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Postmillenial Pop
Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games
Finalist, 2021 John Hope Franklin Prize, given by the American Studies Association
Seeking ways to understand video games beyond their imperial logics, Patterson turns to erotics to re-invigorate the potential passions and pleasures of play
Video games vastly outpace all other mediums of entertainment in revenue and in global reach. On the surface, games do not appear ideological, nor are they categorized as national products. Instead, they seem to reflect the open and uncontaminated reputation of information technology.
Video games are undeniably imperial products. Their very existence has been conditioned upon the spread of militarized technology, the exploitation of already-existing labor and racial hierarchies in their manufacture, and the utopian promises of digital technology. Like literature and film before it, video games have become the main artistic expression of empire the open world empire, formed through the routes of information technology and the violences of drone combat, unending war, and overseas massacres that occur with little scandal or protest.
Though often presented as purely technological feats, video games are also artistic projects, and as such, they allow us an understanding of how war and imperial violence proceed under signs of openness, transparency, and digital utopia. But the video game, as Christopher B. Patterson argues, is also an inherently Asian its hardware is assembled in Asia; its most talented e-sports players are of Asian origin; Nintendo, Sony, and Sega have defined and dominated the genre. Games draw on established discourses of Asia to provide an “Asiatic” space, a playful sphere of racial otherness that straddles notions of the queer, the exotic, the bizarre, and the erotic. Thinking through games like Overwatch , Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare , Shenmue II , and Isolation , Patterson reads against empire by playing games erotically, as players do―seeing games as Asiatic playthings that afford new passions, pleasures, desires, and attachments.
Seeking ways to understand video games beyond their imperial logics, Patterson turns to erotics to re-invigorate the potential passions and pleasures of play
Video games vastly outpace all other mediums of entertainment in revenue and in global reach. On the surface, games do not appear ideological, nor are they categorized as national products. Instead, they seem to reflect the open and uncontaminated reputation of information technology.
Video games are undeniably imperial products. Their very existence has been conditioned upon the spread of militarized technology, the exploitation of already-existing labor and racial hierarchies in their manufacture, and the utopian promises of digital technology. Like literature and film before it, video games have become the main artistic expression of empire the open world empire, formed through the routes of information technology and the violences of drone combat, unending war, and overseas massacres that occur with little scandal or protest.
Though often presented as purely technological feats, video games are also artistic projects, and as such, they allow us an understanding of how war and imperial violence proceed under signs of openness, transparency, and digital utopia. But the video game, as Christopher B. Patterson argues, is also an inherently Asian its hardware is assembled in Asia; its most talented e-sports players are of Asian origin; Nintendo, Sony, and Sega have defined and dominated the genre. Games draw on established discourses of Asia to provide an “Asiatic” space, a playful sphere of racial otherness that straddles notions of the queer, the exotic, the bizarre, and the erotic. Thinking through games like Overwatch , Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare , Shenmue II , and Isolation , Patterson reads against empire by playing games erotically, as players do―seeing games as Asiatic playthings that afford new passions, pleasures, desires, and attachments.
344 pages, Hardcover
Published April 14, 2020
106 people want to read
About the author
Christopher B. Patterson
9 books5 followersChristopher B. Patterson is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Social Justice at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on transpacific discourses of games, literature, and films through the lens of empire studies, queer theory, and creative writing. He is author Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific (2018, Rutgers University Press), and "Stamped: an anti-travel novel" (2018, Westphalia Press).
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 27, 2021
I liked this book a lot. Patterson’s account of video games’s transpacific entanglements and exploration of the racial and sexual dimensions of the erotica of play is novel and interesting, and this is an admirable and important contribution to the fields of game studies and media studies. I found myself a bit annoyed by what felt like a repeated gesturing towards the feminized and dangerous factory labor that produces the silicon in the Pearl River Delta and the extractive economy in cobalt mining, both of which Patterson repeatedly assured us are important without really ever addressing as more than an aside. In this sense the critique itself seems symptomatic, and I don’t know that Patterson would disagree. I was also a bit unconvinced by some of the theoretical architecture - the repeated turns to Barthes and Sedgwick and Foucault sometimes felt a little tacked-on. I found the discussion of BioWare-style RPGs (the Mass Effect series is singled out) as a kind of training exercise for managerial multiculturalism particularly compelling and incisive.
July 21, 2020
In this ubiquitous piece, Christopher Patterson combines queer theory, social responsibility, and his love for video games to elevate the medium but also allows the reader a deeper appreciation on the complex social dynamics of the video game economy.
From comparing and contrasting both an Asian and Western gaming culture in its development and intercultural fetishism in the earlier chapters to engaging the readers (and even its critics and apologists) on the nuanced philosophy of how the paradox of ludonarrative dissonance affects user behavior-- Patterson tugs at both the reader's heartstrings and challenges their collective conscience.
Wherever the readers position may be on the subject of games, gamer culture, or the complex structure of game economics, it is both an entertaining and informative read and for a gamer, each page manipulates my emotions ranging from pure joy of nostalgia to that of a deep examination of my social conscience.
From comparing and contrasting both an Asian and Western gaming culture in its development and intercultural fetishism in the earlier chapters to engaging the readers (and even its critics and apologists) on the nuanced philosophy of how the paradox of ludonarrative dissonance affects user behavior-- Patterson tugs at both the reader's heartstrings and challenges their collective conscience.
Wherever the readers position may be on the subject of games, gamer culture, or the complex structure of game economics, it is both an entertaining and informative read and for a gamer, each page manipulates my emotions ranging from pure joy of nostalgia to that of a deep examination of my social conscience.
October 14, 2021
This book is for someone and it’s probably not me. Peterson really compellingly considers racial erotics and Asiatic/ish pleasure in video games. I really skimmed the game play bits but then started to loose the theoretical threads amidst the volume of material.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews