives about South-North relationships in videogames, but refraining from challenging a mainstream, Global North oriented epistemology. This exploratory work, therefore, elaborates on how a decolonial project of history of videogames, one that is more epistemically just to Global South, could be sought.

This paper explores a game-making programme for 14 Latin American migrants aged 13-18 in London/UK, carried out between October/2017-January/2018, where I investigated the relationships between game conventions, platforms and personal preferences in the curation of fluid identities through game production. Participants presented varying levels of affinity with games linked both to access issues and to other specific elements (e.g. perception of games in contemporary culture, gender). Questionnaires, observations, unstructured/semistructured interviews and gaming archives were employed to explore this participatory initiative and data was analysed through Multimodal Sociosemiotics. Findings remarked how shared understandings about digital games can find their way into platforms and act as “cultural-technical gatekeepers”, supporting or hindering the engagement with game-making of those often perceived as outsiders to gaming culture. This gatekeeping happens when there are “creative dissonances” between, for example, personal preferences and platforms aligned to normative/mainstream genres. These dissonances, however, can end up fostering subversive designs, contravening gaming conventions and potentially challenging traditional gaming boundaries. This insight is relevant for understanding “cultural-technical constraints” and subversive/non-mainstream game-making, especially in relation to innovation and appropriation of game-making resources/strategies by non-mainstream groups.

First Person Encounters is a series of podcasts presented by Games Studies India, about our first experiences with Games while growing up in India. This our third podcast where we interview Xenia Zeiler, an associate professor of South Asian studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research is situated at the intersection of digital media, religion, and culture, with a focus on India and the worldwide Indian community.

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.

Remember localization! Game localization from an indie development perspective Abstract: The game industry is today a global industry, where digital storefronts are used to distribute the digital product you are developing. This presents a number of challenges for a small scale game developer and localization is one. The talk will focus on game localization from an indie game development perspective. The research is based on data from field studies in Sweden, China and India and is a part of a PhD project conducted at the Division of Game Development at the University of Skövde, Sweden. Bio: Marcus Toftedahl is a game researcher, developer and lecturer at the University of Skövde, Sweden. His main competences lies within game production, game localization and game design, from a practical and research perspective. Marcus has worked at the University of Skövde since 2009 and has since then co-developed the world's first full concentration game writing education at university level and is teaching game design and game production.

2019 marked ten years since the publication of Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter’s Games of Empire, which has become a seminal book in videogame cultural criticism. Ten years later, there is still a pressing need for cultural and materialist criticism of the politics of production within game studies. In putting together this special issue, our hope is to identify new developments in the game industry and academia that are emblematic of 21st-century capitalism. Just as Games of Empire popularised critical political-economic perspectives ten years ago, we encourage others, as the authors in this issue did, to continue and maintain investigations into questions of ownership, privatized property, coercive class relations, military operations and radical struggle. Such analyses are necessary not only to trace but also to open up new directions in game culture and academia for decades to come.

The internet has impacted on how media organisations do journalism. Many media organisations both print and broadcast now have an online presence to reach out to fragmented audiences that have migrated to online platforms. Television stations have increasingly embraced the use of digital (online) media to gain better access to their audiences in terms of content distribution and audience engagement. The rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram have given journalists and media organisations the ability to reach their audiences immediately, with the added benefit of audience responses which come almost immediately. The use of new digital media has created platforms for news stations to share digital clips of news items or excerpts of news programmes to keep the audiences informed or enticed by the highlights.

Independent Videogames investigates the social and cultural implications of contemporary forms of independent video game development. Through a series of case studies and theoretical investigations, it evaluates the significance of such a multi-faceted phenomenon within video game and digital cultures. A diverse team of scholars highlight the specificities of independence within the industry and the culture of digital gaming through case studies and theoretical questions. The chapters focus on labor, gender, distribution models and technologies of production to map the current state of research on independent game development. The authors also identify how the boundaries of independence are becoming opaque in the contemporary game industry – often at the cost of the claims of autonomy, freedom and emancipation that underlie the indie scene. The book ultimately imagines new and better narratives for a less exploitative and more inclusive videogame industry. Systematically mapping the current directions of a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly difficult to define and limit, this book will be a crucial resource for scholars and students of game studies, media history, media industries and independent gaming.

