Responding to a journal issue revisiting Games of Empire, this article begins by surveying the state of digital play amid a conjuncture of pandemic lockdown, anti-racism protest, and looming recession. We go on to address criticism of our book’s outlook on “games of multitude” in the face of the reactionary side of gaming culture expressed by Gamergate. We next outline elements of a research itinerary, were we to update our book’s project, including climate crisis, platform proliferation, organizing and organizations, and video gaming’s violent intersections. We conclude by reasserting the need to attend to emancipatory currents within—and against—game cultures. While gaming’s complicity in energy overconsumption and cultures of domination raises serious questions about its contribution to any postcapitalist future, the struggles that might bring us to this point will be waged by combatants whose subjectivities have been formed within the digital complexes of which gaming is now an integral part.
AbrahamB. (2016). The videogame terraforming imaginary. Paper presented atGlobal Ecologies—Local Impacts, the Sixth Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature, Environment & Culture, Australia; New Zealand: University of Sydney, 23-24 November.
BonenfantM. (2021). Hypermodern video games as emblems of empire or how the gaming multitude adapts to hypermodernity. Games and Culture, 16(3), 357–370. doi:10.1177/1555412020961849
4.
BulutE. (2020). A Precarious game: The illusion of dream jobs in the video game industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
5.
ChangA. Y. (2019). Playing nature: Ecology in video games. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
DenhamJ.HirschlerS.SpokesM. (2019). The reification of structural violence in video games. Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal. doi:10.1177/1741659019881040
8.
Dyer-WithefordN. (2020). Cyberwar and the new urban uprisings: Platform riotsPresentation). Vancouver: Simon Fraser University.
9.
Dyer-WithefordN.De PeuterG. (2006). EA spouse and the crisis of video game labour: Enjoyment, exclusion, exploitation, exodus, Canadian Journal of Communication, 31(3), 599-619.
10.
FjaellingsdalK. S.KlöcknerC. A. (2019). Gaming Green: The educational potential of eco –– A digital simulated ecosystem. Frontiers in Psychology. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02846.
KlineS.Dyer-WithefordN.de PeuterG. (2003). Digital play: The interaction of technology, culture, and marketing. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.
24.
MalkowskiJ.RusswormT.M. (Eds.). (2015). Gaming representation: Race, gender, and sexuality in video games. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
25.
MejeurC.ButtM.ColeA. (2021). Feminist & furious: Diversity work(ers) against game studies of empire!. Games and Culture, 16(3), 342-356. doi:10.1177/1555412020963833
NicollB.KeoghB. (2019). The unity game engine and the circuits of cultural software. Cham: Palgrave Pivot.
28.
NieborgD. B.PoellT. (2018). The platformization of cultural production: Theorizing the contingent cultural commodity. New Media & Society, 20(11), 4275-4292.
29.
PattersonC. (2020). Open world empire: Race, erotics, and the global rise of video games. New York: New York University Press.
30.
PattersonT.BarrattS. (2019). Playing for the planet: How video games can deliver for people and the environment. Arendal, Norway: UN Environment/GRID-Arendal.
31.
PhillipsA. (2020). Gamer trouble: Feminist confrontations in digital culture. New York: New York University Press.
32.
RichardsonA. V. (2020, May 4). Endless mode: Exploring the procedural rhetoric of a Black Lives Matter-themed newsgame. Convergence. doi:10.1177/1354856520918072
33.
RuffinoP.WoodcockJ. (2021). Game workers and the empire: unionisation in the UK video game industry. Games and Culture, 16(3), 317-328. doi:10.1177/1555412020947096
34.
ShawA. (2015). Gaming at the edge: Sexuality and gender at the margins of gamer culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
