Synopses & Reviews
Video games are inherently transnational by virtue of its industrial, textual, and player practices. This collection includes essays from scholars from seven countries analyzing game cultures on macro- and micro-levels and investigates the growing transnational nature of digital play. The contributors touch upon nations not usually examined by game studies - including the former Czechoslovakia, Turkey, India, and Brazil - and also add new perspectives to the global gaming hubs of China, Singapore, Australia, Japan, and the United States. By examining both the major markets as well as regions and localities that have traditionally been under-served by dominant industrial players and under-examined by both journalists and scholars, this book offers a nuanced, fluid, and hybrid picture of gaming and new directions for game studies as the field matures beyond the binaries of hardware/software, ludology/narratology, and major/indie development. In addition to full-length essays, brief snapshots of case studies are included. The diversity of regions and perspectives explored in the snapshots and full-length essays help cultivate new ground for research and point to opportunities for scholars interested in the cross-pollination of gaming and globalization studies.
Review
Review
"From the exploitation of cheap and anonymous female labor (Nina Huntemann), to the emergence of unpaid creators as ROM hackers and fan translators (Mia Consalvo) and the cultural work of game developers in the Middle East (Vit Sisler), contributions provide useful, if necessarily episodic, insights into the sometimes grim realities behind the fantasies of game playing. Well edited and properly documented, this collection provides useful insights for those who study the acts of video games on the globalized stage. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." - CHOICE
"Gaming Globally is a wide-reaching book that shows game cultures in action, capturing fascinating stories about the lives and adventures of games and gamers around the world, in different societies. We need more this kind of research to put the claims about what games mean, how game industry operates, and who gamers are, into a real world context." - Frans Mäyrä, Professor, Information Studies and Interactive Media, University of Tampere, Finland
"This is a terrific, and much needed, collection that places the role of institutions, policy, economics, production, locality, and materiality on center stage for game studies. By offering an incredibly rich picture of gaming across diverse global contexts, this book helps set a new standard for those seeking to understand digital play." - T.L. Taylor, Associate Professor, Comparative Studies, MIT, USA
Synopsis
Video games are inherently transnational by virtue of industrial, textual, and player practices. The contributors touch upon nations not usually examined by game studies - including the former Czechoslovakia, Turkey, India, and Brazil - and also add new perspectives to the global hubs of China, Singapore, Australia, Japan, and the United States.
Synopsis
Video games are inherently transnational by virtue of its industrial, textual, and player practices. This collection includes essays from scholars from seven countries analyzing game cultures on macro- and micro-levels and investigates the growing transnational nature of digital play. The contributors touch upon nations not usually examined by game studies - including the former Czechoslovakia, Turkey, India, and Brazil - and also add new perspectives to the global gaming hubs of China, Singapore, Australia, Japan, and the United States. By examining both the major markets as well as regions and localities that have traditionally been under-served by dominant industrial players and under-examined by both journalists and scholars, this book offers a nuanced, fluid, and hybrid picture of gaming and new directions for game studies as the field matures beyond the binaries of hardware/software, ludology/narratology, and major/indie development. In addition to full-length essays, brief snapshots of case studies are included. The diversity of regions and perspectives explored in the snapshots and full-length essays help cultivate new ground for research and point to opportunities for scholars interested in the cross-pollination of gaming and globalization studies.
About the Author
Nina B. Huntemann is associate professor of Communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University. Ben Aslinger is assistant professor of Media and Culture in the Department of English and Media Studies at Bentley University.
Table of Contents
Introduction;
B.Aslinger &
N.B.Huntemann PART I: MACRO
Who Plays, Who Pays? Mapping Video Game Production and Consumption Globally; R.Nichols
Dying to Play: Labor, Gender, and the Video Game Industry; N.B.Huntemann
New Console Globalization: Ebox, ZeeBo; B.Aslinger
Indie Game Development Worldwide; D.Kazemi
PART II: PLAY PRACTICES
Playing at Being Social: A Case Study of Social Media and Online Games in Shanghai, China; L.Hjorth
Why should it be that you and I should get along so Awfully? Transnational Play Singapore-United States; P.Tan
How do you say Gamer in Hindi?; A.Shaw
Playing Minecraft in Rural Ohio; S.Duncan
PART III: LOCALIZATION
Unintended Travel: ROM Hackers and Fan Translations of Japanese Videogames; M.Consalvo
Scanlated into English; B.P.Johnson
Indiana Jones Fights the Communist Police: Text Adventures as a Transitional Media Form in the 1980s Czechoslovakia; J.Svelch
PART IV: STRATEGIES - STATE & INDUSTRY
Innovation in the Australian Video games Industry: Transforming Studio Culture; J.Banks
The Internet Development and Commercialization of Online Gaming Industry in China; P.Chung & A.Y.H.Fung
The Politics of Games Production in Europe - Old Economics, New Politics; A.Kerr
A Critical Analysis of Metu Tech Atom: Emerging Game Development in Turkey; M.Binark & G.Bayraktutan-Sütcü
United States Game Ratings and Censorship; C.Kocurek