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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.

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.

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 Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies provides the first comprehensive overview of this emerging interdisciplinary field in the humanities and social sciences. Featuring contributions by scholars from a wide variety of fields and disciplines, the Handbook charts the growth and development, foundations, key debates, core concerns, and frontiers of Perpetrator Studies. Focusing on genocide, terrorism, and other forms of political mass violence, this Handbook addresses questions of guilt and responsibility, definition, terminology, typology, motivations, group dynamics, memory, trauma, representation, and pedagogy. Offering a thematic and conceptual approach that facilitates a comparative analysis across historical, geographic, and disciplinary lines, the Handbook allows different disciplinary perspectives to confront one another. In so doing, this foundational volume presents contemporary perspectives on longstanding debates whilst also providing new contributions to the field. Written with an interdisciplinary readership in mind, the chapters provide an overview of existing work on a specific topic or issue, delineate current developments within the respective discipline or field, and make suggestions for further research. As such, the book will appeal to scholars across a range of disciplines, including history, sociology, anthropology, criminology, law, philosophy, memory studies, psychology, political science, literary studies, film studies, cultural studies, art history, and education"-- Provided by publisher.

Many of today's most commercially successful videogames, from Call of Duty to Company of Heroes, are war-themed titles that play out in what are framed as authentic real-world settings inspired by recent news headlines or drawn from history. While such games are marketed as authentic representations of war, they often provide a selective form of realism that eschews problematic, yet salient aspects of war. In addition, changes in the way Western states wage and frame actual wars makes contemporary conflicts increasingly resemble videogames when perceived from the vantage point of Western audiences.This interdisciplinary volume brings together scholars from games studies, media and cultural studies, politics and international relations, and related fields to examine the complex relationships between military-themed videogames and real-world conflict, and to consider how videogames might deal with history, memory, and conflict in alternative ways. It asks: What is the role of videogames in the formation and negotiation of cultural memory of past wars? How do game narratives and designs position the gaming subject in relation to history, war and militarism? And how far do critical, anti-war/peace games offer an alternative or challenge to mainstream commercial titles?

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.

This article considers larger methodological questions of what political work is undertaken when scholars engage in postcolonial critiques of video games within academic intellectual frameworks. What is postcolonial game studies, and what is its purpose, within the context of larger issues of inclusion, representation, diversity, and the challenging of hegemonic power structures? After surveying some of the key literature in postcolonial game studies, the author provides critical frameworks for understanding the means by which these approaches have largely been excluded from video game studies, and their crucial function in operating against the grain of profit and innovation-driven discourses in games. This work is the extension of a larger discussion of inclusion, diversity, and tolerance discourse within the liberal academy, and particularly the functions of postcolonial, postmodern and other critical cultural scholarly interventions. In this article, the author argues for a postcolonial approach to game studies, but one that refuses to be reduced to an institutional cultural labor of due diligence, or according to Slavoj Žižek’s term, a ‘culturalization of politics’. Through the work of Stuart Hall and Sara Ahmed on intellectual diversity work within the context of large systems and academic institutions, this article asserts that the perception that critical theorizations (like postcolonial game studies) exert pressure on efficiency and innovation is greatly outweighed by the rich toolkits they bring to video games as maturing cultural forms.

As a media form entwined in the U.S. military-industrial complex, video games continue to celebrate imperialist imagery and Western-centric narratives of the great white explorer (Breger, 2008; Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009; Geyser & Tshalabala, 2011; Mukherjee, 2016). While much ink has been spilt on the detrimental effects of colonial imagery on those it objectifies and dehumanises, the question is why these games still get made, and what mechanisms are at work in the enjoyment of empire-themed play experiences. To explore this question, this article develops the concept of ‘casual empire’, suggesting that the wish to play games as a casual pastime expedites the incidental circulation of imperialist ideology. Three examples – Resident Evil V (2009), The Conquest: Colonization (2015) and Playing History: Slave Trade (2013) – are used to demonstrate the production and consumption of casual empire across multiple platforms, genres and player bases. Following a brief contextualisation of postcolonial (game) studies, this article addresses casual design, by which I understand game designers’ casual reproduction of inferential racism (Hall, 1995) for the sake of entertainment. I then look at casual play, and players’ attitudes to games as rational commodities continuing a history of commodity racism (McClintock, 1995). Finally, the article investigates the casual involvement of formalist game studies in the construction of imperial values. These three dimensions of the casual – design, play and academia – make up the three pillars of the casual empire that must be challenged to undermine video games’ neocolonialist praxis.

