Ideologies and Games
Metagame Book Club: Game Studies. "Ideologies and Games" by Sherry Jones. Published Nov. 11, 2014. Last Updated: Jan. 15, 2019.
**This page was first published on the Metagame Book Club.
Welcome to Week 2 of Track 1: Game Studies!
Welcome to the second week of Reading Track 1: Game Studies! We are continuing our discussion on how games reflect cultural consciousness by focusing on how games express certain ideologies.
Before discussing ideologies in games, I would like you to consider that games are naturally ideological machines. The term, ideology, refers to a system of values, conscious or unconscious, that orient our goals and actions in the world. Louis Althusser uses the term, interpellation, to describe the process by which ideology addresses us, in that we become the subject of an ideology once we socially interact with its institutions and discourses. Our identity becomes constituted by the ideology that governs our actions. Similarly, games are rule-based systems that impose certain logic. Games also express ideas that reflect the consumers' cultural consciousness. In this sense, games express certain ideologies to which the game consumers would "respond." We, as game consumers, via the process of interpellation, are subject to the logic, rules, and ideologies of game systems, as we allow game systems to govern our in-game actions. Since the topic of ideology is quite diverse, we only will focus on certain types of ideologies in games, such as politics and ethics, for this week's discussion.
What are the educational implications of thinking about games in terms of ideology? As educators, we can in fact use games to teach how ideology works, as I have discussed in my past presentation titled, "Studying Video Games as Ideological Texts."
Below are several articles that I have organized under specific sections/themes. Please feel free to choose which texts you would like to read from each section/theme to learn about the issues at hand (please know that you are not expected to read all of the texts!). We will have a live discussion on some of the issues and theories mentioned in the reading materials at the #Metagame Book Club G+ Community website on November 16th, 5pm MT (use this nifty time zone converter to figure out when the live discussion will occur in your time zone). Join our G+ Community to receive the latest notifications of upcoming webinars and discussions.
Enjoy the intriguing readings! Onward~
-- Sherry Jones (Track 1: Game Studies Facilitator)
**This week's recorded live streaming video is published at the end of the page.
Political Ideologies & Games
- [PDF] "How Multiplayer Games Create New Media Politics" by Lars Konzack and Thessa Lindof (2005)
- [PDF] "Digital Art in the Age of Social Media: A Case Study of the Politics of Personalization via Cute Culture" by Larissa Hjorth (2009)
- [PDF] "Anxiety, Openness, and Activist Games: A Case Study for Critical Play" by Mary Flanagan and Anne Lotko (2009)
- [ARTICLE] "Rapture Through Russell: Bioshock & Bertrand Russell's Authority & The Individual" by Ciarán Ó Muirthile (2014)
War Ideologies & Games
- [ARTICLE] "Virtual Torture: Videogames and the War on Terror" by Mark L. Sample (2008)
- [ARTICLE] "Electronic Empire: Orientalism Revisited in the Military Shooter" by Johan Höglund (2008)
- [ARTICLE] “I Hope You Never See Another Day Like This”: Pedagogy & Allegory in Post 9/11” Video Games" by Marc A. Ouellette (2008)
- [ARTICLE] "Play and Possibility in the Rhetoric of the War on Terror: The Structure of Agency in Halo 2" by Gerald Voorhees (2014)
Ethical and Moral Ideologies & Games
- [PDF] "Ethical Moral Videogames: Moral Dilemmas and Gameplay" by José P Zagal (2009)
- [PDF] "'I Like the Idea of Killing But Not the Cruelty': How New Zealand Youth Negotiate the Pleasures of Simulated Violence" by Schott Gareth (2009)
- [PDF] "Agency Reconsidered" by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Michael Mateas, Steven Dow, and Serdar Sali (2009)
- [ARTICLE] "Moral Decision Making in Fallout" by Marcus Schulzke (2009)
- [ARTICLE] "The Agony and the Exidy: A History of Video Game Violence and the Legacy of Death Race" by Carly A. Kocurek (2012)
- [ARTICLE] "Living the Dream: An Allegory for Breaking Procedure" by Miguel Penabella (2014)
Cultural Ideologies & Games
- [ARTICLE] "Street Fighter and The King of Fighters in Hong Kong: A Study of Cultural Consumption and Localization of Japanese Games in an Asian Context" by Benjamin Wai-ming Ng (2006)
- [ARTICLE] "Myths, Monsters and Markets: Ethos, Identification, and the Video Game Adaptations of The Lord of the Rings" by Mark Rowell Wallin (2007)
- [ARTICLE] "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams: Popular Music, Narrative, and Dystopia in Bioshock" by William Gibbons (2011)
- [ARTICLE] "Watched and Being Watched in Outlast and Outlast: Whistleblower" by Hazel Montforton (2014)
Historical Ideologies & Games
- [PDF] "Navigating the Problem Space: The Medium of Simulation Games in the Teaching of History" by Jeremiah McCall (2013)
- [ARTICLE] "The Tyranny of Realism: Historical Accuracy in Assassin's Creed III" by Adrienne Shaw (2014)
- [ARTICLE] "Preserving History in Gran Tourismo" by Corey Milne (2014)
- [ARTICLE] "Gwydion to Alexander: Colonialism in King's Quest III" by Angela R. Cox (2014)
Recorded Live Streaming Video (Review of This Week's Readings)
Published: Nov. 16, 2014.