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Thatgamecompany’s 'Journey' (2012) is a videogame like no other. This serene atmospheric game came out at a time when fast-paced, aggressive, AAA games were (and still are) the norm. Soon after the game’s release in 2012, thatgamecompany’s courage and hard work started getting the appreciation it deserved. 'Journey' has won several ‘Game of the Year’ awards and received several other awards and nominations, including a ‘Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media’ nomination for the 2013 Grammy Awards. For this Game Studies India Adda Talk, I will be discussing (read: gushing over) this game’s brilliant visual and auditory art, wordless storytelling techniques, and one-of-a-kind multiplayer experience. Please join me on this talk and let's take a ‘journey’ like no other. Pun intended. Thank you and I hope you all have a wonderful new year. 🙂 Here’s the game trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie4iz...

Playing back to the Empire, in videogames, is rife with tensions. The imperialist sentiment inherent in reverse-colonist discourse featured in most strategy-based videogames like Europa Universalis IV, where the player could conquer Europe playing for the Marathas, has been noted by Souvik Mukherjee (2017) as playing into the colonial logic while futilely trying to challenge it. Studio Oleomingus, an Indian two-man game studio, is one of the few involved in a different experiment. Their mythical game Somewhere, chronicling a postmodernist search for identity and narrative in the forgotten city of Kayamgadh, has generated significant spin-offs into its universe. With attention to one such spin-off, I will focus critical attention on the issue of the postcolonial gaming of the Museum in A Museum of Dubious Splendors. I will examine the New Museological implications of A Museum of Dubious Splendors, keeping in mind Museologist Eilean Hooper-Greenhill’s assertion of museums embodying “the power to name, to represent common sense, to create official versions, to represent the social world, to represent the past” (Hooper-Greenhill 2001: 2). Oleomingus’ own description of A Museum, as an adaptation of edited, mangled, contested short stories by a fictional Urdu writer, Mir Umar Hassan, eschews the linear narrative production of the colonial museum for a game of meanings, where the player enters rooms according to his choice and constructs his/her own “quiet game about prosaic objects and spurious histories.” ("A Museum" 2018) The paper would take this into account and examine the reconceptualization of the museum space with respect to James Clifford’s sense of museums being “contact zones”: A Museum’s lack of any curator, with its curious blend of colonial and native tales and banal objects defamiliarised by “spurious histories” lends itself to questions of playing the Empire back according to a different episteme, through subaltern histories that the colonial museum space silenced. Paying close attention to the question of postcolonial spatiality in this game, I will analyze the historiographical implications of these identity-scatterings and recuperations at constant play in the structure of the game. Keywords: Museum Studies, Thing Theory, Game studies, Marginal identity, Postcolonial Studies

Video gaming is one of the most popular hobbies in the world, with the gaming industry grossing more revenue than the movie and the music industry combined. The estimated number of gamers across the whole world as of August 2020 is 2.7 billion, which is more than one-third of the world population. The benefits of gaming, as cited by numerous researchers, include a boost in confidence, improved cognitive abilities, stress relief, improved problem-solving skills, enhanced social skills among dyslexic kids, and among many others. Even though video gaming as a hobby and career is slowly getting recognition in India, majority of the population still scoff at the activity, shunning gamers and game researchers alike, citing out-of-context and sometimes even false media propaganda. The challenges faced by a typical gamer in India include lack of information, budget limitation, lack of support from parents and teachers when it comes to teenage gamers, and the overall lack of gaming as a mainstream culture among countrymen. As for someone who wants to pursue Game Studies, there is currently little to no provision for that due to the tightly knit education system in the country and the utter lack of educational institutes offering courses on game studies. We go on to further discuss all of the above challenges and experiences faced by a gamer or someone who wants to pursue game studies in India, in our detailed talk that is scheduled on November 21, 2020.

Venba is a narrative cooking game, where you play as an Indian mom, who immigrates to Canada with her family in the 1980s. Players will cook various dishes and restore lost recipes, hold branching conversations and explore in this story about family, love, loss and more. More on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/14.... Developer, Abhi, gives Game Studies India an exclusive preview talking about identity, nostalgia, memory and of course, food. In conversation with Poonam Chowdhury and Souvik Mukherjee.

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 talk with Poornima Seetharaman. She is the first Indian to be inducted in the Women in Games (WIGJ) Hall of Fame and is also the lead game designer at Zynga. Hear as we talk about her foray in the world of gaming.

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.

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 second podcast where we interview Satyajit Chakraborty, a game developer, game designer and researcher. He also founded Flying Robots Studios in 2012 and has made various unique games. Here he talks about his first experiences with gaming in India.

The First Podcast in a series of podcasts presented by Games Studies India, about our first experiences with Games while growing up in India.

