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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.

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.

The potential of video games as storytelling media and the deep involvement that players feel when they are part of the story needs to be analysed vis-a-vis other narrative media. This book underscores the importance of video games as narratives and offers a framework for analysing the many-ended stories that often redefine real and virtual lives.

The Prince of Persia in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Ubisoft 2003) is ever reluctant to accept an ignominious end to his story, whether after a fall from atop a tower or after being killed by the sand demons. Every time he fails, the Prince exclaims ‘no no, that is not how it happened at all’. Like the videogame player controlling his avatar, the Prince wants the game sequence to be reloaded and replayed; only he appeals to an entity that the player often does not notice – memory. The Prince justifies the reload because he does not remember the events as they happen and he hankers for a return to a ‘true’ memory. There is an implicit problem here, however. We cannot ask the Prince what he remembers and during the game the player ends up remembering the ‘false’ memories, albeit often unconsciously. To progress further in the game, the player needs to have learned from his mistakes or, in other words, to have remembered the previous iterations of gameplay. According to the Prince’s memory, these failed instances of gameplay never happened; yet they happened in the gameplay and are remembered by players.  Often, many players share the same experience and this exists as a shared memory. Players might also be drawing on collectively recorded memories – the written step by step guidelines in a walkthrough and the comments left by players on various gaming forums or wikis.  What the player remembers is also often influential in determining the in-game identity of the player. Videogames themselves, such as Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft 2008) and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (GSC Gameworld 2007) have started self-reflexively exploring memory in their plots. Therefore, it will be useful to move the study of memory in videogames out of its relative obscurity and explore its multi-layered complexity.

This book focuses on the almost entirely neglected treatment of empire and colonialism in videogames. From its inception in the nineties, Game Studies has kept away from these issues despite the early popularity of videogame franchises such as Civilization and Age of Empire. This book examines the complex ways in which some videogames construct conceptions of spatiality, political systems, ethics and society that are often deeply imbued with colonialism. Moving beyond questions pertaining to European and American gaming cultures, this book addresses issues that relate to a global audience ? including, especially, the millions who play videogames in the formerly colonised countries, seeking to make a timely intervention by creating a larger awareness of global cultural issues in videogame research. Addressing a major gap in Game Studies research, this book will connect to discourses of post-colonial theory at large and thereby, provide another entry-point for this new medium of digital communication into larger Humanities discourses.

What are the implications of freedom and agency when a player exercises agency to prevent another player or a non-player character fromacting freely? Such a scenario, taken to an extreme, would be that of slavery and in turn, would raise questions about the nature of freedom itself. Video games have recently begun to address questions of slavery in earnest although academic discussions on games have not yet caught up: the presence of slavers in Fallout 3, the portrayal of racism in Bioshock Infinite (Irrational Games 2014) and the direct depiction of the Caribbean slave trade in Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry (Ubisoft 2013) are extremely appropriate cases in point. This article compares the representation of slavery in video games to that of slave narratives in earlier media in order to examine how effectively digital games are able to convey the horrors of slavery as a human condition and what they can teach about the notion of human freedom and agency per se.

This book examines the local, regional and transnational contexts of video games through a focused analysis on gaming communities, the ways game design regulates gender and class relations, and the impacts of colonization on game design. The critical interest in games as a cultural artifact is covered by a wide range of interdisciplinary work. To highlight the social impacts of games the first section of the book covers the systems built around high score game competitions, the development of independent game design communities, and the formation of fan communities and cosplay. The second section of the book offers a deeper analysis of game structures, gender and masculinity, and the economic constraints of empire that are built into game design. The final section offers a macro perspective on transnational and colonial discourses built into the cultural structures of East Asian game play

As in historical accounts, empire in video games too is concerned with the acquisition of geographical space. Like the splash of red marking the stretch of the British Empire on Victorian world maps, video games that let one play at empire are also obsessed with stamping the imperialist authority of ‘your’ nation on their in-game maps. Video game empires too work on the necessary logic of spatial expansion connected with which is the necessity to remove the ‘fog’ which prevents the player’s ‘line of sight’ from accessing information about surrounding areas. The focus on cartography and surveying in British Raj India is a useful comparison. Although much scholarship exists around the representations of the spatiality of Empire in more traditional media, there is little that addresses the video game representations of Empire. This article is about the representation and experience of space in conceptions of Empire vis-à-vis in empire-building video games, as understood in terms of both cartography and the lived experience of space. It argues that although empire-building video games are largely framed within the western imperialist discourses, the very nature of gameplay itself challenges these set notions – in a way remediating the ambiguity and anxieties of the representations of empire and its spatial constructs in earlier media.

