Deterritorialization and the landscape of New Zealand video games

It is undeniable that video games are among the most important visual, narrative and affective forms of cultural production of the present. Although games are produced in different cultural locations, however, they are often not perceived as cultural productions which tell us something of the countries in which they are produced and consumed. The deterritorialization of such a significant cultural phenomenon has a bearing on video game production in any country that wishes to enter the global market: to succeed it is presumed that a referencing of the local is either absent or muted, at best. Opposed to this is the understanding that creative material emanating from New Zealand will or even should say something about New Zealand specificities. This article will examine the extent to which recent video games produced in New Zealand satisfy such an expectation, albeit focusing only on one key aspect of the local imaginary: the representation of landscape, given that the land constitutes a well-known marker through which New Zealand perceives and constructs identity discourses about itself. This examination will be accompanied by the question as to whether it is a legitimate expectation of video games that they articulate culturally identitarian inventories

Aesthetics · Art · Cultural identity · Deterritorialization · Literature · Multimedia · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · The Imaginary · Video game · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Law · Psychology