Counter-Hegemonic Representations of Japanese Cultural Icons in Sekiro Abstract: Through fictional or non-fictional narratives, media representations of the past communicate specific interpretations, which lets users negotiate the past's prospective meanings. Additionally, these cultural constructions of the past are produced and disseminated in the present. Hence, the existing hegemonic power relations influence the depiction and recognition of cultural communities in the construction of the past. Therefore, the approach to framing cultures in pop-culture representations becomes a preponderating factor in how people perceive such cultures and periods. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, at first glance, can be considered as a game that follows the same vein of exploiting the western craze for the ninja archetype, as seen in its predecessors like the Onimusha and Tenchu series. However, it takes a bold stance against the persisting ‘self-Orientalist’ framework by reclaiming the ninja myth from marketized exoticization. Borrowing from Said’s theory of Orientalism, I would first like to analyze the existing self-Orientalism in depicting and marketing Japanese cultural icons. I would then like to highlight how this game is not an exoticized cultural artefact and further discuss the implications of such a portrayal in the contexts of representation and authenticity. I conclude that by undercutting innate stereotypes and using inherently Japanese characters, the game reappropriates the agency to depict Japanese cultural icons, from a non-Oriental, non-exoticized viewpoint. Thus, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice becomes a stand-out in the video game industry in this respect. Bio: Geoffrey Fernandez is a PhD candidate at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Pilani campus. His doctoral research examines the use of culture, mythology, and folklore in video games.

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.

Recent research has started focusing on the representation of history in videogames. Such representation is almost always of mainstream history and usually presented from a Western perspective. Set in a fictitious Himalayan kingdom in South Asia, Ubisoft’s Far Cry 4 is arguably a crucial example of how history is represented using Western and even colonial frameworks and where the narratives that do not emerge from conventional written history are almost always rendered invisible. Using the frameworks of Subaltern Studies and “border-thinking,” this essay attempts to unpack issues of Orientalism and “colonial difference”; it then engages with postcolonial digital humanities and postcolonial game studies to comment on how history is represented in videogames and how the neglected gaps and silences in the game are important in constructing the historiography in videogames. In the process, the essay engages in a debate with current notions of videogame-historiography.

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.

Where do computer games "happen"? The articles collected in this pioneering volume explore the categories of "space", "place" and "territory" featuring in most general theories of space to lay the groundwork for the study of spatiality in games. Shifting the focus away from earlier debates on, e.g., the narrative nature of games, this collection proposes, instead, that thorough attention be given to the tension between experienced spaces and narrated places as well as to the mapping of both of these.

Where do computer games "happen"? The articles collected in this pioneering volume explore the categories of "space", "place" and "territory" featuring in most general theories of space to lay the groundwork for the study of spatiality in games. Shifting the focus away from earlier debates on, e.g., the narrative nature of games, this collection proposes, instead, that thorough attention be given to the tension between experienced spaces and narrated places as well as to the mapping of both of these.

From its humble beginnings as a video game launched in the mid-90s, Pokémon has become a global entertainment franchise, even reaching into the world via "augmented reality" with the mobile game Pokémon GO. In the work, Nakazawa Shinichi argues that the Pokémon worldview is the best contemporary example of Claude Lévi-Strauss's "savage mind" (la pensée sauvage), suggesting that computer games can often be viewed as attempts to reconnect the human unconscious with the true, hidden essence of nature.

Redefines games and game culture from south to north, analyzing the social impact of video games, the growth of game development and the vitality of game cultures across Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, the Indian subcontinent, Oceania and Asia.

The treatment of colonialism in video games, barring a few notable exceptions, is marked by a Western and, specifically, late 19th-century imperialist bias. Simultaneously, in the past two decades of multifaceted research and the development of robust theoretical frameworks in the still fledgling discipline of game studies, postcolonial discourses, whether they comprise critiques of imperialism or neocolonialism, have not been prominently highlighted until very recently. A coherent effort to bring together the current research on postcolonialism in video games was also urgently required. Further, the past years has seen a rather persistent, albeit unexpected, emergence of a pro-colonial or pro-imperialist discourse in mainstream academia that even justifies the continuance of empire as an ameliorating influence on the people of the so-called developing countries, most of which had formerly been colonized by European powers.Thus, it is the aim of this issue to address this epistemic omission and counter such bias where it exists by also bridging video games research with larger discussions of postcolonialism in other humanities contexts and disciplines. The various articles in this special issue offer a range of perspectives from epistemological power to theory and praxis in critical academia, to contexts of production and practices of play, to close readings of postcolonial traces in video games. These varying approaches to the analysis of video games and their societal and historical contexts open up the debates further to a diverse set of topics ranging from board games to phone games or from mainstream high-budget console games to indie titles that question colonialism. As video games address issues relating to orientalism, subalternity, and hybridity as well as the current ambiguities in conceiving nationhood and the postcolony, the articles in this issue will also likely adumbrate further serious commentary that will develop both game studies research and current conceptions of the postcolonial.

"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.

The postcolonial has still remained on the margins of Game Studies, which has now incorporated at length, contemporary debates of race, gender, and other areas that challenge the canon. It is difficult to believe, however, that it has not defined the way in which video games are perceived; the effect, it can be argued, is subtle. For the millions of Indians playing games such as Empire: Total War or East India Company, their encounter with colonial history is direct and unavoidable, especially given the pervasiveness of postcolonial reactions in everything from academia to day-to-day conversation around them. The ways in which games construct conceptions of spatiality, political systems, ethics, and society are often deeply imbued with a notion of the colonial and therefore also with the questioning of colonialism. This article aims to examine the complexities that the postcolonial undertones in video games bring to the ways in which we read them.