Tamagotchi (Bandai, 1996), surely the best known of virtual pets(though they are, strictly speaking, extraterrestrial rather than earthlyanimals)
Similar to Pokémons, these types of entities displace the actual debates of animal welfare. They are mascots, competitive/trained playthings, not entities that can live on their own. Animals like this get systematically infantilised, made dependent from a white saviour gaze.
In mostcases, civilians can be killed—players can murder or incidentally attack the wrongperson during a gunfight—but this causes players to lose a life or fail a mission.
This also implicitly means that killing "others" is allowed. They might be playing the war game, yes, but maybe their country unlisted them unwillingly, how are they different from civilians?
g rape and pedophilia, it is rare to findgames in which these (especially the latter) are possible. Developers might notalways intend to forbid these actions, but they are forbidden all the same if playersare unable to simulate them. Games therefore establish a kind of moral architec-ture as boundaries are created, all without labeling actions or the need for explicitmoralizing.
Then these go unoticed, invisibilised. Much like prostitution is. Much like porn... yet his author seems to frame it as positive?
Kearney considered the girly aesthetic of what shecalls “sparklefication” and its capacity to dissolve effeminophobia.66 Girl andqueer communities that embrace “sparklefication,” Kearney writes, are “cham-pioning femininity for the various pleasures it elicits and the subversive potentialit offers within patriarchal heteronormative societies.”67 Kearney acknowledgeselsewhere, however, that “[p]ink’s signifying power has been so cemented overthe past half century that it is very difficult to associate it with anything otherthan females and femininity,” making it challenging to disentangle the colourfrom its use in upholding rigid gender stereotypes.
In the West! Please, consider this.
One of the most comprehensive of these studies isKearney’s Girls Make Media. Kearney’s book charts a history of girls’ cultural pro-duction in North America, rewriting misogynistic assumptions that position girlsand women as consumers and boys and men as producers. Kearney goes as farback as the domestic crafting activities of the Victorian era to the scrapbookingby fans of classic Hollywood cinema. By the late twentieth century these practiceshad expanded to photography, music, filmmaking, zine making, and web design.
Think who is an art teacher? Who went goes to through master?
In 2019,it attracted crowds of 5,500 at two outdoor events on Halloween night, with other eventsinvolving smaller numbers, e.g. 60 older citizens attended an afternoon tea party and 780people participated in a Dracula themed fun run.Enacting hospitality as welcome and as social controlThe data suggest that both festivals are actively fostering hospitality through their practices.
What data? I don't see a single demographic here beyond mentioning the overall diversity of the area at 50% non-irish. Who attended this? I don't know.
enhance integration
Integration is NOT inclusion.
In festival and eventsettings where people gather, e.g. to hear a favourite musician or learn about a shared interest,there is clear potential for people to set aside differences and find common ground in taste andleisure preferences (Gilroy 2004)
Wow, don't you see the problem here? Curb your privilege.
This understanding highlights that hospitality is not just aboutunrequited giving but always involves an exchange. For their part, the host offers a welcome,friendliness and safety. In the narrowly defined service encounter, the reciprocation expectedof the guest involves economics, as well as a tacit agreement to respect the host’s rules andregulations.
I am a stranger in this adultcentric capitalist world, I haven't signed a social contract to obey your crappy laws.
Clear-cut distinctions between hosts and guests areno longer tenable now (Larsen 2008), given that mobility is such a prominent feature ofcontemporary living (Morley 2002).
Nonsense
outlets like the-Score eSports presented Korean player salaries as disproportionately low,46characterizing Korean players as supreme talents exploited by corporatesponsors paying them minimal wages.47 Even as many Korean players leftfor China, the discourse evolved to see Korean players as good neoliberalsubjects due to their ease of exploitation by corporate interest.
That's true for most esports and regions, yes. It's a very precarised field, in a way, like culture. There's one Taylor Switft (survivorship bias, the myth of self-made hard-worker).
South Korean esports ecosystem
Not just esports, think K-pop boybands. And arguably, some of these may surely find themselves in different origins, like sports clubs and training camps (think La Masia from FCB). Also, this is missing an intersectional approach considering how gender and disability fit into this MASCULINE landscape.
people almostoverwork themselves, and they feel this compulsion and duty to the degreethat sometimes I think they sometimes ruin their lives.
