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

Virtual History examines many of the most popular historical video games released over the last decade and explores their portrayal of history. The book looks at the motives and perspectives of game designers and marketers, as well as the societal expectations addressed, through contingency and determinism, economics, the environment, culture, ethnicity, gender, and violence. Approaching videogames as a compelling art form that can simultaneously inform and mislead, the book considers the historical accuracy of videogames, while also exploring how they depict the underlying processes of history and highlighting their strengths as tools for understanding history. The first survey of the historical content and approach of popular videogames designed with students in mind, it argues that games can depict history and engage players with it in a useful way, encouraging the reader to consider the games they play from a different perspective. Supported by examples and screenshots that contextualize the discussion, Virtual History is a useful resource for students of media and world history as well as those focusing on the portrayal of history through the medium of videogames.

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.

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.

This article offers a critical analysis of Matthew Baren’s 2018 film Extravaganza, a documentary about drag scenes in Shanghai. By focusing on some drag performers represented in this film, in tandem with an examination of the social and industry contexts of the film, as well as my interviews with the filmmaker and performers, I problematise the gender identity of the performers and the national identity of the film. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of ‘becoming’ and Song Hwee Lim’s discussion of ‘trans’, I propose to think about certain modes of transnational production with the critical concept of ‘becoming trans’. ‘Becoming trans’ offers a productive way of conceptualising new modes of ‘minor’ transnational cinematic connections in a globalised world without having to resort to identity politics.

Peut-on envisager une autre histoire du jeu vidéo ?

Artists and cultural practitioners from Indigenous communities around the world are increasingly in the international spotlight. As museums and curators race to consider the planetary reach of their art collections and exhibitions, this publication draws upon the challenges faced today by cultural workers, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to engage meaningfully and ethically with the histories, presents and futures of Indigenous cultural practices and world-views. Sixteen Indigenous voices convene to consider some of the most burning questions surrounding this field. How will novel methodologies of word/voice-crafting be constituted to empower the Indigenous discourses of the future? Is it sufficient to expand the Modernist art-historical canon through the politics of inclusion? Is this expansion a new form of colonisation, or does it foster the cosmopolitan thought that Indigenous communities have always inhabited? To whom does the much talked-of 'Indigenous Turn' belong? Does it represent a hegemonic project of introspection and revision in the face of today's ecocidal, genocidal and existential crises?"--Page 4 de la couverture. Autres auteurs/titres:edited by Katya García-Antón ; contributors, Daniel Browning, Kabita Chakma, Megan Cope, Santosh Kumar Das, Hannah Donnelly, Léuli Māzyār Luna'i Eshrāghi, David Garneau, Biung Ismahasan, Kimberley Moulton, Máret Ánne Sara, Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, Irene Snarby, Ánde Somby, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Prashanta Tripura, Sontosh Bikash Tripura.

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.

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.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including where and how queerness is produced, the use of paratexts to expand and stop queer readings of films, and queers' non-reliance on mainstream media to produce queer stories.

Resident Evil 5is a zombie game made by Capcom, featuring a White Americanprotagonist and set in Africa. This article argues that approaching this as a Japanesegame reveals aspects of a Japanese racial and colonial social imaginary that are missedif this context of production is ignored. In terms of race, the game presents hybridracial subjectivities that can be related to Japanese perspectives of Blackness andWhiteness, where these terms are two poles of difference and identity throughwhich an essentialized Japanese identity is constructed in what Iwabuchi calls“strategic hybridism.” In terms of colonialism, the game echoes structures of Japa-nese colonialism through which Japanese colonialism is obliquely memorialized and a“normal” Japanese global subjectivity can be performed.

Much has been written about Nina Simone’s song “Mississippi Goddam” because it lyrically achieves the political consciousness of the embattled community whose experiences and energy it intends to speak to, through, and for. With its curse words, impatient tone, and energetic rhythm, it could never be mistaken for the traditional, Christian-inflected civil rights dirge. “Alabama’s got me so upset,” the chorus complains. “Tennessee made me lose my rest, and,” as if its atrocities need not be spelled out, “every body knows about Mississippi, goddam!” The song was banned from radio airplay but still became part of the civil rights sound

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.

"Si tous les groupes humains sont touchés par la violence à grande échelle, les femmes la subissent sous des formes spécifiques, comme en témoignent les assassinats systémiques des femmes et des filles autochtones en Amérique du Nord et en Amérique latine, ou encore les nombreux conflits armés (Syrie, Lybie, Birmanie, entre autres) dans lesquels le viol est érigé en arme de guerre. Les deux phénomènes peuvent d'ailleurs se recouper puisque l'un des tout premiers féminicides à avoir été qualifié et documenté comme tel en Amérique est celui ayant été perpétré contre les femmes mayas durant la guerre civile guatémaltèque au début des années 1980. Cependant, les femmes ne sont pas seulement les victimes de la violence de masse, puisqu'elles sont aussi les premières à témoigner et dénoncer pour faire barrage à cette violence. Ce numéro hors-série regroupe des articles et des projets visuels qui décrivent et analysent la violence de masse liée au genre. Il s'agit de réfléchir sur la manière de représenter cette violence et d'en témoigner, d'autant plus qu'elle est bien souvent rendue invisible et inaudible par le patriarcat, le colonialisme, les intérêts politiques en présence ou l'impéritie de l'État."