Pub Date : 2022-06-14DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2022.2083206
Alex Thomas
ABSTRACT The animated show Craig of the Creek is an important source of animated environmental imagery for children as its main characters and plot provide the opportunity to discuss both race and environmental issues. However, these shows often only show one view of environmental degradation and ignore issues like environmental racism and urban housing issues. The history of racial environmental innocence and the exclusion of people of color need to be considered to fully understand the benefits and shortcomings of the show’s narrative. I argue that while Craig of the Creek resists some notions of racial innocence, the show still promotes a mainly romanticized, commodified view of nature. To do this, I provide a close ecocritical analysis utilizing discourse analysis and environmental racism theory to explain how well the show includes social inequality. I conclude that while the cartoon acknowledges pollution and the dangers of nature, it largely ignores the complicated relationship between race and the environment and reproduces the idea of the environment being nothing more than a commodity. It glosses over the complicated history that both people of color and indigenous people have with nature ownership and is passing on an unfortunate lesson to children viewing the program.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2022.2080847
K. Bergstrom
ABSTRACT In this article I examine game studies’ role in training students who go on to work in or study the games industry. Using a feminist lens to critique the leaky pipeline metaphor, I discuss how this metaphor assists in a collective amnesia that allows game studies to ignore the larger culture problems associated with games and the industry that makes them. In its place, I offer up Neil deGrasse Tyson’s use of “blood on the tracks” to describe how some people are actively pushed out of our field. As a way forward, I suggest that by reimagining how we teach game studies’ genesis point, it will offer up the potential for a brighter, more diverse future for our field.
在这篇文章中，我将探讨游戏研究在培养那些继续在游戏行业工作或学习的学生中的作用。我用女权主义的视角来批判“管道泄漏”这个比喻，讨论了这个比喻是如何导致集体失忆的，它让游戏研究忽略了与游戏和游戏制作行业相关的更大的文化问题。取而代之的是，我用尼尔·德格拉斯·泰森(Neil deGrasse Tyson)的“血迹斑斑”(blood on the tracks)来形容一些人是如何被主动赶出我们的领域的。作为一种前进的方式，我建议通过重新设想我们如何教授游戏研究的起源点，它将为我们的领域提供一个更光明，更多样化的未来。
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Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2022.2080845
Amanda L. L. Cullen, Rainforest Scully-Blaker, Ian Larson, Kathryn Brewster, Ryan Rose Aceae, William Dunkel
ABSTRACT As members of the Critical Approaches to Technology and the Social (CATS) Lab at UC Irvine, we are particularly motivated by this special issue’s call to action. As a collective of interdisciplinary students at various stages in relevant degrees, we are the future of game studies. As such, this question strikes us not as one for speculation, but as a space to commit a set of shared values necessary for game studies to have a future—one that is more equitable, more sustainable, and more transparent. We argue that working towards this future will require an increased commitment to critiquing the relationship between industry and game-making practice; examining the sociopolitical landscape of both game culture and the world; and an attention to the institution of the university itself. Imagining the future in this way is a necessary practice, and a core component to scholarly critique. When we imagine the future, we can work both towards and against it. We do this work as researchers, but also as streamers, makers, critics, and players, each of whom brings our perspective to this special issue to articulate our vision of a critical game studies that strives for equity, sustainability, and self-reflexivity.
{"title":"Game studies, futurity, and necessity (or the game studies regarded as still to come)","authors":"Amanda L. L. Cullen, Rainforest Scully-Blaker, Ian Larson, Kathryn Brewster, Ryan Rose Aceae, William Dunkel","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2022.2080845","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2022.2080845","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As members of the Critical Approaches to Technology and the Social (CATS) Lab at UC Irvine, we are particularly motivated by this special issue’s call to action. As a collective of interdisciplinary students at various stages in relevant degrees, we are the future of game studies. As such, this question strikes us not as one for speculation, but as a space to commit a set of shared values necessary for game studies to have a future—one that is more equitable, more sustainable, and more transparent. We argue that working towards this future will require an increased commitment to critiquing the relationship between industry and game-making practice; examining the sociopolitical landscape of both game culture and the world; and an attention to the institution of the university itself. Imagining the future in this way is a necessary practice, and a core component to scholarly critique. When we imagine the future, we can work both towards and against it. We do this work as researchers, but also as streamers, makers, critics, and players, each of whom brings our perspective to this special issue to articulate our vision of a critical game studies that strives for equity, sustainability, and self-reflexivity.","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"186 1","pages":"201 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80647285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2022.2080846
S. Ganzon
ABSTRACT This paper argues for transculturality in critical examinations of diversity in player communities. Transculturality enriches discussions on intersectionality in games and fandom by challenging its default male whiteness and Eurocentricity, and acknowledging the presence of non-normative players who have always existed in game communities. Intersectional game studies is transcultural game studies.
