Votre recherche

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 examines a terrain in which gender inclusion remains a challenge: competitive esports. In the male-dominated sphere of esports, the underrepresentation of women and nonbinary people often leaves these marginalized groups invisible, with a significant lack of women and nonbinary people competing in top-tier tournaments. We highlight the experience of Wang ‘BaiZe’ Xinyu, a Chinese Hearthstone player who became the first woman to compete in a Hearthstone Championship Tour event in the game’s 3-year history. The narrative surrounding BaiZe’s participation largely focused on her gender and ignored the achievements that led her to qualify for the event. We argue that BaiZe’s entrance to the championship scene was received negatively by both competitors and spectators, reinforcing barriers that exclude women and nonbinary people from entering this male-dominated space. The discrimination faced by these esports competitors reinforces sexism inherent not only in Hearthstone but also in esports in general.

Extant research on e-sports has focused on the growth and value of the phenomenon, fandom, and participant experiences. However, there is a paucity of e-sports scholarship detailing women’s experiences from marginalized communities living in various conservative Muslim countries. This shortage of literature remains despite different radical Islamic groups’ consistent demand for banning several online video games and the Muslim youth’s resistance to these calls. This study aimed to understand the motives and lived experiences of Muslim women e-sports participants from Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. The authors collected data via observations of online video games and in-depth interviews. The study participants revealed that they use e-sports as a vehicle for an oppositional agency and personal freedom from the patriarchal system. The findings also suggest that participants are facing systematic marginalization and grave intrusion of post-colonization. The study contributes to the limited scholarship concerning Indian subcontinent Muslim women’s e-sports participation.

Colonisation bequeathed classical education, among others, to the African continent. The post-colonial utility, function and status of such a knowledge system have been questioned and resisted, and African knowledgebased institutions are making efforts to decolonise such systems. The decolonial project has also impacted popular culture in the sense that African identity and self-presentation are being interrogated using various methods. Adaptations and productions of classical myths are implicated in this discourse. Implicated adaptations serve as platforms for allegorical cross-cultural conversation on shared experiences of a people group, perhaps of an earlier generation with the assumption of partial or absolute continuities. Continuity discourse is problematic when two cultures are implicated, particularly, when one is a colonial culture and the other colonised. The unity of discourse is either affirmed, violated or reconstituted.

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

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 Latinx Research Center's Revista N'oj hosted a round table discussion on Decolonial Aesthetics titled, "Decolonizing Art & Praxis in the Time of Covid-19." The talk included Jesus Barraza, Dr. Guisela Latorre, Dr. Mauricio Barros de Castro, and Dr. Laura E. Pérez. The panel was moderated by Revista N'oj editor, Abraham Ramirez.

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.

This book proposes contemporary decolonization as an approach to developing cultural economies in the Global South. This book represents the first critical examination and comparison of cultural and creative industries (CCI) and economy concepts in the Caribbean and Africa.

Transnational Korean Television: Cultural Storytelling and Digital Audience provides previously absent analyses of Korean TV dramas' transnational influences, peculiar production features, distribution, and consumption to enrich the contextual understanding of Korean TV's transcultural mobility. Even as academic discussions about the Korean Wave have heated up, Korean television studies from transnational viewpoints often lack in-depth analysis and overlook the recently extended flow of Korean television beyond Asia. This book illustrates the ecology of Korean television along with the Korean Wave for the past two decades in order to showcase Korean TV dramas' international mobility and its constant expansion with the different Western television and their audiences. Korean TV dramas' mobility in crossing borders has been seen in both transnational and transcultural flows, and the book opens up the potential to observe the constant flow of Korean television content in new places, peoples, manners, and platforms around the world. Scholars of media studies, communication, cultural studies, and Asian studies will find this book especially useful.

1. Racism and Mainstream Media / Lori Kido Lopez -- 2. Image Analysis and Televisual Latinos / Mary Beltrán -- 3. Visualizing Mixed Race and Genetics / Meshell Sturgis and Ralina L. Joseph -- 4. Listening to Racial Injustice / Dolores Inés Casillas and Jennifer Lynn Stoever -- 5. Branding Athlete Activism / Jason Kido Lopez -- 6. The Burden of Representation in Asian American Television / Peter X. Feng -- 7. Indigenous Video Games / Jacqueline Land -- 8. Applying Latina/o Critical Communication Theory to Anti-Blackness / Mari Castañeda -- 9. Asian American Independent Media / Jun Okada -- 10. Remediating Trans Visuality / Amy Villarejo -- 11. Intersectional Distribution / Aymar Jean Christian -- 12. Podcasting Blackness / Sarah Florini -- 13. Black Twitter as Semi-Enclave / Raven Maragh-Lloyd -- 14. Arab Americans and Participatory Culture / Sulafa Zidani -- 15. Diaspora and Digital Media / Lia Wolock -- 16. Disrupting News Media / Meredith D. Clark -- 17. Latinx Audiences as Mosaic / Jillian M. Báez -- 18. Media Activism in the Red Power Movement / Miranda J. Brady -- 19. Black Gamers' Resistance / Kishonna L. Gray -- 20. Cosmopolitan Fan Activism / Susan Noh.

