Full Description
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.
Contents
Introduction.- Part I. Gamer Culture.- 1. Bullet Hell: The Globalized Growth of Danmaku Games and the Digital Culture of High Scores and World Records; Mark Johnson.- 2. The Contents Production Fields and Doujin Game Developers in Japan: Creation of Various Game Expressions driven by Non-economic Rewards; Nobushige Hichibe.- 3. From Pioneering Amateur to Tamed Co-operator: Tamed Desires and Untamed Resistance in the Cosplay Scene in China; Anthony Fung.- Part II. Gender and Class.- 4. Making Masculinity: Articulations of Gender and Japaneseness in Japanese RPGs and Machinima; Lucy Glasspool5. Living the Simple Life: Defining Agricultural-simulation Games through Empire; Fan Zhang.- Part III. Colonialism and Transnationalism.- 6. Virtual Colonialism: Japan's Others in SoulCalibur; Rachael Hutchinson.- 7. A Chinese Cyber Diaspora: Contact and Identity Negotiation in a Game World; Holin Lin and Chuen-Tsai Sun.- List of Contibutors.- Index.
