Playful Politics and Political Play: Conceptualizing Videogames as a Political Arena

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

Who is a videogame developer? The politics of videogame maker identities

Games on Working, Games on Gaming, Working on Games, and Games on Working on Games: On the self-referentiality that entangles neoliberal play and work

The politics of game canonization: Tales from the frontlines of creating a national history of games

In this paper, we provide insight into the politics of forming a national games canon by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, one of the biggest audiovisual cultural heritage institutions in the Netherlands. From a historiographical perspective, the paper investigates how different stakes and commitments of the different actors involved (the authors included) during the different stages of admission and selection are inherently connected. From a unique insider's perspective, we recognize that more pragmatic concerns around preservation and archival efforts of the Institute collapse with the socioculturally-driven aims of the canon as a history of Dutch games, a process we call the politics of acquisition.

‘We’re Not Gonna Take It.’ The Countercultural AAA Aesthetics of Wolfenstein: The New Colossus

Vivian James – The politics of #Gamergate’s Avatar

Anxiety, Openness, and Activist Games:A Case Study for Critical Play

This paper explores the boundaries of social issues or‘activist’ games with a case study on a popular gamereleased in 2009 which fosters a critical type of play amongthe audience. We assess the game’s public reception tobetter understand how contradictory play elements led to ananxiety of ambiguity during open play. Borrowing from the“poetics of open work,” we will demonstrate how the mostpowerful play experience in activist games result from anew relationship formed between the audience and theplayer through mechanics, subject position, representation,and content.