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Exploring issues of labor and inequality at the intersection of AAA and indie sectors, this article interrogates the perception of the indie sector as key to mitigating the production of racializing or racist game content. As developers are central to the industry and the larger games culture, their views reveal how indies are imagined as a privileged site free from economic pressures where racism can be ameliorated. Based on interviews with developers, I argue that the project to redress representational inequities within games is shifted on to indie developers, intensifying their emotional and cultural labor. Indie game developers are imagined as the solution, yet this perspective underestimates the precariousness of independent game production. Economic precariousness may encourage indies to repeat certain patterns of racial representation.

This article examines North American (i.e., Canada and the United States) video game developers’ understanding of race, how they construct narratives when they include characters of different races, and some of the pressures that may shape that process. Discourse analyses of semistructured interview texts found that video game developers operate under an internalized pressure to create game narratives that are quickly understandable and, thus, sellable. This pressure is normatively internalized in the profession as an attempt to hedge against market uncertainty. Video game developers, therefore, depend on social beliefs from the “real world” to inform how video game players might receive their games as well as narratives and themes from past texts such as the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Therefore, this article argues that racism might be enabled because it is believed to be a hedge against market uncertainty.

Questions of nation and identity not only concern multiple aspects of video games, their production, and their consumption, but also require further and manifold discussion from different perspectives. In an effort to bring together voices from different fields that engage with video games and gaming practices from various perspectives, this virtual round table discussion attempts to open up the conversation beyond the realms of academia. Kathrin Trattner and Lisa Kienzl talked to Megan Condis, Marijam Didzgalvyt , Georg Hobmeier and Souvik Mukherjee about how concepts such as nation(alism) and identity impact video game representations, the gaming industry, and online gaming cultures in numerous ways.

An interview by Kathrin Trattner with Mira Wardhaningsih, Cultural Content Director from StoryTale Studios about the game Pamali

This book explores Vietnamese popular television in the post-Reform era, that is, from 1986, focussing on the relationship between television and national imagination. It locates Vietnamese television in the experiences of everyday life and the prevailing network of power relations resulting from marketization and globalization, and, as such, moves beyond the clichéd assumption of Vietnamese media as a mere propagandist instrument of the party state. With examples from a wide range of television genres, the book demonstrates how Vietnamese television enables novel conditions of cultural oppression as well as political engagement in the name of the nation. In sharp contrast to the previous image of Vietnam as a war-torn land, post-Reform television conjures into being a new sense of national belonging based on an implicit rejection of the socialist past, hopes for peace and prosperity, and anxieties about a globalized future. This book highlights the richness of Vietnam’s current culture and identity, characterized, the book argues, by ‘fraternity without uniformity’.

The aftermath of Japan's 1945 military defeat left its public institutions in a state of deep crisis; virtually every major source of state legitimacy was seriously damaged or wholly remade by the postwar occupation. Between 1960 and 1990, however, these institutions renewed their strength, taking on legitimacy that erased virtually all traces of their postwar instability.How did this transformation come about? This is the question Ellis S. Krauss ponders in Broadcasting Politics in Japan; his answer focuses on the role played by the Japanese mass media and in particular by Japan's national broadcaster, NHK. Since the 1960s, television has been a fixture of the Japanese household, and NHK's TV news has until very recently been the dominant, and most trusted, source of political information for the Japanese citizen. NHK's news style is distinctive among the broadcasting systems of industrialized countries; it emphasizes facts over interpretation and gives unusual priority to coverage of the national bureaucracy. Krauss argues that this approach is not simply a reflection of Japanese culture, but a result of the organization and processes of NHK and their relationship with the state. These factors had profound consequences for the state's postwar re-legitimization, while the commercial networks' recent challenge to NHK has helped engender the wave of cynicism currently faced by the state. Krauss guides the reader through the complex interactions among politics, media organizations, and Japanese journalism to demonstrate how NHK television news became a shaper of Japan's political world, rather than simply a lens through which to view it.

