[PDF] Race Culture And The Video Game Industry eBook

Author : Sam Srauy
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 12,74 MB
Release : 2024
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781032398068

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A detailed and much needed examination of how systemic racism in the US shaped the culture, market logic, and production practices of video game developers from the 1970s until the 2010s. Offering historical analysis of the video game industries (console, PC, and indie) from a critical, political economic lens, this book specifically examines the history of how such practices created, enabled, and maintained racism through the imagined 'gamer.' The book explores how the cultural and economic landscape of the United States developed from the 1970s through the 2000s and explains how racist attitudes are reflected and maintained in the practices of video games production. These practices constitute a 'Vicious Circuit' that normalizes racism and the centrality of an imagined gamer identity. It also explores how the industry, from indie game developers to larger profit-driven companies, responded to changing attitudes in the 2010s, where racism and lack of diversity in games was frequently being noted. The book concludes by offering potential solutions to combat this 'Vicious Circuit'. A vital contribution to the study of video games that will be welcomed by students and scholars in the fields of media studies, cultural studies, game studies, critical race studies, and beyond.

Author : Sam Srauy
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 38,91 MB
Release : 2024-04-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1040018548

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A detailed and much needed examination of how systemic racism in the US shaped the culture, market logic, and production practices of video game developers from the 1970s until the 2010s. Offering historical analysis of the video game industries (console, PC, and indie) from a critical, political economic lens, this book specifically examines the history of how such practices created, enabled, and maintained racism through the imagined ‘gamer.’ The book explores how the cultural and economic landscape of the United States developed from the 1970s through the 2000s and explains how racist attitudes are reflected and maintained in the practices of video games production. These practices constitute a 'Vicious Circuit' that normalizes racism and the centrality of an imagined gamer identity. It also explores how the industry, from indie game developers to larger profit-driven companies, responded to changing attitudes in the 2010s, where racism and lack of diversity in games was frequently being noted. The book concludes by offering potential solutions to combat this ‘Vicious Circuit’. A vital contribution to the study of video games that will be welcomed by students and scholars in the fields of media studies, cultural studies, game studies, critical race studies, and beyond.

Author : Soraya Murray
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 47,20 MB
Release : 2017-10-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1786732505

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Today over half of all American households own a dedicated game console and gaming industry profits trump those of the film industry worldwide. In this book, Soraya Murray moves past the technical discussions of games and offers a fresh and incisive look at their cultural dimensions. She critically explores blockbusters likeThe Last of Us, Metal Gear Solid, Spec Ops: The Line, Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed to show how they are deeply entangled with American ideological positions and contemporary political, cultural and economic conflicts.As quintessential forms of visual material in the twenty-first century, mainstream games both mirror and spur larger societal fears, hopes and dreams, and even address complex struggles for recognition. This book examines both their elaborately constructed characters and densely layered worlds, whose social and environmental landscapes reflect ideas about gender, race, globalisation and urban life. In this emerging field of study, Murray provides novel theoretical approaches to discussing games and playable media as culture. Demonstrating that games are at the frontline of power relations, she reimagines how we see them - and more importantly how we understand them.

Author : Jennifer Malkowski
Publisher :
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 14,74 MB
Release : 2017
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9780253026477

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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.

Author : Soraya Murray
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 22,82 MB
Release : 2017-10-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 178672250X

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Today over half of all American households own a dedicated game console and gaming industry profits trump those of the film industry worldwide. In this book, Soraya Murray moves past the technical discussions of games and offers a fresh and incisive look at their cultural dimensions. She critically explores blockbusters likeThe Last of Us, Metal Gear Solid, Spec Ops: The Line, Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed to show how they are deeply entangled with American ideological positions and contemporary political, cultural and economic conflicts.As quintessential forms of visual material in the twenty-first century, mainstream games both mirror and spur larger societal fears, hopes and dreams, and even address complex struggles for recognition. This book examines both their elaborately constructed characters and densely layered worlds, whose social and environmental landscapes reflect ideas about gender, race, globalisation and urban life. In this emerging field of study, Murray provides novel theoretical approaches to discussing games and playable media as culture. Demonstrating that games are at the frontline of power relations, she reimagines how we see them - and more importantly how we understand them.

Author : Jennifer Malkowski
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 25,70 MB
Release : 2017-07-03
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 0253026601

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Recent years have seen an increase in public attention to identity and representation in video games, including journalists and bloggers holding the digital game industry 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 far behind. Gaming Representation examines 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, the contributors to this volume push gaming scholarship to new levels of inquiry, theorizing, and imagination.

