Introduction: Transnational Play
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
Summary
Abstract
Transnational Play makes a case for approaching gameplay as a global industry and set of practices that also includes diverse participation from players and developers located within the global South, in nations outside of the First World. Such participation includes gameplay in cafés, games for regional and global causes like environmentalism, piracy and cheats, localization, urban playful art in Latin America, and the development of culturally unique mobile games. This book offers a reorientation of perspective on global play, while still acknowledging geographically distributed socioeconomic, racial, gender, and other inequities. Over the course of the inquiry, which includes a chapter dedicated to the cartography of the mobile augmented reality game Pokémon Go, I develop a theoretical line of argument critically informed by gender studies and intersectionality, post-colonialism, geopolitics, and game studies. This book looks at who develops, localizes, and consumes games, problematizing play as a diverse and contested transnational domain.
Keywords: globalized games, participatory gaming, post-colonialism, mobile games, global South, urban studies
Digital games are attracting new players. Yves Guillemot, French CEO of game publisher Ubisoft, told GamesBeat in an interview: ‘It's a very interesting time for the industry, because the mobile is bringing in more and more casual people; Facebook brought new people too by using a new system to monetize’ (Takahashi). Danish game researcher Jasper Juul, somewhat dramatically, dubbed this shift in player demographic: ‘the casual revolution’ (1). No longer the exclusive realm of a Personal Computer hardcore demographic of teenage boys versed in militant teamwork and digital combat, grandmothers, younger women, users of mobile phones and Facebook of any gender, are playing these shorter, more interruptible, and cartoonish games. Players navigate the uncertain outdoor terrain of augmented reality games with their smartphones, collecting cartoon pocket monsters in parks and public plazas and deploying their creatures in digital turf wars. Although seldom included in North American, European, or Japanese studies, these trainers of Pokémon, overseers of digital farms on Facebook, virtual city builders, and argonauts of addictive puzzle challenges, are also located in the ‘global South’, in Latin America, in Africa, and in Southeast Asia.
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- Transnational PlayPiracy, Urban Art, and Mobile Games, pp. 7 - 28Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020