Introduction: Developing Critical Contexts of Gameplay
To study games is to also study the forms and cultures of play that develop around and give meaning to the acts of playing games. In its most abstract structure of play, or paidia, is the unconstrained use of imagination to engage with the world. It is here that paidia offers individuals the freedom to “play” and to “play with” the world around them. However, these acts are always imbued with deep social meanings that are simultaneously expressed through and developed during that act of play. 1 From the early games of Mancala, Go, and Chess to the acts of playing house or dolls, individuals learn to navigate social structures from agriculture and warfare to domesticity and gender. 2 In sum, as individuals learn to play, they also learn to understand, and reinforce, a variety of social practices, making play a formative activity in the construction of the individual, society, and culture. 3 The activity play, or paidia, is however balanced between ludus, or the controlled rules of play. 4 Rule systems provide players with the formal design challenges, outcomes, and goals that form the parameters of the game, and “players accept the rules because they make the game activity possible.” 5 From this perspective, it is equally important to understand the larger social, cultural, and national contexts that influence and control the design of game structures. It is therefore between the act of playing and the formally designed systems of the game that meaning is created, maintained, and controlled, making games an evocative cultural object. 6 It is at this intersection of paidia and ludus that games interpellate individuals into the socially constructed environment of the game, 7 and which this book seeks to explore.
Within an increasingly complicated and complex world, digital environments and games serve as a resource for game players to understand and negotiate social interactions. Turkle notes that electronic games are a material resource that new generations understand as a part of themselves because they are “a primary source for developing” 8 an understanding of who we are and how we should act toward others. Electronic games enable individuals think about themselves in new ways and reveal how the worlds they live in are constructed. According to Murray, “everyday experiences [are]… increasingly gamelike, and we are aware of the constructed nature of all of our narratives. The ordinary categories of experience, such as a parent, child or student are understood as ‘roles’ that are perpetually deconstructed into their ‘culturally invented components.’ 9 The construction of identity, once understood through the protocols of human relationships, is now composed of intersecting arrangements of a collective story game, “an aggregation of overlapping, conflicting, constantly morphing structures that make up the rules by which we act and interpret our experiences.” 10 Through the use of augmented reality to create exercise routines 11 or through the development of moral reasoning within multiplayer online games, 12 the stories, games, and experiences of individuals continually blend together to inform lived experiences of contemporary life. As lived experiences become increasingly gamelike, 13 it is increasingly important to understand how digital games teach us to understand and manage these interactions, making digital games a nexus for engaging with the complex interrelations of a postmodern life.
Recent game research ranging from narrative structures (Wark 2007; Bogost 2007, 2008, 2011) to rule systems (Juul 2005; Galloway 2006; Frasca 2007) and from economics (Castranova 2005; Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter 2009; McGonigal 2011) to identity (Williams and Smith 2007; Williams et al. 2011; Jenkins 2006) reveals not only a greater need to analyze games from a critical perspective but highlight the significance of games as a dominant cultural artifact of the twenty-first century. 14 A coherent game analysis therefore comes from a nuanced understanding of the political economies and cultural practices that work to enable and constrain game production, the acts of playing and the communities of support built around a game. Hjorth and Chan further note that previous game research is often guided by American and European perspectives that leave the Asia-Pacific region neglected. 15 To confront this problem, they offer an initial overview of the socio-technological, socio-cultural, techno-nationalist, and economic dimension of video games in the region, thereby presenting them as a fully realized media and social phenomenon. Central to this discussion is the developing digital infrastructures, ownership patterns, market structures, and online industries that have driven some of the most dynamic digital markets in the world (Jin and Chee 2008; Consalvo 2016). However, to move beyond the well-covered discussions of industries, PC Bangs/gamer cafes, 16 genres, and community contexts 17 of previous research, a stronger focus must be paid to the local, national, and transnational ideologies that are a part of these cultural artifacts.
To build a critical perspective on gaming cultures within the East Asian region, this book analyzes the transnational flow of player practices, game content/production, and game design structures. The book is arranged around three thematic sections: (1) gamer culture, the participatory spaces that enable player competition, game production, and fan engagement with East Asian games; (2) gender and class, the articulations of masculinity and the deigned class structures that are built into the structures of East Asian games; and (3) colonialism and transnationalism, the colonial contexts that are designed into East Asian game narratives and game architectures. The subsequent chapters therefore work to bridge the economic and political constraints of the game industry with the socio-cultural practices of play and game structures to offer a more detailed analysis of East Asian games.
Part I
Part I traces the transformation of player practices and gamer cultures from their localized contexts of participatory interaction to the larger information-based spaces of transnational capital. In this context, the introductory section of this book contextualizes the acts of and ways that paidia creates ways of engaging with game structures. From Spacewar to Overwatch and from Ms. Pacman to Paragon, the competitive structures of games and their localized spaces of play were a significant component in shaping Japanese arcade and gamer culture (Jin 2010; Taylor 2012). Chapter 2 therefore draws on the literature around Japanese gaming culture, its digital heritage, and Mark Johnson’s first-hand experience as a high-level player to explore the competition over high scores and world records in danmaku games and their expansion outside of Japan. Danmaku games are a unique genre of highly challenging fast-paced Japanese arcade games which need little strategy or tactical thought, but demand extremely high levels of attention and reflex, as they overwhelm the player with complex geometric patterns. While danmaku high scores were limited to Japanese arcades, the development of networked contexts gave rise to danmaku discussion forums which offer the ability to share record-breaking videos, discuss strategies for maximizing scores, and create the ability to “port” these games to consoles and PCs owned by non-Japanese gamers, resulting in a nascent global digital culture for this once quintessentially Japanese genre. Even as danmaku games spread across the globe, garnering greater forms of competition, there is still a continuing dominance of Japanese players in danmaku. Johnson relates this trend to other gaming subcultures with distinct geographical concentrations of their strongest players—real-time strategy games in South Korea, multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games in China, first-person shooters in Europe, fighting games in North America, and so on—and considers the interrelation between digital danmaku culture and the prior arcade-centric culture in Japan from which it grew.
The rise of competitive games, via the once localized nature of danmaku games, highlights the continuing trend of globalized gamer cultures. In Chap. 3, Nobushige Hichibe and Ema Tanaka extend the discussion of globalized cultural practices through an examination of the “production field” in doujin games. Stemming from the shared interests in a media text, doujin artists create and share self-made work...