Author : Aaron Trammell
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 26,97 MB
Release : 2023-04-18
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 1479818437

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The story of white masculinity in geek culture through a history of hobby gaming Geek culture has never been more mainstream than it is now, with the ever-increasing popularity of events like Comic Con, transmedia franchising of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, market dominance of video and computer games, and the resurgence of board games such as Settlers of Catan and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Yet even while the comic book and hobby shops where the above are consumed today are seeing an influx of BIPOC gamers, they remain overwhelmingly white, male, and heterosexual. The Privilege of Play contends that in order to understand geek identity’s exclusionary tendencies, we need to know the history of the overwhelmingly white communities of tabletop gaming hobbyists that preceded it. It begins by looking at how the privileged networks of model railroad hobbyists in the early twentieth century laid a cultural foundation for the scenes that would grow up around war games, role-playing games, and board games in the decades ahead. These early networks of hobbyists were able to thrive because of how their leisure interests and professional ambitions overlapped. Yet despite the personal and professional strides made by individuals in these networks, the networks themselves remained cloistered and homogeneous—the secret playgrounds of white men. Aaron Trammell catalogs how gaming clubs composed of lonely white men living in segregated suburbia in the sixties, seventies and eighties developed strong networks through hobbyist publications and eventually broke into the mainstream. He shows us how early hobbyists considered themselves outsiders, and how the denial of white male privilege they established continues to define the socio-technical space of geek culture today. By considering the historical role of hobbyists in the development of computer technology, game design, and popular media, The Privilege of Play charts a path toward understanding the deeply rooted structural obstacles that have stymied a more inclusive community. The Privilege of Play concludes by considering how digital technology has created the conditions for a new and more diverse generation of geeks to take center stage.

Author : Kishonna L. Gray
Publisher : University of Washington Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 21,85 MB
Release : 2018-11-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0295744197

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From #Gamergate to the 2016 election, to the daily experiences of marginalized perspectives, gaming is entangled with mainstream cultures of systematic exploitation and oppression. Whether visible in the persistent color line that shapes the production, dissemination, and legitimization of dominant stereotypes within the industry itself, or in the dehumanizing representations often found within game spaces, many video games perpetuate injustice and mirror the inequities and violence that permeate society as a whole. Drawing from groundbreaking research on counter and oppositional gaming and from popular games such as World of Warcraft and Tomb Raider, Woke Gaming examines resistance to problematic spaces of violence, discrimination, and microaggressions in gaming culture. The contributors of these essays seek to identify strategies to detox gaming culture and orient players and gamers toward progressive ends. From Anna Anthropy�s Keep Me Occupied to Momo Pixel�s Hair, Nah, video games can reveal the power and potential for marginalized communities to resist, and otherwise challenge dehumanizing representations inside and outside of game spaces. In a moment of #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, and efforts to transform current political realities, Woke Gaming illustrates the power and potential of video games to foster change and become a catalyst for social justice.

Author : Walt Williams
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 43,57 MB
Release : 2017-09-19
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1501129953

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"An award-winning videogame writer offers a rare behind-the-scenes look inside the gaming industry, and expands on how games are transformed from mere toys into meaningful, artistic experiences"--

Author : Amanda C. Cote
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 32,25 MB
Release : 2020-09-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1479802204

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Interviews with female gamers about structural sexism across the gaming landscape When the Nintendo Wii was released in 2006, it ushered forward a new era of casual gaming in which video games appealed to not just the stereotypical hardcore male gamer, but also to a much broader, more diverse audience. However, the GamerGate controversy six years later, and other similar public incidents since, laid bare the internalized misogyny and gender stereotypes in the gaming community. Today, even as women make up nearly half of all gamers, sexist assumptions about the what and how of women’s gaming are more actively enforced. In Gaming Sexism, Amanda C. Cote explores the video game industry and its players to explain this contradiction, how it affects female gamers, and what it means in terms of power and gender equality. Across in-depth interviews with women-identified gamers, Cote delves into the conflict between diversification and resistance to understand their impact on gaming, both casual and “core” alike. From video game magazines to male reactions to female opponents, she explores the shifting expectations about who gamers are, perceived changes in gaming spaces, and the experiences of female gamers amidst this gendered turmoil. While Cote reveals extensive, persistent problems in gaming spaces, she also emphasizes the power of this motivated, marginalized audience, and draws on their experiences to explore how structural inequalities in gaming spaces can be overcome. Gaming Sexism is a well-timed investigation of equality, power, and control over the future of technology.