Title:
Gaming representation : race, gender, and sexuality in video games / edited by Jennifer Malkowski and Treaandrea M. Russworm.
Author:
Malkowski, Jennifer, 1983- editor.
Russworm, TreaAndrea M., editor.
Publication Information:
Bloomington : Indiana University Press , [2017]
©2017
Call Number:
GV1469.17.S63 G38 2017
Abstract:
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.
ISBN:
9780253026477
Series:
Digital Game Studies
Digital game studies.
Physical Description:
xviii, 260 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm.
Contents:
Foreword / Acknowledgments Introduction: Identity, Representation, and Video Game Studies Beyond the Politics of the Image / Part 1: Gender, Bodies, Spaces. I Turned Out to Be Such a Damsel in Distress : Noir Games and the Unrealized Femme Fatale / No Time to Dream: Killing Time, Casual Games, and Gender / Aw Fuck, I Got a Bitch on My Team! : Women and the Exclusionary Cultures of the Computer Game Complex / Attention Whores and Ugly Nerds: Gender and Cosplay at the Game Con / Machinima Parodies: Appropriating Video Games to Criticize Gender Norms / Part 2: Race, Identity, Nation -- Dystopian Blackness and the Limits of Racial Empathy in The Walking Dead and The Last of Us / Journey into the Techno-Primitive Desert / The Rubble and the Ruin: Race, Gender, and Sites of Inglorious Conflict in Spec Ops: The Line / Representing Race and Disability: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as a Whole Text / Entering the Picture: Digital Portraiture and the Aesthetics of Video Game Representation / Part 3: Queerness, play, subversion. Playing to Lose: The Queer Art of Failing at Video Games / Romancing an Empire, Becoming Isaac: The Queer Possibilities of Jade Empire and The Binding of Isaac / A Game Chooses, a Player Obeys: BioShock, Posthumanism, and the Limits of Queerness / Afterword: Racism, Sexism, and Gaming's Cruel Optimism
