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racism

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January 14th

…History in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus,” by Reid McCarter – Bullet Points Monthly Many have praised the new Wolfenstein game for basing its world building on the USA’s existing racism, rather than juxtaposing liberal Americans with foreign Nazi invaders. Reid McCarter complicates this, arguing that the game still reinforces the exceptionalist idea that America is defined by liberty, despite historical evidence to the contrary.

“If we use fiction to imagine the political landscape of a United States under Nazi rule, we should also be willing to look at the ways in which the real-world America influenced…

This Year In Videogame Blogging: 2017

…Questions About The Law And How To Use It | Kotaku – Cecilia D’Anastasio With Campo Santo’s Sean Vanaman filing a DMCA notice against PewDiePie after his latest incident, Cecilia D’Anastasio asks several lawyers about the legalities of the issue, and gets back just as many different answers.

  • Racism in the games community: yes i play (and write) | Not Your Mama’s Gamer – Kishonna Gray PewDiePie says a racist slur on stream, and Kishonna Gray is here to say this isn’t new, just brought to light thanks to the constant recording that is now commonplace. The slurs are…
  • March 4th

    …blends romance with horror as a story about losing trust for someone you love.

  • Catherine, Trans Identities, and Representation in Japan – Anime Feminist (Content warning: transmisogyny) Kazuma Hashimoto discusses the state of trans rights in Japan, as reflected in the transphobic narrative of Catherine.
  • Deliverance: Myth-making and Historical Accuracy | Unwinnable (Content warning: racism) Reid McCarter details the prejudices expressed in Kingdom Come: Deliverace‘s portrayal of history.
  • “Deliverance selects from the past what best serves an exclusionary, xenophobic vision of Czech history – one that considers ethnic and linguistic minorities a historical detriment.”

    February-March Roundup: History

    …a teenage playing through ICO and comparing it with later attempts to go through it. But while the technical shift in contemporary triple-A games has made ICO feel stiff by comparison, Milena still cherishes the memory of that first experience of its world.

    Read it now

    Reid McCarter

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance – Myth-making and Historical Accuracy

    Article contains discussion of racism, misogyny and sexual assault.

    Writing for Unwinnable, Reid McCarter considers which versions of history are most important to represent in fiction and what kinds of rhetoric do they champion. That Kingdom Come: Deliverance boasts of…

    June 10th

    …Kpop and eSports – YouTube Alexandra Orlando examines industrial connections that span the Korean media and technology industries.

  • The Struggle over Gamers Who Use Mods to Create Racist Alternate Histories | Kotaku Luke Winkie shares an in-depth exploration of the mechanics at work in Paradox Studios’ problematic modding community, and the response the studio has taken having recognized common issues with racism.
  • “Lind describes parsing the space between authentic and sarcastic hyper-nationalism as a “daily challenge” for Paradox.”

    Protest

    Two writers look at historical and contemporary protest movements in relation to videogames.

    June 17th

  • The Dragon At The End Of The Universe – Timber Owls Edcrab complicates the role of dragons in the larger problem of RPG predictability.
  • “The problem is not the dragon. The problem is expectation: the expectation of dragons in fantasy, sure, but more specifically the expectation of escalation.”

    Springs

    Two writers consider cultural issues in the representation of marginalized people’s struggles. (Content warning for racism and transphobia)

    • Exploring Japanese Trans Themes in One Night, Hot Springs | Unwinnable Khee Hoon Chan highlights the value of positive stories in the context of

    July 1st

    Trauma

    Two writers look at how experiences of racism and xenophobia are reflected in videogames.

    • The Origins of Assassin’s Creed | Unwinnable Yussef Cole reflects on the complex cultural position of blackness in the history of Egypt.
    • God of War & the Lessons of an Undocumented Immigrant | Unwinnable Marcos Gonsalez offers beautiful ruminations on trauma, using the violence perpetrated in God of War as a mirror on the violence suffered by many immigrant families.

    “Trauma does not move from point A to point B to point C. There is no coherence

    July 29th

    …across the fractured pathways and catwalks.”

    Something of value

    Two writers look at attempts to represent minority issues in games.

    • A Researcher Is Digging Up Largely Forgotten Queer Video Games | Kotaku Gita Jackson interviews Adrienne Shaw about her project documenting LGBTQ+ games.
    • Detroit: Become Human Plays Into the Racism it Claims to Oppose | Unwinnable Malindy Hetfield examines tonal and structural confusion in Detroit: Become Human, critiquing David Cage’s self-declared limited intentions for the game’s message.

    “It wasn’t Cage’s intention to add something of value to racial discourse. He was…

    September 9th

    …lot of writing, and some of the finest examples are collected below. Other recurring themes that saw careful examination this week include the shifting legacies of role-playing games, the relationship between games and time (both specifically and conceptually), and the boundaries between design and interactivity.

    Margins

    Three articles this week reflect on the identities included, excluded, and effaced from games and their surrounding cultural spheres.

    • Witch Spring, Fantastic Racism and Colorism – I Need Diverse Games Latonya Pennington analyzes how a self-effacing character in Witch Spring 3 who disguises her appearance to look more white undermines

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    September 30th

    …accuracy (*cough cough racism cough sexism*) of your favourite war-simulator the hill you plan to die on if you ask me.

    • How survival horror reinvented itself • Eurogamer.net Emad Ahmed considers the positive influence of 90’s/early 2000’s Japanese cinema on survival horror games, with emphasis on the unsettling and the unknowable over the gruesome.
    • Playing today’s games in a thousand years • Eurogamer.net Andreas Inderwildi scrutinizes the viability of games as enduring historical artifacts, along cultural, rather than material, lines.

    “Will there still be people around who’ll appreciate, or at least try to understand,