Oh, don't turn this around. This is true. It is true for pianists in Spain, for athletic swimmers in Oklahoma, and for football players in Argentina. Child exploitation is a thing. Perhaps not self-overwork, but this is what society asks of them.
There's this thing in progressivism, where we should be more rested and have more leisure. I sorta agree insofar as it is sustainable, but if the right-wing politicians exploit themselves, we must keep up too. We can't fight a tank with a sunflower for now, I think. We can't fight populism with 3 hour talks.
So no, I deny there exists, at least more than anecdotically, this fog of mystery surrounding Korean players. Indeed, many lower ranks, may admire and find a new interest in their culture thanks to popular figures like that.
League of Legends (LoL)
Stop this essentialisation. There's more than football in Europe, more than NBA and NFL in USA, and more than LoL in Asia. Surely, most people consume these. But you are making a kids these days scarecrow. Asia doesn't dominate Rocket League, Dota, CS:GO, Valorant, Overwatch, PUBG, or Fortnite.
Curiously, it dominates in MOBAs, like Arena of Valor, that have their headquarters on China. I am implying it has to do with marketing (and yes, also govern endorsements). Don't blame the players, blame the power.
Here: https://www.esportsearnings.com/games / https://escharts.com/
Allen Guttmann explains how modern sports differ from the games foundin ancient society. He ascribes seven distinct features (two values and fiveprocesses) to modern sports that distinguish it from ancient games: secu-larism, equality, specialization, rationalization, bureaucratization, quan-tification, and record
Modern sports are usually jobs. Such a pipeline is inherently speculative, not because you shouldn't make a living with art or fitness, but because in doing so, you are the product, and people will rate you.
Christine Yano builds on Iwabu-chi’s work and thinks through what she calls the commodity “whiteface” ofHello Kitty. 31 Remarking on Japanese companies’ desires to create globallycompatible consumer products in the 1970s by mimicking Euro-Americanstandards, Yano underscores the ambiguity of the international appeal ofHello Kitty, especially her cute white face. 32 Yano links mukokuseki to mo-dernity, whiteness, and global acceptance and adeptly points out the Japanesecompanies’ willingness to self-erase for the sake of global marketability.
Representation in toys, similar than in games. You consume stereotypes for Carnival: What do the boys wear, tactical and police gear. What about girls? Flying assistants or dressed princesses. Do you see many doctors during carnival? No.
To me, most festivals are grotesque self-fetishisations plagued by nationalistic discriminatory pride. Yes, they can be an acknowledgement of diverse oft-excluded identities (furries), and a visibilisation and acceptance of them, but they rarely are: Most of the times, they look like a parody of the parody, a cartoonish simulation of army/school uniforms, and an objectification via (female) sexualised dresses.
TzarinaPrater and Catherine Fung argue that for the Asian body’s labor to be recog-nized, it must be converted from “the foreign threat to the assimilated modelminority.”
Reminder: Exclusion, Segregation, Integration, and Inclusion. Assimilation is homogenised inclusion, which dissolves any inclusion, because there is no other to include as there is no identity diversity.
Thinking through Hutchinson’s and Moore’s perspectives, we could arguethat Kojima’s strategy of using racial ambiguity to cater to both the Japaneseand the Western audience permits him to embody Japaneseness without anyhistorical baggage.
Furthermore, can you stop to think what budget the game may have?
Noting the racially ambiguous design of the mgs series’ protagonist Snake,Hutchinson argues that the white-passing body welcomes Western playersto empathize with its message.
I know that this is colonising, you don't have to shove it upon me... but isn't it a justified concession? Isn't the inherent peace-cooperation argument embeded in the game akin to the reparatory non-repetition argument that underlies historical memory?
For me, it is not, and I say this having played a large chunk of the game while focusing on utilitarianist EA ethics. It is not, because it may avoid tokenisation, sure, but Sam Porter is not a slave, he is a hero. Not only that, with although it prefaces the quest of reaching white people with anti-war logics, the game has war, the game has fights, and its sequel does too. These are surrounded with mysticism and fantastic events which cloud the statements and leave them open to interpretation in a way that most players are sure to miss them. It's not provocative, it's a eco-tourism chore. The cutscences and events are a McGuffin to visit places and trek through them to feel epic.