{"title":"Towards intersectional and transcultural analysis in the examination of players and game fandoms","authors":"S. Ganzon","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2022.2080846","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2022.2080846","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper argues for transculturality in critical examinations of diversity in player communities. Transculturality enriches discussions on intersectionality in games and fandom by challenging its default male whiteness and Eurocentricity, and acknowledging the presence of non-normative players who have always existed in game communities. Intersectional game studies is transcultural game studies.","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"29 1","pages":"221 - 229"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74563310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2022.2080851
Sarah Stang
ABSTRACT In this article I discuss close reading as a methodology for feminist game studies. Due to its centralization of the researcher’s own interpretations, close reading can be a particularly fruitful methodology for marginalized scholars discussing the ways games construct, position, and portray their own identities. However, this intimacy can also result in vulnerability, in part because reactionary and conservative members of the gaming community continue to insist that video games should be “just for fun” and push back against reading “too much” into them. This pushback has been directed in particularly hostile ways towards feminist critics and scholars who interpret game narratives or characters as misogynistic, homophobic, or racist. Yet, in order to make positive change happen, more feminist research on games needs to reach the broader public and intimate social justice-oriented close reading must become normalized rather than niche. In this sense, close reading can be both a methodology and a political stance.
{"title":"Too close, too intimate, and too vulnerable: close reading methodology and the future of feminist game studies","authors":"Sarah Stang","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2022.2080851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2022.2080851","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article I discuss close reading as a methodology for feminist game studies. Due to its centralization of the researcher’s own interpretations, close reading can be a particularly fruitful methodology for marginalized scholars discussing the ways games construct, position, and portray their own identities. However, this intimacy can also result in vulnerability, in part because reactionary and conservative members of the gaming community continue to insist that video games should be “just for fun” and push back against reading “too much” into them. This pushback has been directed in particularly hostile ways towards feminist critics and scholars who interpret game narratives or characters as misogynistic, homophobic, or racist. Yet, in order to make positive change happen, more feminist research on games needs to reach the broader public and intimate social justice-oriented close reading must become normalized rather than niche. In this sense, close reading can be both a methodology and a political stance.","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"58 1","pages":"230 - 238"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84789089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2022.2075025
S. Chess, M. Consalvo
ABSTRACT Game studies, as a subfield of media and/or communication studies, has occupied an odd place within critical media studies. Those who are invested in critical theory of video game studies understand the importance of the subfield, those who do not study or play video games tend to think of the topic as “other”—as distinct from other theoretical compartments of media studies work. Yet, as the games scholars in this invited issue explain, games are now a central component in the convergence of media content, media platforms and technologies, and media audiences. Theories and methods that help us understand games and their culture are therefore increasingly relevant to understanding wider media production and use. The goal with this special issue, therefore, was to offer a variety of approaches and specifics that would be helpful to scholars both within and beyond game studies.
{"title":"“The future of media studies is game studies”","authors":"S. Chess, M. Consalvo","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2022.2075025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2022.2075025","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Game studies, as a subfield of media and/or communication studies, has occupied an odd place within critical media studies. Those who are invested in critical theory of video game studies understand the importance of the subfield, those who do not study or play video games tend to think of the topic as “other”—as distinct from other theoretical compartments of media studies work. Yet, as the games scholars in this invited issue explain, games are now a central component in the convergence of media content, media platforms and technologies, and media audiences. Theories and methods that help us understand games and their culture are therefore increasingly relevant to understanding wider media production and use. The goal with this special issue, therefore, was to offer a variety of approaches and specifics that would be helpful to scholars both within and beyond game studies.","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"322 1","pages":"159 - 164"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80267690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2022.2080844
Aaron Trammell
ABSTRACT The past five years have seen the development of what Mukherjee, S. (2018. Playing subaltern: Video games and postcolonialism. Games and Culture, 13(5), 504–520) and Murray, S. (2018. The work of postcolonial game studies in the play of culture. Open Library of Humanities, 4(1), 1–25) (amongst others) term postcolonial game studies. Postcolonial game studies looks at how games represent colonial and postcolonial environments in the story worlds they present, and also considers how these games are consumed by players in postcolonial nations. Fittingly, it is a critique both of how games reproduce colonial tropes. In this essay, I argue that the work of decolonizing games requires that we also decolonize play. Here I shall argue that the foundational theories of play that game scholarship is predicated upon are built upon a racist and xenophobic binary that pits civilization against barbarism. This binary is a consequence of a white European canon of game studies scholarship that has supported a grand theory of play apprehended only through an etic lens. If we are to consider the future of game studies, I think we should work to decolonize play. Crucially, we must attend to how Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) play globally and consider the many other ways—beyond merely games—that this play is articulated.
