The Consumption of Food at Video Game Events

This paper develops the discussion from a completed ethnographic PhD thesis (Law 2016); it draws on the data gathered from interviews, focus groups and participant observations to consider the consumption of food at video game events. To date, there is still little empirical research conducted on video gamers that attend various video game events; in particular, the relationship between the consumption of food at video game events. Though it was not the intention of the research to explore the consumption of food amongst video gamers, the subsequent analysis of this data highlighted patterns in relation to the consumption of food amongst male and female gamers at video game events. This paper argues that the consumption of food provided a social significance to connect gamers together through ritual practices, such as eating and drinking together – which little has been explored within games studies.

“Block the Spawn Point”: Play and Games in the Hong Kong 2019 Pro-democracy Protests

Resistance, Play and Esports Chants: A Super Smash Bros. Melee Case Study

The Disrupted Ludic Self: Aesthetics of character switching in NeiR: Automata

Rethinking failure: Applying Gordon Calleja’s Model of Player Involvement to NieR: Automata

The Winner Takes It All: Dramatic Arcs in High-Performance Video Game Livestreaming

The Rhythms of Gameplay Between Stable Forms and Changing Flow

Beyond Gamification: Games Design as a Playful and Dynamic Methodology and Curatorial Intervention

Approximately history: Developer perspectives on counterfactual history in digital strategy games

Hong Kong and Insect Rhetoric: The Spatial Politics of Pokémon GO

During Hong Kong’s 2019 street protests, images of Pokémon became a recurring motif. What accounts for the presence of this videogame franchise figure among the anti-extradition demonstrators? Establishing Pokémon as a lens through which spatial politics can be viewed, this paper examines the sociocultural, economic and geographic tensions in Hong Kong through this popular Nintendo franchise. Charting the emergence of insect rhetoric as an invective in that city, the contours of the anti- extradition crisis are charted at the intersections of language, identity, space and nostalgia. Drawing extensively on reportage of protest movement, this paper concerns itself with how digital platforms enact, elaborate and represent spatial politics and activism in both virtual and embodied worlds.