Glory to Trumpland!: Critically Playing Border Games

This project examines the critical play of a variety of games about immigrant and refugee experience. These border games take place within fictional or actual borderlands and follow characters either in transit or trapped in detainment centers between nations. Spanning a range of genres, each deals...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Gamevironments
Main Author: Kagen, Melissa ca. 20./21. Jh. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:German
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Published: [2019]
In: Gamevironments
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B USA / Immigration / Refugee / Video game / Political conflict
IxTheo Classification:AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
KBQ North America
ZB Sociology
ZC Politics in general
ZG Media studies; Digital media; Communication studies
Further subjects:B gamevironments
B Protest
B Unplay
B Postcolonial
B Immigration
B Refugee
B Critical
B Border
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Description
Summary:This project examines the critical play of a variety of games about immigrant and refugee experience. These border games take place within fictional or actual borderlands and follow characters either in transit or trapped in detainment centers between nations. Spanning a range of genres, each deals differently with the major problem posed by their content - how to create a sensitive procedural rhetoric around migration. Drawing from Flanagan's conceptualization of critical play and Mukherjee's work on the ambivalence of postcolonial playing back, I explore the possibilities of critically playing border games and the extent to which each game's design (dis)allows for certain forms of play and protest. I focus on three paired case studies, Escape from Woomera (2003) and Smuggle Truck (2012); Papers, Please (2013) and Liberty Belle's Immigration Nation (2014); and Bury Me, My Love (2017) and The Waiting Game (2018). By considering both the design of these border games and the metagaming practices that have developed around them, I show how postcolonial misplay of fictional games draw more effective critical attention to injustice than the most well-intentioned and serious educational game
ISSN:2364-382X
Contains:Enthalten in: Gamevironments
Persistent identifiers:URN: urn:nbn:de:gbv:46-00107842-10