Video games have become a global industry, and their history spans dozens of national industries where foreign imports compete with domestic productions, legitimate industry contends with piracy, and national identity faces the global marketplace. This volume describes video game history and culture across every continent, with essays covering areas as disparate and far-flung as Argentina and Thailand, Hungary and Indonesia, Iran and Ireland.

Video games are inherently transnational by virtue of their industrial, textual, and player practices. This collection includes essays from scholars from eight countries analyzing game cultures on macro- and micro-levels and investigates the growing transnational nature of digital play

Game Studies is a rapidly growing area of contemporary scholarship, yet volumes in the area have tended to focus on more general issues. With Playing with the Past, game studies is taken to the next level by offering a specific and detailed analysis of one area of digital game play -- the representation of history. The collection focuses on the ways in which gamers engage with, play with, recreate, subvert, reverse and direct the historical past, and what effect this has on the ways in which we go about constructing the present or imagining a future. What can World War Two strategy games teach us about the reality of this complex and multifaceted period? Do the possibilities of playing with the past change the way we understand history? If we embody a colonialist's perspective to conquer 'primitive' tribes in Colonization, does this privilege a distinct way of viewing history as benevolent intervention over imperialist expansion? The fusion of these two fields allows the editors to pose new questions about the ways in which gamers interact with their game worlds. Drawing these threads together, the collection concludes by asking whether digital games - which represent history or historical change - alter the way we, today, understand history itself.

In this chapter, the creation of a value chain during the process of digital games development in Turkey is discussed using a critical political economy approach. This study claims to be the first of its kind that intends to examine the topography of the digital game industry in Turkey and gives a brief history and describes the present status of digital games production in Turkey. All the components of a value chain, namely, the industrial structure and development process, publishing and licensing, distribution and marketing structure, labor force, legal regulations, and governmental policies will be considered in that order to map out the present topography of the industry. The final part of the study will deal with possible solutions for further development in the industry. At this point, the study stresses the fact that all components of the value chain must be performed uninterrupted if the actors in Turkey’s digital game industry desire to position themselves as “producers” in global or local markets.

The issue of identity formation when playing an avatar in a video game has recently become perceived as both increasingly complex and contentious. Game critics argue both for and against the apparent seamlessness in the identity formation in video games. However, while the case against seamlessness builds up with respect to other gaming genres, first-person shooters (FPS) are often still singled out as best representing this first-person identification whereby players were supposed to be totally immersed in their avatars while they played the game. In the light of recent research, this chapter builds on earlier research to reveal further problems in assuming a seamless merging of identity even in the FPS. It argues that the very conception of subjectivity has always been problematized through the FPS, and that the genre itself self-consciously keeps pointing this out. As an example of the latter, the chapter focuses on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video games to show how FPS games prompt players to question their in-game identity(ies) because the playing subject, instead of being a fixed entity, is hard-wired into the process of exploration that constitutes gameplay.

From Nausicaa to Sailor Moon, understanding girl heroines of manga and anime within otaku culture.

This collection explores the relationship between digital gaming and its cultural context by focusing on the burgeoning Asia-Pacific region. Encompassing key locations for global gaming production and consumption such as Japan, China, and South Korea, as well as increasingly significant sites including Australia and Singapore, the region provides divergent examples of the role of gaming as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Drawing from micro ethnographic studies of specific games and gaming locales to macro political economy analyses of techno-nationalisms and trans-cultural flows, this collection provides an interdisciplinary model for thinking through the politics of gaming production, representation, and consumption in the region.

This chapter examines the relationship between culture, economics and policy within the creative industries (which for the purposes of this paper, are assumed to be equivalent to the cultural industries), and their manifestation in Asia. Addressing any one of these three issues is a challenge in itself, but addressing all three of them together raises the complexity even further. Early writers on the “creative economy” have noted how it works differently from the traditional economy (Florida 2002; Howkins 2001).1 Culture is vitally important to understanding how creative industries develop, but the role of culture in shaping national competitive advantage is not that clear. The same can be said for policy, and a discussion of the triad can be quite convoluted. Having said that, all three levels are still very relevant to the proper description of a creative industry — as I will show in this chapter.This paper attempts to address this triad of issues primarily with a production-and-innovation-oriented view of industrial organisation, bringing in creativity, culture and policy where possible. I shall do this primarily through the lens of one sector in particular — the video games industry — in which Asia has been investing heavily lately, and in which Japan has been an early leader. I will also provide a limited focus on the animation sector for comparative purposes. I will first provide a summary of how creative production in video games occurs in the US, followed by an examination of how Asian patterns compare. In particular, I am interested in whether individual and industrial level creativity differs in Asia. Within Asia, more detailed cases of the Chinese online games industry and the Philippine animation industry will be discussed, but relevant observations are also drawn from general knowledge and a literature review of Japan, Korea and Singapore, as well as interviews which corroborate those observations.