The 1990s’ popular televised journalistic/history documentaries have played a vital role in the making of political television culture, society of political spectacle, and the production of popular history and memory in Turkey. Despite their importance, these documentaries did not attract enough scholarly attention. By focusing on arguably the most popular and impactful journalistic/history documentaries of Turkey’s history, developed by Mehmet Ali Birand in the 1990s, I will assess the role of television in teaching, telling, and writing the political history. In doing so, I will also contextualize the form and discourse of these documentary series within historical juncture of globalization and neoliberalization of television as well as the country’s political economy.

This article paves way for a materialist analysis of the games industry as 21st century imperialism that is economically and culturally structured to cultivate anti-democratic norms that lead to fascist movements against those who question or seek to change the status quo. While much research has studied the politics of reactionary movements in gaming cultures, few have paid attention to the relation between the games industry as part of an imperialist economic system, the chauvinistic ideals symptomized in their cultural products, and the reactionist consumer audiences they attract and cultivate. As I argue, the economic structure of the industry as 21st century imperialism leads to perpetual anti-democratic crises that are maintained by reactionary forces that cultivate, attract, and form fascist grassroots organization. To conceptualize this dynamic, I invoke the labor aristocracy theory as suggested by Friedrich Engels and V.I. Lenin. This theory helps highlight the material basis from which consumers of digital games are bribed to become ideologically aligned with the chauvinism that the imperialist nature of the games industry is justified by. I also invoke W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of a public and psychological wage to highlight the chauvinistic tendencies that the games industry cultivates via their products and marketing, in which the lack of democratic and equitable representation provides the reactionary consumers a sense of superiority. Together, these approaches account for the economic and cultural bases of both the games industry and its reactionary consumers. By anchoring my analysis in critical theories on imperialism and race, the article identifies the root causes of organized harassment and chauvinism in game cultures, as well as how the industry as 21st century imperialism benefits from and is protected by these forces of reaction.

Sport has had a symbiotic relationship with television for decades, as it has always been one of the most marketable visual products for the medium. The new visual media technologies that have been introduced since the 1970s have altered this relationship greatly by incrementally commodifying sport at each step. One of the most crucial aspects of this relationship is globalisation, which initially depended on satellite television and took sport’s hyper-commodification to a whole new level. Turkey, which went through a massive transformation to a neoliberal rule following a bloody coup d’etat in 1980 that practically razed the whole social and political structure, has since become an important example of the roles of sport and television in an aggressively neoliberal setting. This chapter aims to explain why televised sport has had a remarkable role in the sociopolitical transformation of Turkey since the 1980 coup.

This chapter traces the evolution of the Turkish Public Service Broadcaster with a focus on its transnationalization. Drawing parallels between the changing dynamics in politics, culture, and media in Turkey; contemporary cosmopolitan media cultures; and the continuities and changes in Turkish Radio and Television Corporation’s (henceforth TRT) identity as a public service broadcaster, I shed light on the ways in which TRT has been engaging in transnational broadcasts since the beginning of 1990s. For this I elaborate on the ways in which transnational broadcasting processes in Turkey have been influenced by media transnationalization around the world. I discuss two different incentives behind TRT’s transnational endeavors. First, I elaborate on TRT’s attempts at engaging with the Turkish diaspora around the world; later, I articulate how, in more recent years, TRT sets out to exert a Turkish cultural presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The chapter aims to draw a general portrait of the concept of transnational broadcasting in Turkey with a specific focus on the country’s public service broadcaster, TRT.