The Brazilian television industry is one of the most productive and commercially successful in the world. At the forefront of this industry is TV Globo and its production of standardized telenovelas, which millions of Brazilians and viewers from over 130 countries watch nightly. Eli Lee Carter examines the field of television production by focusing on the work of one of Brazil's greatest living directors, Luiz Fernando Carvalho. Through an emphasis on Carvalho's thirty-plus year career working for TV Globo, his unique mode of production, and his development of a singular aesthetic as a reaction to the dominant telenovela genre, Carter sheds new light on Brazilian television's history, its current state, and where it is going--as new legislation and technology push it increasingly toward a post-network era.

Stresses the crucial importance of LGBT festivals in promoting examples of queer cinema throughout Europe and the USA.

Game Devs & Others: Tales from the Margins tell the true stories of life in the industry by people of color, LGBTQIA and other marginalized identities. This collection of essays give people a chance to tell their stories and to let others know what life on the other side of the screen is like when you’re not part of the supposed “majority”. Key Features This book is perfect for anyone interested in getting into the games industry who feels they have a marginalized identity For those who wish to better diversify their studio or workplace who may or may not have access to individuals that could or would share their stories about the industry Includes initiatives aimed at diversifying the industry that have a positive or negative impact on the ongoing discussions Coverage of ajor news items about diversity, conferences aimed at or having diversity at its core of content and mission are discussed Included essays are written with as little game dev specific jargon as possible, makeing it accessible to people outside the industry as well as those in the scene but that may not have all the insider lingo

Peut-on envisager une autre histoire du jeu vidéo ?

"Debates on the future of the African continent and the role of gender identities in these visions are increasingly present in literary criticism forums as African writers become bolder in exploring the challenges they face and celebrating gender diversity in the writing of short stories, novels, poetry, plays and films. Controversies over the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer (LGBTIQ) communities in Africa, as elsewhere, continue in the context of criminalization and/or intimidation of these groups. Residual colonial moralizing and contemporary western identity norms and politics vie with longstanding polyvalent indigenous sexual expression. In addition to traditional media, the new social media have gained importance, both as sources of information exchange and as sites of virtual construction of gender identities. As with many such contentious issues, the variety of responses to the "state of the question" is strikingly visible across the continent. In this issue of ALT, guest editor John Hawley has sampled the ongoing conversations, in both African writing and in the analysis of contemporary African cinema, to show how queer studies can break with old concepts and theories and point the way to new gender perspectives on literary and cinematic output. This volume also includes a non-themed section of Featured Articles and a Literary Supplement."--Publisher's description

From #Gamergate to the daily experiences of marginalization among gamers, gaming is entangled with mainstream cultures of systematic exploitation and oppression. Whether visible in the persistent color line that shapes the production, dissemination, and legitimization of dominant stereotypes within the industry itself, or in the dehumanizing representations often found within game spaces, many video games perpetuate injustice and mirror the inequities and violence that permeate society as a whole. Drawing from the latest research and from popular games such as World of warcraft and Tomb raider, Woke gaming examines resistance to spaces of violence, discrimination, and microaggressions in gaming culture. The contributors of these essays identify strategies to detox gaming culture and orient players toward progressive ends, illustrating the power and potential of video games to become catalysts for social justice

Feminism in Play focuses on women as they are depicted in video games, as participants in games culture, and as contributors to the games industry. This volume showcases women's resistance to the norms of games culture, as well as women's play and creative practices both in and around the games industry. Contributors analyze the interconnections between games and the broader societal and structural issues impeding the successful inclusion of women in games and games culture. In offering this framework, this volume provides a platform to the silenced and marginalized, offering counter-narratives to the post-racial and post-gendered fantasies that so often obscure the violent context of production and consumption of games culture.

