Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture

Who cares about esports?

Nicholas T. Taylor — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Meant as both a provocation and a prompt, ‘who cares about esports?’ opens the topic up to critical scrutiny at a time when the esports industry is in the midst of a(nother) serious contraction, even as there is a sizeable jump in the breadth and amount of esports research. As the introduction to this special section on Sustaining Equitable Competitive Gaming, this article considers the interplay of these two transformations, while also opening up a third, vital line of inquiry: ‘who cares for competitive gaming?’ This question is meant, on the one hand, to underscore the difference—and the relationship—between competitive gaming and esports, while also providing an overview of the kinds of critical and timely care documented by the four articles in this special section.

Distinguishing the players of the digital field

Tim Bergström — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This article explores the field of contemporary gaming practices and preferences among players of various social backgrounds. From a Bourdieusian perspective based on the notion of different capital forms (economic, social, and cultural), the socialisation process of Swedish players of digital games (n=1019) is investigated through a multiple correspondence analysis on questionnaire data. The findings show that the contemporary Swedish gaming culture is clearly divided by gender and age, but not as visibly by social class, birthplace, or upbringing. The article concludes that the contemporary gaming culture restricts present dispositions and future trajectories among the agents of the gaming field.

(Re)producing orientalism

Yizhou Xu — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Through the case study of the mobile title Game of Sultans, this article examines the proliferation of iterative and copycat games through the practice of reskins in the mobile game industry. Based on year-long autoethnographic fieldwork working in a Chinese mobile game company, I provide an on-the-ground perspective of how Orientalist representations in reskinned games are instrumentalized through the roles of “cultural brokers” and the work of localization for Western markets. By taking a theoretical and technological understanding of reskins, I argue that reskinned games, as a form of industrial mimicry, while an important aspect of standardized game production, can also serve as means of subversion against seemingly totalizing control of the US-dominated app economy. This article addresses the dearth of studies in theorizing the industry practice of game reskins beyond just a monetization tool but also its extractive labor process within the global app empire.

Parties as playful experiences

Leland Masek, Jaakko Stenros — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Partying is a widespread, understudied, and playful phenomena. Game Studies has seen great value from defining important concepts related to games since its inception. Foundational play and game scholars urged for a need to analyze parties and celebrations as a form of playfulness, yet there is little empirical Game Studies work enabling a deeper understanding of partying. Partying bears striking resemblances to games: inefficient use of resources, arbitrary rules, cultural group formation, and ongoing moral panics. There are also practical overlaps: games occur at parties and digital party games are quite popular. This work contributes to a deeper understanding of parties by analyzing 33 semi-structured interviews where individuals from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds had highly playful experiences at parties. A new theoretical conception of partying as a form of playfulness is proposed as a “phenomenon that creates an experience of social connection in a group mediated through a shared engagement-prioritizing activity”. This work concludes with a call for party studies to become a sub-field in game studies.

Playing rogues

David Matencio — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This article explores how video games, with no apparent connection to the literary rogue, still articulate Picaresque episodes and simulate Picaresque experiences through their intended gameplay and worldbuilding. These experiences are a specific expression of the combination of mechanics, narrative, and the agency of the player around a defined type of character, the rogue. They show how pervasive the influence of Picaresque Literature is, influencing design choices and informing key forms of being and acting in virtual worlds. This paper aims to define what a Picaresque experience in video games is and how it is possible to produce them. To achieve this, three video games will be analysed to show the different specific tools video games use to enable these experiences. The analyses will be supported by a theoretical framework based on existing bibliography about agency, videoludic narrative, mechanics, and Picaresque Literature with the objective of offering a comprehensive description of Picaresque experiences while also explaining them as a transmedia phenomenon that demonstrates the influence of Picaresque Literature in video games.

Queer gender identities and videogames

Mark Maletska — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This narrative literature review discusses peer-reviewed research articles connecting queer gender identities and videogames. Its main purpose is to describe directions of research on connections between queer gender identities and videogames, and to indicate gaps and missing connections in existing studies. The analysed material was collected in April–August 2023 using Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus databases. Three major thematic categories were identified in the publications: representation of queer gender identities in videogames; player–avatar connections and gender dysphoria; and queer gender identities in game-related spaces. The main finding of the review is that articles focused on queer people do not tend to address the inherent queerness of videogames. Queer temporality and spatiality are not sufficiently studied in interaction with queer players, and narrative and/or visual elements remain in focus, even when potentially interactive activities like avatar creation are being researched.

Deconstructing esports

Tom Legierse, Maria Ruotsalainen — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Branding competitive gaming as esports, part of a process known as sportification, has contributed greatly to the wider acceptance of competitive gaming as legitimate leisure and professional activity. However, the social effects of sportification remain largely overlooked in current research. In this paper we argue that in order to understand the normative and formative social effects of sportification of competitive gaming, we need to forefront the bodies in esports. Building on scholarship that highlights inequities in (competitive) gaming and esports, we identify four ways in which bodies are made relevant in esports: 1) the obscuring of the playing body and establishment of an idealized and normative masculine athletic body; 2) the ‘visibility’ of women's bodies as deviant from the norm; 3) the invisibility (and impossibility) of disabled bodies through design (embodied nature of design of both games and gameplay); and 4) the embodied nature of infrastructural issues that cannot be reduced to materiality. We argue for a deconstruction of esports as a social practice that forefronts bodies. Understanding exactly how bodies become relevant will allow us to deconstruct the structural conditions of participation that dictate which bodies are possible or not in esports and move towards more equitable esports practices.