在过去的五年里，Mukherjee, S. (2018.)玩低级游戏:电子游戏和后殖民主义。游戏与文化，13(5)，504-520)。文化游戏中的后殖民游戏研究。人文开放图书馆，4(1)，1 - 25)(除其他外)学期后殖民游戏研究。后殖民游戏研究着眼于游戏如何在故事世界中呈现殖民和后殖民环境，并考虑后殖民国家的玩家如何消费这些游戏。恰当地说，这是对游戏如何复制殖民比喻的一种批判。在这篇文章中，我认为去殖民化游戏的工作要求我们也去殖民化游戏。在这里，我想说的是，游戏学术所依据的基本理论是建立在种族主义和仇外的二元对立之上的，即文明与野蛮的对立。这种二元对立是欧洲白人游戏研究学术经典的结果，该经典支持一种仅通过客观视角来理解的宏大游戏理论。如果我们要考虑游戏研究的未来，我认为我们应该努力去殖民化游戏。至关重要的是，我们必须关注黑人、原住民和有色人种(BIPOC)是如何在全球范围内发挥作用的，并考虑到这种发挥作用的许多其他方式(不仅仅是游戏)。
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Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2022.2080849
Alexandrina Agloro
ABSTRACT Game design in systematically excluded communities offers a powerful framework for empowering communities. These findings are based upon The Resisters—an alternate reality game built with young people about social movement history in Providence, RI—and Vukuzenzele—a collaboration between an interactive media firm and an informal settlement non-governmental organization (NGO) in Cape Town, South Africa. In this article, I assert the value of game development as a process, the importance of considering collaborations with stakeholders, and the challenges and possibilities of intentional game design.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2022.2080850
Aleena Chia
ABSTRACT The production of videogames routinely uses automated techniques to generate content, rig animations, map light, and script behaviors. The automation of programming and artistic functions is increasingly baked into game engines that work with other software applications in 3D production ecosystems, which are laying the foundations for what is being pitched by platform companies as the future metaverse. Platform studies has analyzed automated decision-making through the politics of classification. Game studies has investigated engines such as Unreal and Unity as platform tools that consolidate power through asymmetries of interconnectivity and interoperability. This commentary discusses the automaticity of game engines as platform tools for designing and simulating interactive 3D worlds within and beyond games. Outlining the structuring force of game engines from game development and entertainment media to architecture, engineering, construction, and manufacturing, I speculate on the implications of engines for game workers and game studies.
{"title":"The metaverse, but not the way you think: game engines and automation beyond game development","authors":"Aleena Chia","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2022.2080850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2022.2080850","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The production of videogames routinely uses automated techniques to generate content, rig animations, map light, and script behaviors. The automation of programming and artistic functions is increasingly baked into game engines that work with other software applications in 3D production ecosystems, which are laying the foundations for what is being pitched by platform companies as the future metaverse. Platform studies has analyzed automated decision-making through the politics of classification. Game studies has investigated engines such as Unreal and Unity as platform tools that consolidate power through asymmetries of interconnectivity and interoperability. This commentary discusses the automaticity of game engines as platform tools for designing and simulating interactive 3D worlds within and beyond games. Outlining the structuring force of game engines from game development and entertainment media to architecture, engineering, construction, and manufacturing, I speculate on the implications of engines for game workers and game studies.","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"9 1","pages":"191 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89244524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2022.2080852
Tara Fickle, Christopher B. Patterson
ABSTRACT This article examines several genres of role-playing games in terms of their procedural logics of racial management as an attempt to understand how game logics can express varying and often contentious ways of enacting “diversity.” It argues that games themselves can help answer one of the most persistent questions about games today: “how do we make games more diverse?” We proceed by defining the racial logics—the “diversity rules”—structuring the Mass Effect series (BioWare, 2007–), Genshin Impact (miHoYo, 2020), and Divinity: Original Sin 2 (Larian Studios, 2017). These games respectively place the player in the role of multicultural manager, racial empath, and divine avatar. These games show us the many logics, strategies, and appropriations that can occur when diversity itself is treated not as a complex process toward building social justice, but as an obtainable asset, and as the sole win condition in making and selling a game. Attending to these racial logics can open paths to new disciplinary directions in game studies by pushing beyond established domestic boundaries, liberal multiculturalist definitions of diversity, and ultimately into revealing our regional attitudes and particular ways of defining and practicing “diversity.”
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