This Graduate Workshop seeks to investigate contemporary video games as an emergent space to be considered under the auspices of Area Studies, with special consideration given to practices, memory politics, and identity negotiation. By bringing together scholars and young professionals from a wide array of disciplines, we aim to advance the dialogue concerning methodological and conceptual approaches for video games in the humanities and social sciences.

Cultural Historian Johan Huizinga postulates that play precedes culture, and that humans have not added an essential feature to the general idea of play (Homo Ludens). He stipulates that “in play there is something ‘at play’ which transcends the immediate needs of life”. Such interpretations on play presuppose a certain spontaneity and presume constraints on limited participation. Video games thoroughly complicate this view. They represent a fundamental departure, both in the manipulation of space and the magnified intensity of community built within and on the periphery of playerbases. Occurring within their own artificial dimension, video games viewed from a spatial framework present perhaps a challenge to the transnational turn, as they allow for a fundamentally de-territorialized space for play, with participation excelling beyond the millions, thereby expanding the potential domain for Area Studies. In these de-territorialized spaces, players experience both unscripted interactions with other players, and engage with narratives from artificially constructed AI, or so-called non-playable characters (NPC’s), which impact the player with a significantly different interaction than that with traditional media. Interactions occurring in turn in digital spaces are fully autonomous, both in their design and realization.

We understand history and its depiction as rendered tangible through interaction in video games. Similarly, we want to investigate how the interaction between players and games can be understood as a process of knowledge production. For example, analyzing the process of how a given reality is constructed within a game by tracing patterns of the depiction of history can reveal insights into exploring a new interdependence of the realities presented in games and those of the non-digital world.

Especially of interest is the process of community driven negotiation of producing ‘authenticity’ in an otherwise artificially constructed world. The point of view of play is similarly critical, as portrayals of individualism and collectivism can be challenged or reified based on the sort of gaze granted to a player. These aspect should especially be examined from a feminist perspective, as games and gaming communities are predominantly crafted by men, for men.

Overcoming stigmatizations, like gaming fostering violence or perceived social ineptitude of its practitioners, while also having a player-base that rapidly shifts in both age and gender, video games have become a vehicle of cultural communication both through the content they display and the means of consuming them. The challenges and privileges gaming has afforded through this process necessitate a critical perspective on the content of games and the communities that consume them.

Video games must also not be isolated from their concurrent platforms. The digital spaces of dialogue, display, and entertainment, such as Twitch for streaming, Steam for markets, and Discord for inter-gamer communication, create ripe opportunities for inter-platform cross-pollination in terms of the notions negotiated by players.