"I want to play a normal game. I don't need all this."

Carina de Assunção, Michael Scott, Rory Summerley — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Esports in Portugal have been growing steadily in recent years. As in many other countries, women are significantly underrepresented in Portuguese esports. New studies with Portuguese students show conservative views towards gender roles and disinterest in prioritising diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which contrasts with the global tendency to incorporate it in the industry. Lately, initiatives promoting DEI have populated the esports landscape. However, the communities’ response, which may impact effectiveness, remains under-examined. This work is part of a larger ethnographic project that aims to understand how the esports communities in Portugal perceive and react to DEI initiatives such as women-only tournaments or harassment awareness campaigns. This paper will discuss findings from the thematic analysis of 10 interviews with Portuguese members of an esports community. The recurring themes were (1) DEI initiatives are imposed; (2) Portugal is too small to care (about DEI); (3) nepotism; (4) self-preservation; and (5) ubiquity of online toxicity.

Changing the game but keeping to the rules

Beatriz Blanco — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The vulnerabilities faced by social minorities in Brazil, such as women, Black people, and LGBTQ+ people, are also very prevalent in local gaming cultures. Because of this, members of these groups organize collectives through social media to debate strategies and to provide mutual support for their esports initiatives. In the last few years, many of these activist collectives were absorbed by formal esports organizations, with some of their members now leading equality and diversity initiatives for esports in Brazil. Nevertheless, the movement from grassroots activists to PR representatives has contradictions, especially considering how social media platforms mediate the transition between activism and cause marketing. This paper aims to highlight some of these ambivalences, and how they impact the most vulnerable esports workers in Brazil.

Equitable forms of participation on a gaming-adjacent platform

Fredrik Rusk, Matilda Ståhl, Isac Nyman — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

To connect with youth online, a non-profit organization in Finland is organizing a youth center on a server on the gaming-adjacent social platform, Discord. We focus on the infrastructuralized platform and study ethnographically how the labor of moderation and technical competencies that platforms require on the part of the youth workers. We want to better understand the technical conditions by which youth workers have to navigate equity in platformized communities. How does the platform and connected infrastructure determine what forms of communication and interaction are and are not permitted and when and to whom? The results indicate that the employment of opening hours and the presence of youth workers who actively moderate the server during those opening hours, seem to create a safe space for a diversity of youth. The moderation, largely invisible and frictionless, becomes an intricate part of the infrastructuralized platform and the socialization on the platform. This infrastructuralized moderation requires technical, pedagogical and psychological knowledge, competence and resources.

Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis, edited by Laura op de Beke, Joost Raessens, Stefan Werning and Gerald Farca (Amsterdam University Press, 2024)

Lykke Guanio-Uluru — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

A review of the voluminous anthology Laura op de Beke, Joost Raessens, Stefan Werning and Gerald Farca (eds.): Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis. Published by Amsterdam University Press in their Green Media series, 2024. ISBN: 978-9-463-72119-6, 612 pages.

Everything to Play For: How Videogames are Changing the World by Marijam Did (Verso, 2024)

Emil L. Hammar — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

A review of Marijam Did: Everything to Play For: How Videogames are Changing the World. Published by Verso, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-804-29324-9, 288 pages

Videogame Formalism: On Form, Aesthetic Experience and Methodology by Alex Mitchell and Jasper van Vught (Amsterdam University Press, 2023)

Hans-Joachim Backe — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

A review of Alex Mitchell and Jasper van Vught's Videogame Formalism. On Form, Aesthetic Experience and Methodology. Published by Amsterdam University Press, 2023. ISBN: 978-9-048-55423-2, 264 pages,

World War Two Simulated: Digital Games and Reconfigurations of the Past by Curtis D. Carbonell (University of Exeter Press, 2023)

Phil Hammond — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

A review of Curtis D. Carbonell's monograph World War Two Simulated: Digital Games and Reconfigurations of the Past. Published by University of Exeter Press, 2023. ISBN: 978-1-804-13060-5, 264 pages.

Editorial

Holger Pötzsch, Kristine Jørgensen — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The editorial argues for the necessity of thinking and acting critically in times of multiple crises. Then it introduces the contributions brought together in the present issue and, finally, takes up some internal issues as Eludamos.

Transgender emergence in video games

Robin Longobardi Zingarelli — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Over the past two decades, trans theory has conceptualised gender identity and bodily autonomy, advocating for self-exploration and political affirmation (Nagoshi & Brzuzy, 2010; Stryker, 2017; Stryker & Whittle, 2006). This focus has resonated with game studies, which have examined video games as a medium for trans representation (Ruberg, 2020; Ruberg, 2022; Thach, 2021). This commentary explores the emergence of transgender identities in video games, outlining the state of the art of transgender representations and the experiences of trans players and designers. It highlights the significance of procedural elements such as character customisation, embodiment, and player-avatar relationship for transgender players. In doing so, it also suggests potential tensions and contradictions inherent in transgender emergence, arguing that while video games can provide positive and beneficial spaces for exploring gender identity, they may simultaneously perpetuate transphobia and exploit transgender experiences.