A paper I wrote entitled “Privileging the Past Problematic and Gendered Rhetoric in Retrogaming Content” is now available via the proceedings of the Foundations of Digital Games 2022 conference. I won best paper for this article and I’m really excited that it’s finally out for all to read.
Here’s the abstract to the article:
This paper presents qualitative analysis of 5 of the most popular retrogaming channels on the streaming site “YouTube” to understand how notions of gaming past are brought to bear on the present. Findings suggest that content creators draw upon personal histories and well-trodden discussions to present informational content about products of the past. However, these accounts are often situated in privileged and gendered accounts that are indicative of what Salter and Blodgett term “Toxic Geek Masculinity”. Although seemingly innocuous, these narratives potentially contribute to barriers of entry into the gaming community for marginalized individuals that do not fit within the hegemonic gaming norm.
If the article is unavailable to you for whatever reason please let me know and I’d be happy to share a copy.
A paper I co-authored with Thomas Grace, and Katie Salen entitled “Policies of Misconduct: A Content Analysis of Codes of Conduct for Online Multiplayer Games” will be presented and published at CHI-Play 2022.
Unfortunately I will not be able to attend the conference in-person, but I am very much looking forward to attending virtually.
Here’s an abstract for the paper:
In this paper we searched the websites of 60 popular online multiplayer games to locate their codes of conduct and then performed a content analysis on 32 unique codes of conduct. Our analysis consisted of a two-cycle coding process including initial coding, and then pattern coding for clustering categories and themes together. Our aim was to better understand how game companies include codes of conduct on their websites and what content they include in the codes of conduct. The two-cycle coding process identified five main themes: (1) game company values, (2) expectations of players, (3) bad behaviors and rules, (4) moderation practices, and finally (5) document structure. Our findings suggest that codes of conduct are routinely inaccessible, if present at all, and that codes of conduct are often framed around punitive legal language that reflect policies of misconduct rather than expressing communal values and expectations. Our findings can help contribute towards community management in online games and make codes of conduct more accessible for all stakeholders in online gaming communities. We have also provided design recommendations and a design process that should help guide game companies looking to create value focused codes of conduct.
I’ll be presenting research on the retrogaming community, as well as a brief presentation on my dissertation work, at the Foundation of Digital Games annual conference in Athens, Greece. The paper “Privileging the Past: Problematic and Gendered Rhetoric in Retrogaming Content” will later be published in the FDG22 proceedings (so stay tuned for that!)
If you’re also going to the conference or have interest in the presentation/paper, please feel free to reach out. Looking forward to sharing this research.
I’m so excited to share my newly published article entitled The Bootleg Connection: Micro Genius and the Transnational Circulation of Early Clone Consoles now available via the Journal of Game Histories, RomChip.
Micro Genius products
Here’s the abstract for the article:
Video game histories often depict the medium’s global rise as untroubled, with video games emerging from North America and Japan and meeting little to no resistance. Recent game scholarship has shown the flaws in this narrative, specifically its Western-centric bias and failure to acknowledge the numerous regional markets and local developers who contributed to the medium’s global popularity. This paper continues this work by considering an alternative, bootleg network of transnational gaming circulation. By exploring Micro Genius devices and their transnational legacy as a case study of bootleg gaming brands, this paper contends that alternative gaming experiences are not only important but critical to game history and the global game industry’s extraordinary reach. Originating in Taiwan, Micro Genius devices had an undocumented impact on the growth of the regional gaming market. Subsequently, the brand had an extensive afterlife as a transnational clone via three regional variants: the Dendy in Russia, the Pegasus in Poland, and the Samurai Micro Genius in India. The case of Micro Genius and its various rebrands shows how pirate brands not only invited regional communities into the video gaming market and culture but did so through complex transnational networks comparable to those of leading companies like Nintendo and Sega.
I’m so happy that this piece is finally out there. It’s been several years of work and really encompasses a lot of where my research is going.
An article I co-wrote with a few of my games labmates entitled Game studies, futurity, and necessity (or the game studies regarded as still to come) was recently published in the journal Critical Studies in Media Communications as apart a issue on the future of games research. It was truly a wonderful collaborative experience putting together this piece and hopefully it will be of interest to some of you.
Here’s the abstract for the article:
As members of the Critical Approaches to Technology and the Social (CATS) Lab at UC Irvine, we are particularly motivated by this special issue’s call to action. As a collective of interdisciplinary students at various stages in relevant degrees, we are the future of game studies. As such, this question strikes us not as one for speculation, but as a space to commit a set of shared values necessary for game studies to have a future—one that is more equitable, more sustainable, and more transparent. We argue that working towards this future will require an increased commitment to critiquing the relationship between industry and game-making practice; examining the sociopolitical landscape of both game culture and the world; and an attention to the institution of the university itself. Imagining the future in this way is a necessary practice, and a core component to scholarly critique. When we imagine the future, we can work both towards and against it. We do this work as researchers, but also as streamers, makers, critics, and players, each of whom brings our perspective to this special issue to articulate our vision of a critical game studies that strives for equity, sustainability, and self-reflexivity.
The full article can be found at this link. If for whatever reason you are unable to access the article, please feel free to reach out and I can help out.
My extended abstract entitled “Platforms at the Peripheries” that I submitted to the Digital Games Research Association’s (DiGRA) 2020 conference is now available via their proceedings.
A Famicom clone “Bootleg Console” called the Skyeye Racing Pro,
I wrote this around a year ago when the world looked pretty different, but it still encompasses a lot of what I’m exploring in my research. I’m excited to share more about the project as it progresses,.
