IDK, I feel like the crux of this articles argument is “Anglophone Gaming Press primarily focuses on games actually released, or played widely within the Anglophone Games Market. And this is necessarily insidious for… reasons >.>”
It just doesn’t strike me as a particularly compelling issue. Even if the gaming market is becoming increasingly international in scope (Which is a good thing!), language barriers do still represent a real barrier for communication, and frequently either inform, or dictate genuine differences in how two cultures, or sets of cultures, are going to develop. Until we all decide to speak Esperanto (or Mandarin) that’s likely going to remain the case in the future.
Furthermore, while gaming markets are today international, they don’t have international origins. They each grew up around particular regional industries (especially so in computer games development), and those origins still impact the development trends of particular national games industries to this day. If the author wants to write a book specifically about the history of gaming in Brazil for Anglophone audiences to gain a better perspective on international games development, then they should do that! It would most likely be a positive addition to the current discourse.
I just don’t get why they took it so personally, that the Anglo Gaming Press & Academia would focus primarily on the parts of gaming history that are most relevant to it’s own development.
Come on, the issue isn’t that the anglophone press only focuses on anglophone games, it is that the anglophone press writes about anglophone games as if that was all of games
Yes, my point though is that up until the last 4-6 years or so, this has been a mostly legitimate phenomenon.
If you want to understand how the Call of Duty series became the culturally predominant image of what “videogames” are in the West by the mid-2010’s, you would be better served by analyzing the history & development trends of the Western Gaming Market, rather than whatever the hell was going on with MapleStory, or Vietnamese mobile gaming, even if the latter two have larger playerbases. Those aren’t who western games companies are selling to, and aren’t who they hire to make directorial decisions. Those people’s experiences are, in the abstract, no less valid or meaningful than those of westerners, but they aren’t relevant to the immediate question.
Conversely; if one is to understand, and properly contextualize, the growth of the modern Chinese games industry in the international market, then this will necessarily require a broadening of the scope of the conversation around videogames.
These are phenomena dictated by material developments within the industry, and they will change as the composition of the industry itself does.
IDK, I feel like the crux of this articles argument is “Anglophone Gaming Press primarily focuses on games actually released, or played widely within the Anglophone Games Market. And this is necessarily insidious for… reasons >.>”
It just doesn’t strike me as a particularly compelling issue. Even if the gaming market is becoming increasingly international in scope (Which is a good thing!), language barriers do still represent a real barrier for communication, and frequently either inform, or dictate genuine differences in how two cultures, or sets of cultures, are going to develop. Until we all decide to speak Esperanto (or Mandarin) that’s likely going to remain the case in the future.
Furthermore, while gaming markets are today international, they don’t have international origins. They each grew up around particular regional industries (especially so in computer games development), and those origins still impact the development trends of particular national games industries to this day. If the author wants to write a book specifically about the history of gaming in Brazil for Anglophone audiences to gain a better perspective on international games development, then they should do that! It would most likely be a positive addition to the current discourse.
I just don’t get why they took it so personally, that the Anglo Gaming Press & Academia would focus primarily on the parts of gaming history that are most relevant to it’s own development.
Come on, the issue isn’t that the anglophone press only focuses on anglophone games, it is that the anglophone press writes about anglophone games as if that was all of games
Yes, my point though is that up until the last 4-6 years or so, this has been a mostly legitimate phenomenon.
If you want to understand how the Call of Duty series became the culturally predominant image of what “videogames” are in the West by the mid-2010’s, you would be better served by analyzing the history & development trends of the Western Gaming Market, rather than whatever the hell was going on with MapleStory, or Vietnamese mobile gaming, even if the latter two have larger playerbases. Those aren’t who western games companies are selling to, and aren’t who they hire to make directorial decisions. Those people’s experiences are, in the abstract, no less valid or meaningful than those of westerners, but they aren’t relevant to the immediate question.
Conversely; if one is to understand, and properly contextualize, the growth of the modern Chinese games industry in the international market, then this will necessarily require a broadening of the scope of the conversation around videogames.
These are phenomena dictated by material developments within the industry, and they will change as the composition of the industry itself does.