Games face a crisis of diversity in both their content and in the industry itself. The inequalities that underlie these issues are heightened in the Global South. Addressing these issues will require a systemic decolonisation of games education in which future generations of industry professionals become critically engaged in their creative practice. Decolonisation requires the investigation and reconstruction of the ways knowledge is created and produced. To enable this, the curricula employed in teaching games requires close investigation and intervention. The difficulties of enabling access to knowledge when teaching games are exacerbated when seen in light of the need for decolonisation. Situated in a South African context, this article investigates the first-year core course ‘Key Concepts in Game Design’ offered at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. It outlines the challenges games education faces in South Africa and takes stock of the state of the course and of the perceptions of students enrolled in it. It demonstrates that the course curriculum requires increased Africanisation and the establishment of common play practices. Finally, it highlights the importance of focusing on the development of critical game literacies as part of the decolonising project.

"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.

To date, game studies has largely undertheorized the co-production of postcolonial stories, exploration, and mapping in games. Furthermore, as has been noted before (Carr, 2006), the work that has been done on postcolonialism and play so far often leaves the player out of the equation, even sometimes as a theoretical construct. Yet player experience is crucial to understanding such games, as narratives are not only built on the ‘master’ level of game mechanics, but also through the personal stories players processually (Ash, 2009; Thrift, 2008) develop through their journey of touring and mapping, thereby developing spatial stories (De Certeau, 1984; Jenkins, 2004; Lammes, 2009) that may present us with conflicting spatio-temporal accounts. Through a comparative and collaborative auto-ethnographic analysis of Civilization VI (Sid Meier, 2016) – a turn-based strategy game – we want to push this discussion further and improve our theoretical understanding and analytical purchase of the triad relation between narrative and postcolonialism in games, thereby contributing to the field of postcolonial theory and game studies. Drawing on postcolonial geography, science and technology studies (STS), non-representational theory and game studies, we argue that games, through their playful, explorative and emergent qualities, are a powerful means of rethinking and reimagining colonial (hi)stories in this postcolonial era (Lammes, 2009, 2010) including issues of spatio-temporality, cartography and the hybrid relation between women and machines.

Burn the Boards (Causa Creations, 2015) portrays the life of an Indian worker who recycles electronic waste in a precarious environment. Phone Story (Molleindustria, 2011) simulates the journey and process of production and consumption of mobile phones, from Congo and China to Pakistan. Whereas Phone Story is described as ‘an educational game’ that addresses the player directly as a consumer, Burn the Boards is a resource management puzzle that creates compassion through role playing. These games bring to the fore a hidden reality of the everyday that is ingrained in historical relationships and power dynamics, drawing attention to what Michael Rothberg has recognized as ‘exploitation in an age of globalized neo-liberal capitalism’ (2014: iv).  This article explores how these games denounce the smartphone industry by using that same technology. For this purpose, we refer to Game Studies theory on procedural rhetoric; values and ethics; and the role of the player, combined with questions of (neo)colonization, globalization, and neoliberalism drawn from Postcolonial Studies. Our analysis shows the complicity of users and their confrontation with the extreme vulnerability of others, emphasizing how the coloniality of power works in our global consumer society. Thus we study the power relationships described and established by these games, the affective reactions which they seek to trigger, and their potential to transform players from passive observers into ethical players and consumers.