To influence a mass of players, and not just get critical acclaim it would have needed to be more straightforward.
lhewodd,whichhadbeenfifledwifl1reds,pinks,bhies,andpastelyellows,isnowblackandwhite,exceptforherhair,whichisgreen.Herdress,whichwasredandvolunfinous,isnowblackandgray,hanginglimplyoverherlumchedbody.Nothavecontrol.IuseflicThmnbstickstotryandmovehcrtotheriglfl;butshcsh1mblesandfalls.3
Wow... it amazes me how Fullerton cannot see through privilege and stereotypes on this representation. Elitist art. Gibberish clichés. Come on, are you marvelling at the "metaphorical" representation of sadness with just a reclined posture and a black and white palette?
Often enough riot is understood to haveno politics at all
Torre Pacheco, Asalto al Capitolio, Portugal Lula de Silva. Milei is famously anarcho-capitalist. Alt right is presenting itself as anti-bureaucracy, anti-state.
The opposition of strike and riot thus comes to stand, viaveiled syllogism, for the opposition of Marxism
Does it?
Benjamin explains that the sociotechnical imaginary is not just about revealing “how the technical andsocial components of design are intertwined, but also imagines how they might be configureddifferently.”
Design is also practice, it's a step in-between theory and application. It's about understanding logistics from the inside without causing real havoc or backfire. It's about learning to predict, to see the holes and gaps that may arise before they do. Design, at the end, is about bridging the theory-application divide. It helps solidfy theories while seeing their limitations in a safe space, dispelling the myth of sudden talent (from an illusion of explanatory depth), and warning against creeping normality by remaining revisionist (iterating) through the practice.
that inviting nonexperts or amateurs from diverse fields to solveproblems could contribute to more effective solutions and outcomes thankeeping a problem closed and away from the public.
Could, may, underexplored... come on. I am stopping reading here.
Cell Slider par-ticipants evaluate potentially cancerous cells, helping scientists to getbetter at diagnosing cancer in future patients. Similarly, in Biogames,players help to properly diagnose malaria in cells.
Just thought I'd appreciate that the so-called "indispensable" and complex medicine sciences seem to rely on non-expert crowd information quite regularly!
If you can’t do that, someone else can.” She cited the 2022IGDA Developer Satisfaction survey in addressing the games industry retention problem:“Diverse talent tends to leave the industry at about twice the rate as white men. So, if webroaden the funnel and we bring more diverse talent in, all we’re doing is losing morepeople, and that’s not an acceptable action plan. It’s not going to make the kind of lastingchange we need to see in our industry.” Regarding retention of diverse talent, MacLeanrecommended actions for leaders and colleagues that foster an inclusive environment:charter team agreements to define core hours of work, hold team members accountable toensure they use their vacation days, accommodate remote work, create shared definitionsfor flex time schedules, develop clear promotion paths, and demonstrate care foremployees as humans. All of these were presented as ways to retain talent, especially forcaregivers. “People are willing to make these tradeoffs,” speaking of work/life balanceand caregiving in particular, “regardless of gender, regardless of family status if they seethere is a path forward.”From my perspective, intentionality and action to create positive sustainablecultures accommodating the needs of marginalized individuals signposts that the gamesindustry has acknowledged a need for correction and is beginning to support diversityand representation in a meaningful way.
Concerning! He's bought the brand washing attempts of big corps... am I being, rash? Is there no way out for Microsoft? Yes there is: One that doesn't include buying Activision despite being rotten? Profiting from endless games like CoD and Candy Crush? One that doesn't invest in data centers for AI that crush the global South? One that doesn't invest heavily in AAA titles like Halo, including its marketing, only to make a fraction of the investment sponsoring indies (and then laying them off)?
Then, no. I am not being rash. Microsoft owns a greedy ecosystem that includes Word and Excel. It asks people to pay for Windows licenses at 200€. Tried to do a Netflix with Xbox Game Pass. A big problem is that almost everyone knows Microsoft. Who knows Annapurna?
A third and very central way in which UE’s design supported player empowerment was the manner in which the game facilitated the forming of a social network among its players. This was done through the narrative of the game, which told players that social innovation requires teamwork; through the complexity of the missions, which led players to collaborate; and by facilitating player communication via the discussion forum and players’ personal pages. As the game developed and players started to befriend each other, a network emerged that was transferrable to the physical world and enabled them to share ideas, knowledge, and other resources.
Reminds me of the school of moral ambition - https://www.moralambition.org/