2 - Venues for Ludoliteracy: Arcades, Game Cafés, and Street Pirates
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
Summary
Abstract
This chapter presents a review of popular platforms and spaces for gameplay in the global South. My research method in this chapter is closest to digital ethnography, informed by site visits and other online visual and textual documentation. I also discuss experimental gaming venues in India, Senegal, and Kenya that attempt to overcome obstacles to accessibility. I reflect on a lack of gender diversity observable in many global public play spaces. The mobile platform is approached as one of the more recently viable and gender diverse platforms for gaming in the global South. The chapter closes with a presentation of Southern players’ and game pirates’ defense of their ethics on online gaming forums.
Keywords: ludoliteracy, arcades, game cafés, game piracy, ethics
‘It's so simple actually. If you have enough money to buy a game and you pirate it that is awkward. But if you simply don't have enough money to buy all these games you want (Currency people!!! $50 is a fortune to pay in some countries.) Then what should you do? Sit there wishing you had that game? Hell no, screw companies and do what you want because a pirate is free. And please stop talking from your comfy chair.’
‒ Gamer, October 16, 2012 at 12:57 pmAs ‘Gamer’ points out above, in response to an anti-piracy post on a blog, digital game players in the global South are seated in less comfortable chairs—both literally and metaphorically—than are Northern players. They suffer from frequent power outages, unreliable Internet service, and high local taxes on digital imports. Furthermore, these inhabitants of relatively impoverished nations often lack home computers, accessible retail distribution channels for games, and disposable leisure income. Yet despite such obstacles, digital games have been played both legally and illegally for a couple of decades across the global South.
Apart from anti-piracy campaigns initiated by Northern intellectual property stakeholders, these players have remained largely invisible to game studies. In this chapter, I aim to shed light on global play practices in nations like Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
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- Information
- Transnational PlayPiracy, Urban Art, and Mobile Games, pp. 47 - 64Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020