Casual Empire
Video Games as Neocolonial Praxis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2961031 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sabine Harrer (0000-0002-4035-0748, BTK University of Arts & Design, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2018-01-30 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Open Library of Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2056-6700 • E-ISSN: 2056-6700 |
| Publisher | Open Library of the Humanities (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.16995/olh.210 |
| OpenAlex | W2786647958 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 13 |
| References cited | 9 |
As a media form entwined in the U.S. military-industrial complex, video games continue to celebrate imperialist imagery and Western-centric narratives of the great white explorer (Breger, 2008; Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009; Geyser & Tshabalala, 2011; Mukherjee, 2016). While much ink has been spilt on the detrimental effects of colonial imagery on those it objectifies and dehumanises, the question is why these games still get made, and what mechanisms are at work in the enjoyment of empire-themed play experiences. To explore this question, this article develops the concept of ‘casual empire’, suggesting that the wish to play games as a casual pastime expedites the incidental circulation of imperialist ideology. Three examples – Resident Evil V (2009), The Conquest: Colonization (2015) and Playing History: Slave Trade (2013) – are used to demonstrate the production and consumption of casual empire across multiple platforms, genres and player bases. Following a brief contextualisation of postcolonial (game) studies, this article addresses casual design, by which I understand game designers’ casual reproduction of inferential racism (Hall, 1995) for the sake of entertainment. I then look at casual play, and players’ attitudes to games as rational commodities continuing a history of commodity racism (McClintock, 1995). Finally, the article investigates the casual involvement of formalist game studies in the construction of imperial values. These three dimensions of the casual – design, play and academia – make up the three pillars of the casual empire that must be challenged to undermine video games’ neocolonialist praxis. EDITOR'S NOTE: The original version of this paper contained a misspelling of writer Pippa Tshabalala's last name. This has now been corrected
Aesthetics · Art · Casual · Colonialism · Empire · Multimedia · Political science · Praxis · Racism · Sociology · Video game · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology
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Adaptations of Empire
Postcolonial Play in the Orient's Sandbox
We Are the Champions? Performing whiteness in Ascension
Making girls at home in games
Divide and the Rules
Representations of Africans in Popular Video Games in the U.S
White Masculinity, Creative Desires, and Production Ideology in Video Game Development
Sustaining intangible heritage through video game storytelling - the case of the Sami Game Jam
Casual Empire
| Unique citing works | 13 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,63 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 12 |