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Close Encounter of the 3D Kind: Examining Constructions of the Foreign ‘Other’ in Japanese Videogames

Close Encounter of the 3D Kind: Examining Constructions of the Foreign ‘Other’ in Japanese... AbstractAs a relatively young medium, videogames have become an important part of global popular culture that cannot be underestimated. Due to rapid technological advances, the contents of today’s videogames are becoming increasingly complex. While games are publicly often denounced for causing aggression, violence, or even mental illness, game studies oppose such stereotypical views and seek possibilities to conduct research on digital games in a systematic and thorough manner. This paper draws on approaches from game studies to examine videogames from the perspective of Japanese studies. Assuming that videogames, like other mass media, take part in and shape socially relevant discourses, it will be analysed how the relation between ‘self’ and ‘other’ is constructed in Fire Emblem: Sōen no kiseki and Akatsuki no megami, Tales of Symphonia, and Zeruda no densetsu: Mujura no kamen. For this purpose, the games’ content and character design will be taken into account. Special emphasis will be placed on the question how the relationship between ‘self’ and ‘other’ becomes manifest in the relation between the player and the characters that is constructed during gameplay. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies de Gruyter

Close Encounter of the 3D Kind: Examining Constructions of the Foreign ‘Other’ in Japanese Videogames

Gmeinbauer, Christina
Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 9 (1): 28 – Dec 1, 2018
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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2018 Christina Gmeinbauer, published by Sciendo
ISSN
2521-7038
eISSN
2521-7038
DOI
10.2478/vjeas-2017-0001
Publisher site
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Abstract

AbstractAs a relatively young medium, videogames have become an important part of global popular culture that cannot be underestimated. Due to rapid technological advances, the contents of today’s videogames are becoming increasingly complex. While games are publicly often denounced for causing aggression, violence, or even mental illness, game studies oppose such stereotypical views and seek possibilities to conduct research on digital games in a systematic and thorough manner. This paper draws on approaches from game studies to examine videogames from the perspective of Japanese studies. Assuming that videogames, like other mass media, take part in and shape socially relevant discourses, it will be analysed how the relation between ‘self’ and ‘other’ is constructed in Fire Emblem: Sōen no kiseki and Akatsuki no megami, Tales of Symphonia, and Zeruda no densetsu: Mujura no kamen. For this purpose, the games’ content and character design will be taken into account. Special emphasis will be placed on the question how the relationship between ‘self’ and ‘other’ becomes manifest in the relation between the player and the characters that is constructed during gameplay.

Journal

Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies – de Gruyter

Published: Dec 1, 2018

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