This article comes out of a longer project looking at digital commemorations of slave rebellion. In this excerpt from that work, the author considers the issues at stake in videogamic representations of colonial Saint Domingue and its denizens, particularly for their depiction of the prehistory of the Haitian Revolution. In two mainstream videogames, both part of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, the history of Saint Domingue, its legacy of slave resistance, and the Haitian Revolution are made into fodder for an interactive entertainment experience that intervenes in and reshapes history in a complex manner. There are several issues at stake, which the author focuses on exclusively in terms of the commodification of Saint Domingue. First, the games place the history of slave revolt into the hands of game players of diverse ancestry, allowing for a redistribution of ownership over narratives of emancipation and empowerment. Second, the games identify themselves as tampering with history, and their mélange of fictional characters and real personages seems to risk rewriting the history of Saint Domingue’s legacy of slave revolt and—by extension—of the Haitian Revolution itself. Given recent events in the United States, and increased attention to strategies of black resistance such as the Black Lives Matter movement, it seems all the more imperative that our depiction of slave revolts in popular culture be handled with care. And yet, the author finds a subversive maneuver visible in the games: the use of untranslated language, especially Haitian Kreyol, may work to preserve and limit the player’s mastery over these histories. This article provides a tour of this complex territory of digital Saint Domingue.

Gaming Representation' offers a timely and interdisciplinary call for greater inclusivity in video games. The issue of equality transcends the current focus in the field of Game Studies on code, materiality, and platforms. Journalists and bloggers have begun to hold the digital game industry and culture accountable for the discrimination routinely endured by female gamers, queer gamers, and gamers of color. Video game developers are responding to these critiques, but scholarly discussion of representation in games has lagged behind. Contributors to this volume examine portrayals of race, gender, and sexuality in a range of games, from casuals like Diner Dash, to indies like Journey and The Binding of Isaac, to mainstream games from the Grand Theft Auto, BioShock, Spec Ops, The Last of Us, and Max Payne franchises. Arguing that representation and identity function as systems in games that share a stronger connection to code and platforms than it may first appear, 'Gaming Representation' pushes gaming scholarship to new levels of inquiry, theorizing, and imagination.

The in-depth, diverse, and accessible essays in Queer Game Studies use queerness to challenge the ideas that have dominated gaming discussions. This volume reveals the capacious albeit underappreciated communities that are making, playing, and studying queer games, demonstrating the centrality of LGBTQ issues to the gamer world and establishing an alternative lens for examining this increasingly important culture.

Game studies has been an understudied area within the emerging field of digital media and religion. Video games can reflect, reject, or reconfigure traditionally held religious ideas and often serve as sources for the production of religious practices and ideas. This collection of essays presents a broad range of influential methodological approaches that illuminate how and why video games shape the construction of religious beliefs and practices, and also situates such research within the wider discourse on how digital media intersect with the religious worlds of the 21st century. Each chapter discusses a particular method and its theoretical background, summarizes existing research, and provides a practical case study that demonstrates how the method specifically contributes to the wider study of video games and religion. Featuring contributions from leading and emerging scholars of religion and digital gaming, this book will be an invaluable resource for scholars in the areas of digital culture, new media, religious studies, and game studies across a wide range of disciplines.

Transformation and the decolonization of the curriculum, modes of teaching, and classroomare key concerns in South African Higher Education. In game design education this need is exacerbatedby the slow pace of diversification in both academia and the industry.This paper presents a close analysis of interventions undertaken into an introductory game design course to address the difficultiesof diversification across racial, genderand economic divides. The results of the interventions are assessed, and recommendations for future adjustments to the course in aid curricular decolonization is are made.

Muslim members of the video game industry discuss the current state of Muslim representation within video games. This includes current problems with the way Muslims are represented and potential solutions. Our panelists come from all sides of the industry. From AAA, to indie, the panelists all have a unique voice and angle they would like to bring to the discussion. All panelists have grown up Muslim in western countries and have had to deal with certain adversities and challenges. It's through that experience that the panelists want to bring a lively discussion, backed with personal accounts and sources, that is not only engaging, but educational.