What counts as the field site when researching Nepali video game developers? Concentrating on the company Arcube Games and Animation, in the summer of 2017 I used the ethnoludographic method to research game development in the Kathmandu Valley. I recorded my findings in field notes, photographs, written documents and other material culture. My usual ethnographic method developed in two ways. First, I engaged in ludography, a humanistic qualitative method for interpreting gaming. Second, Nepal proved not to be an isolated location, but rather a vortex of global flows. I found that in the Kathmandu valley these flows are often focused on a fantasy of Shangri-La that poses Nepal as an underdeveloped traditional nation, full of picturesque poverty, and over-determined with religious culture, but blessed with beautiful Himalayan landscapes.

Introduction to the gamevironments Special Issue Video Game Development in Asia: Voices from the Field .

"Queerness in Play examines the many ways queerness of all kinds - from queer as 'LGBT' to other, less well-covered aspects of the queer spectrum - intersects with games and the social contexts of play. The current unprecedented visibility of queer creators and content comes at a high tide of resistance to the inclusion of those outside a long-imagined cisgender, heterosexual, white male norm. By critically engaging the ways games - as a culture, an industry, and a medium - help reproduce limiting binary formations of gender and sexuality, Queerness in Play contributes to the growing body of scholarship promoting more inclusive understandings of identity, sexuality, and games."--Provided by publisher.

In novel ways, and from a surprising location, Yvonne Welbon’s Remembering Wei-Yi Fang, Remembering Myself: An Autobiography (1995) explores some of the same dilemmas that earlier African American expatriate artists promulgated, using their time abroad as a win dow onto America, while relishing the nurturing possibilities of partial escape from American racism. Some of the most complex and insightful observations about America and American racism have been crafted by African American expatriate artists such as James Baldwin and Josephine Baker. These artists’ depictions of their encounters abroad complicate our understandings of American identity and American racism.

This paper is a brief summary of a preliminary exploration of certain aspects of independent video game development in Japan. Initial interviews were conducted with researchers and indie game developers over a two-week period in Tokyo. Independent game developers from Kamakura were also interviewed as part of the research. Initial fieldwork was geared primarily toward doujin level game development and distribution. My key research question focused upon the religious and spiritual dimensions of doujin games. However, after conducting interviews it became clear that developers did not consider the Western frame or classification of religion and spirituality in their development but rather incorporated aspects of tradition, culture and values within their work.

"Pretty Liar" explores the rise of language and gender politics on Lebanese television to tell the untold story of the co-evolution of Lebanese television and its audiences and how the civil war of 1975-1991 affected that co-evolution. The shift in public interest in television has been widely acknowledged and interpreted within an institutional context as a victory of the neo-liberal entrepreneurship of a new, agile brand over the government inefficiency of Lebanon's national station, Télé Liban. Yet, the role of the Lebanese Civil War in reshaping national television and broadcasting in Arab media following the emergence of the Lebanese Broadcasting Company in 1985 has been unexplored. Based on empirical data and grounded in theory by Arab and global researchers, "Pretty Liar" offers textual analyses of five Lebanese fictional series, three major and several additional periodicals, and nine literary works, and provides context from unscripted interviews with television administrators, anchors, actors, and freelance contributors, print journalists, and audience members. Khazaal seeks to offer new insight into how entertainment television became a site for politics and political resistance, feminism, and the cradle for post-war Lebanon due to the shift in practices and standards of legitimacy. The history of television in Lebanon is not merely the history of technology and business, Khazaal argues, but rather the history of a people and their continuing quest for a responsive television even during times of civil unrest.

This book examines the development of television broadcasting in Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea. It explores the policy regimes guiding the development of television broadcasting as a powerful institution and the extent to which new forms of television have become part of each country’s contemporary media mix. It analyses the interests involved in key policy decisions, the institutional dynamics promoting or inhibiting new media markets, and the relative importance in the different countries of cable, satellite, digital broadcasting, and the use of the Internet for purposes associated with television broadcasting. The nature of television regimes in each of the three countries is very different, and the contrasting situations provide great insights into how television is developing, and how it could develop further, both in East Asia and worldwide.