"Surveying the latest Chinese TV shows centered on romantic relationships, this book joins the expanding body of literature on the ever-evolving structures of feelings while breaking new grounds in media studies. With its thorough investigation of a wide range of genres, narratives, and public discourses, the volume makes timely and significant contributions to the fields of media studies, China studies, and the cultural history of love and romance."--Hui Faye Xiao, University of Kansas, USA "What does romantic love mean for Chinese people today? How is love represented in popular Chinese television programs? Huike Wens fascinating and important book explores how romantic love promises young Chinese urbanites individual freedom, fulfillment, and purpose in life, yet also plays an ideological role in creating social cohesion and maintaining traditional patriarchal values in post-socialist China. An entertaining and thought-provoking insight into how love functions in contemporary Chinese society." --Hsu-Ming Teo, Macquarie University, Australia This book examines how representations of romantic love in Chinese television programs reflect the contradictions inherent to changing dominant values in post-socialist Chinese mainstream culture. These representations celebrate individual freedom, passion, and gender equality, and promise change based on individual diligence and talent, while simultaneously obstructing the fulfillment of these ideals. Huike Wen is an Associate Professor at Willamette University (Salem, Oregon). Her research focuses on the intersection of genders, emotions, media technology, and nations in transnational Chinese and East Asian media and culture.

This chapter discusses how Chinese television has been refashioned by the digital entertainment industry, and contends that new genres, identities, and representations have emerged in recognition of youths as the most valuable and desirable category of audience. It does so by way of three case studies. The first illustrates the symbiotic relationship between online literature and television drama production, and how the former contributes to the fantastical turn of Chinese television. The second seeks to understand the emergence of new cultural figures of “supreme heroine” and “sweet males” in the context of the rise of female fandom in contemporary Chinese popular culture. The third reveals how traditional television content, or in this case a political drama, may be recreated by online distributors and influencers so as to be aligned with the habits, attitudes, and preferences of the younger audiences. The chapter concludes that to understand contemporary Chinese television culture, the Internet and social media must become an integral component of inquiry because of their powerful remediating role in the public communication of any cultural text.

The chapter traces the evolution of Chinese television since 1958 from a state propaganda organ to a profit-generating media juggernaut, with China Central Television (CCTV) as the only network TV responding to both market principles and party directives. Commercialization and marketization played a major role in the rapid development of the Chinese television industry. In recent years China’s TV industry has witnessed the rise of private media companies and the rapid expansion of digital media and the proliferation of over the top (OTT) content. The chapter further provides an overview of China’s overall TV structures and teases out the relationship between CCTV and local stations. The most popular genre on Chinese TV is serial drama, which developed from predominantly single-episode anthology dramas in the 1980s to chiefly multi-episode serial dramas. Talk shows and reality TV became fashionable since the late 1990s.

Computer Science education research establishes collaboration among students as a key component in learning, particularly its role in pair programming. Furthermore, research shows that girls, an underrepresented population in computing, benefit from collaborative learning environments, contributing to their persistence in CS. However, too few studies examine the role and benefits of collaborative learning, especially collaborative talk, among African-American girls in the context of complex tasks like designing video games for social change. In this exploratory study, we engage 4 dyads of African-American middle school girls in the task of designing a video game for social change, recording the dyads' conversations with their respective partners over an eight-week summer game design experience during the second year of what has now become a six-year study. Qualitative analysis of dyadic collaborative discussion reveals how collaborative talk evolves over time in African-American middle-school girls.

Ce travail vise à montrer deux choses. La première, c’est de saisir toute l’importance du tournant postcolonial/afro-décolonial dans la construction d’une contre-épistémologie propre au sujet culturel colonisé africain. En d’autres termes, pour le sujet colonisé, cette contre-épistémologie sert à décoloniser les imaginaires, à partir d’un questionnement de la colonialité de l’épistémologie et du savoir donnés pour universels par l’occident. La deuxième chose, c’est que ̶ à quelques mois de la commémoration du centenaire de la naissance du prolixe et polygraphe auteur africain-colombien Manuel Zapata Olivella (1920-2004) ̶ cet article puisse le situer à sa juste place. Celle d’un sujet culturel colonisé africain des Amériques dont l’abondante production culturelle et la pensée, portées et révolutionnées par le concept de Muntu africain, participent de la décolonisation des imaginaires et de l’épistémologie

Pairing Dominican-born artist Firelei Báez with Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu, this article meditates on relational black and brown aesthetic strategies by reading femme gestures performatively across individual works, as well as the exhibition spaces within which the artists draft practices of informed and resistant engagement. Working with both theories of brownness that emerge from Latinx studies as well as scholarship of the black radical tradition, the author follows a sense of shared aesthetic gestures in Báez and Mutu’s work toward an indictment of pervasive Global North racial epistemologies. Focusing on the performative gesture as the basis for relation, this article ultimately hones in on the chimeric figures—amalgamations of flora and fauna—that both artists deploy, arguing that these present a model for imagining an otherwise arrangement of the social.R Poniendo en diálogo a Firelei Báez, una artista nacida en República Dominicana, con Wangechi Mutu, que nació en Kenia, este artículo invita a una meditación sobre las estrategias estéticas relacionales negras y morenas mediante una lectura en clave performativa de gestos femeninos en obras individuales y en aquellos espacios de exposición en que las artistas elaboran prácticas de participación política informada y de resistencia. Trabajando tanto con las teorías de lo moreno (brownness) que emergen de los estudios Latinx como con el trabajo académico de la tradición radical negra, la autora rastrea gestos estéticos presentes tanto en el trabajo de Báez como en el de Mutu para denunciar las omnipresentes epistemologías raciales del norte global. Centrándose en el gesto performativo como la base de la relación, este artículo se enfoca en última instancia en las figuras quiméricas – amalgamaciones de flora y fauna – que ambas artistas despliegan en su trabajo para sostener que estas presentan un modelo para imaginar otra manera de organizar lo social.