Just wanted to update the blog with two unfortunate cancellations about presentations of research.
I was accepted to the Digital Games Research Association’s annual conference in Tampere Finland to present my on-going research. The presentation was tentatively entitled Platforms at the Peripheries:A Case Study Analysis of Historic Bootleg Consoles. Of course the conference has been cancelled due to the global pandemic. An extended abstract for the research will be published in the Conference’s proceedings in the next few months.
I was accepted to the American Sociological Association’s annual conference in San Francisco California to present a paper I wrote entitled Gaming Tastes: Cultural Hierarchies Amongst Video Game Consoles and Devices. The paper broadly looks at communal hierarchies of gaming hardware through concepts by Pierre Bourdieu. This conference has also been cancelled due to the global pandemic. Discussion of a virtual conference are in the works, so we’ll see what happens.
I wanted to share these two projects to extend my willingness to discuss and share info about these areas for any potential academics or interested parties. I’m always happy to chat with individuals about this research, so please do hesitate to send a message.
As unfortunate as it is for these conferences to be cancelled, they are done in an attempt to keep everyone safe. I’m extremely grateful for all of the organizers and peer reviewers for their hard work, and for the conference officials for making the swift and hard decisions to cancel. Hopefully everyone’s hard work won’t go to waste and we’ll be back to physical meetings in 2021.
I wanted to share a guest blog post I did for the Strong Museum of Play’s Play Stuff Blog during my summer fellowship there last year. The post entitled, Clones in the Archives: Console and Software Cloning Practices in the Early Years of Video Games, is a short look at how console cloning contributed to the global proliferation of video games in the 1970s and 1980s. It narrows in on cloning narratives around Pong Clones and Famicom clones (Famiclones) and seeks to understand if these narratives differ in meaningful ways. It also briefly reflects on doing archival research and the amazing opportunity I was given by the Strong Museum.
This historical piece has increasingly become a tent pole of my understanding around cloning practices more broadly, as well as foundation for situating how video game history favors specific narratives over other. Hopefully I’ll have some more pieces of this project to share in the future, but the Play Stuff Blog post should give you an idea as to where my research is heading.
I wanted to share an area of research I’m currently engaged with, particularly looking at what are typically referred to as Bootleg Consoles as meaningful social artifacts that make up regional gaming identities.
A Subor Famicom clone, not licenced by Nintendo
Broadly, the term bootleg console can be used to refer to any third party video game device that plays another manufacturer’s software without the intent permission from the original developer. Bootleg consoles of the past had traditionally been cloned devices that enable one to play physical software on a non-licensed device. During the early years of the industry, these types of devices sprung up all around the world in areas left untapped by big name game developers (Atari, Sega, Nintendo, etc.) and many countries had their own variations that they fondly remember.
The CrazyBoy famiclone.
Modern bootleg consoles exist somewhere between cloned consoles and straight emulation, and many device tend to be marketed as all-in-one devices similar to official products like the NES Classic or Sega Genesis Mini. These devices tend to feature a swath of pirated games at a fraction of the cost of official products, with the most common platform pirated still being the Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System.
Power Player device, an example of modern bootlegs on the market
Looking more critically at these devices as platforms that are more than just cheap cash-ins or pirateware may yield interesting results about gaming more broadly, and how the industry as created a platform hierarchy through I.P and access.
One way that I am examining this project is through a twitter account that collects, documents, and share many of these types of devices. You can check the twitter account @Bootlegconsoles.
The intent of this account is to share knowledge and experiences around these devices, and does not condone piracy. You can support this project by simply sharing or subscribing to this twitter account, but also by sharing your own experiences with these devices!
I’ll be sure to share more info on this project as it progresses.
Continuing with an update about my games research related activities this summer, I wanted to share a little bit about my experience at the Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA) summer school in Skövde, Sweden.
This was a three day workshop where games researchers from multiple countries came together to discuss current topics in the field, share on-going research, and collaborate over shared interests. I presented on a research proposal about bootleg consoles I’m starting to dive into and received some great feedback from participants and faculty. It was a terrific opportunity to meet scholars from around the world and create connections outside of my narrow academic lens.
A brainstorming exercise to find collaborative ideas
It’s a rare opportunity to engage in a event like this, so I was incredibly honored to have the chance to participate in the summer workshop. Even just traveling abroad for video game related research is something I never would have thought i’d be doing some years ago. Hopefully HEVGA decides to hold the summer school next year and the event becomes an annual gathering of academics.
After the summer school I had the chance to spend a few days in Stockholm, and I took the opportunity to check out some game related activities
One of my first stops was to NERDS video game bar, located in the area of Södermalm. Besides offering video game themed drinks, the bar offered the ability to rent out consoles and tvs for local play of classic titles like GoldenEye and Mario Kart 64. Having done research prior on physical gaming spaces, seeing how social engagement was key to the design of the bar was really fascinating. It was incredibly packed so I didn’t get a chance to play anything, but I did get to try one of the bar’s in-house beers.
Also decided to check out one of Stockholm’s used game store, GameShop.Se. It was a really neat store that had consoles and games from multiple regions (US, PAL, Japan) and even some old cloning/bootleg devices. The shop owners were incredibly hospitable and overall the store seemed like a great stop for anyone in area looking for some retro titles.
What’s next? I’m hoping to update the blog more often and actually share some written work. Unfortunately academic publishing moves slower than blogging and it’s taken me awhile to actually pull together some research worth sharing, but things are in the pipeline. Overall this summer has been incredibly productive for creating new connections around game studies and for solidifying some ideas I’ve been working on.
The Sociology of Videogames 