In contrast with radio broadcasting, which began in 1927, television started remarkably late in Turkey. When the country’s sole public service broadcaster, Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), was established in 1964 and all of the radio transmitters were transferred to the Corporation, even radio broadcasting was not successfully institutionalized to catch up with its Western counterparts. For a very young Republic like Turkey, radio was an integral part of the modernization and nation-building agenda of the early ruling elite and therefore it institutionalized as a part of the machinery of the state, under very strict state control. Much known indispensable merits of autonomy and independence attributed to the historical public service broadcasting model in Europe were hardly appreciated and supported in Turkey. Television broadcasting also had its share from this negative perception and had to face similar obstructions as radio from the beginning. This chapter traces the history of content regulation in television broadcasting by situating the political controversies at the center at different times from the 1960s until today. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun, not in Turkey.

Since the1980s, the television (TV) drama has proved to be one of the most dominant formats on Turkish TV channels and occupied major slots on primetime throughout the 1990s and 2000s. As Internet penetration grew, on-demand services transformed audiences’ expectations of TV series. Internet series first became a trend on YouTube in 2013, and Netflix began broadcasting in Turkey at the beginning of 2016. Its entry to the sector triggered video-on-demand suppliers like Blu TV and Puhu TV which are digital enterprises of Doğan and Doğusṃ Holdings. Blu TV announced their first original project in 2017, Masum (Innocent), which was a big-budget series that included famous actors. In the same year, Puhu TV released their first original, Fi (Phi). Finally, Netflix launched their first original production in Turkey, Hakan: The Protector, in 2018. This chapter focuses on the implications of convergence for the production and distribution of TV dramas and considers the changes in the sector as television broadcasting shifted to new media platforms in Turkey.

This chapter examines the intersection of popular culture and populism in Turkey by focusing on the TV show Payitaht Abdulhamid. Our motivation to analyze the recent TV series Payitaht Abdulhamid stems from our interest in the instrumental mobilization of popular culture for the Turkish government’s dual desire to both establish cultural hegemony and consolidate its populist style of government. Our analysis reveals that television, especially in the Global South, still plays a central role in governments’ desire to reconstruct history and establish cultural hegemony. This is particularly important as Turkey is going through a crisis of hegemony since the public is completely divided in its support for the government. Within the context of this hegemonic crisis, televised popular culture is vital, perhaps more than ever. Specifically, the show reduces a complicated history into easily understandable dichotomies and projects them on to contemporary politics in order to consolidate support for the government. Through televised popular culture, the government mobilizes history for purposes of cultural hegemony and populist politics flavored with nationalist, Islamist, and anti-Western motifs. Ultimately, the TV show presents yet another moment for understanding the mediated nature of 21st-century politics outside Western contexts.

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.

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…

The article provides a comparative account of two paradigms of independent videogame production: the Japanese dojin (doujin) games and the increasingly global indie games. Through a multilayered analysis, it expounds the conceptual metaphors associated with indie and d jin games, traces the two movements respective histories, situates them in wider media environments, and compares their characteristic traits.

"Examining a wide range of Japanese videogames, including arcade fighting games, PC-based strategy games and console JRPGs, this book assesses their cultural significance and shows how gameplay and context can be analyzed together to understand videogames as a dynamic mode of artistic expression. Well-known titles such as Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter and Katamari Damacy are evaluated in detail, showing how ideology and critique are conveyed through game narrative and character design as well as user interface, cabinet art, and peripherals. This book also considers how Japan' has been packaged for domestic and overseas consumers, and how Japanese designers have used the medium to express ideas about home and nation, nuclear energy, war and historical memory, social breakdown and bioethics. Placing each title in its historical context, Hutchinson ultimately shows that videogames are a relatively recent but significant site where cultural identity is played out in modern Japan. Comparing Japanese videogames with their American counterparts, as well as other media forms, such as film, manga and anime, Japanese Culture Through Videogames will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, as well as Game Studies, Media Studies and Japanese Studies more generally."-- Provided by publisher.