Call for Papers: Special Issue “The Playful Postcolonial: Culturing Videogames in India”
Call for Papers: Special Issue “The Playful Postcolonial: Culturing Videogames in India”
Guest editors: Zahra Rizvi & Souvik Kar
“the empire plays back . . . with its own rules of play.”
—Souvik Mukherjee (2017, p. 7)
At the DiGRA 2022 conference, DiGRA India presented a panel on videogames and India, announcing a turn in game studies—the “waking up” to the discursive possibilities and critical engagement of what game developer Ernest Adams (2009) calls “the sleeping giant” of the gaming industry—India. This giant presents some of the most complex and diverse gaming cultures that are both unique in their experience—informed by the intersection of class, gender, religion, caste, and more (Chowdhury & Rizvi, 2021)—and, simultaneously, have strong affinities with the rest of South Asia and the postcolonial Global South (Mukherjee, 2017; Mukherjee & Hammar, 2018). At the same time, there still exists a paucity of in-depth scholarly engagement with videogames in India, both produced within the country itself as well as globally, that draws on non-Western, specifically Indian cultures and geographies. These constructed absences hide behind them a world of postcolonial possibility, ranging from Nodding Head Games’ incorporation of Hindu mythology and Indian art in Raji: An Ancient Epic (2020) to Studio Oleomingus’ attempt to explore “how interactive fiction might be used to pollute a single reductive record of the past or of a people” (Jani, 2014, para. 2). As a system that is informed by capitalist and colonialist ideologies, the videogame industry finds itself facing these playful and yet hopeful possibilities of resistance and subversion in the gaming cultures of India, where participation in and through postcolonial media opens up a field of questions that need urgent tending to.
What happens when pleasures of play are revealed to be imperial (Jayanth, 2021)? How do gamers in India negotiate play? How do videogames mirror and affect India in the popular imagination and on-ground? Where is India in the map of game studies? This special issue is an ambitious venture in seeking to understand and bring to the fore not only these complexities but also to redress some of the most glaring absences in games research.
The issue will be seeking submissions on themes such as, but not limited to, the following topics:
- Postcolonialism and videogames
- Game design and India
- Representations of India in videogames
- Gamers and gaming cultures in India
- History of games in India
- Analysis of specific Indian games
- Platform debates in India
- Videogames, social media, and the Indian cyberspace
- Situating play in India vis-à-vis play in South Asia and the Global South
- Identity politics in videogames
- Game studies in India
If you are interested in participating in this special issue, please email a 400-500 word abstract (plus references) to rs.zrizvisasuke@jmi.ac.in and eic.press.start@gmail.com by October 3, 2022. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out within a few weeks and full papers will be due by January 31, 2023. The expected date of publication is February 2024.
Articles are expected to be 5000–8000 words (including references and abstracts) and to use the Press Start template. Informal enquiries may be directed to Zahra Rizvi (rs.zrizvisasuke@jmi.ac.in) and Souvik Kar (la20resch11010@iith.ac.in). We also invite you to join our friendly Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/PressStartJournal), where we will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.
References:
Adams, E. (2009). The promise of India: Ancient culture, modern game design. The Designer’s Notebook: The Personal Website of Dr. Ernest W. Adams. http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/India/india.htm
Chowdhury, P., & Rizvi, Z. (2021). Gaming as ghosts: Spectres and absences in games and game Cultures [Keynote address]. 2021 DiGRA India Conference on Games, Culture(s), and India: Dispatches from a Playful Subcontinent. November 20-21, India (virtual conference).
Jani, D. (2014). About. Studio Oleomingus. https://oleomingus.com/about-1. Accessed August 24, 2022.
Jayanth, M. (2021). White protagonism and imperial pleasures in game design [Keynote address]. 2021 DiGRA India Conference on Games, Culture(s), and India: Dispatches from a Playful Subcontinent. November 20-21, India (virtual conference).
Mukherjee, S. (2017). Videogames and postcolonialism: Empire plays back. Palgrave Macmillan.
Mukherjee, S., & Hammar, E. (2018). Introduction to the special issue on postcolonial perspectives in game studies. Open Library of Humanities 4(2), https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.309
Nodding Head Games. (2020). Raji: An ancient epic [Multiplatform]. Nodding Head Games.
Rizvi, Z., Bhattacharya, A., Lahiri, I., Chowdhury, P., Kar, S., & Mukherjee, S. (2022). DiGRA India—Gaming the “sleeping giant”’ [Panel presentations]. DiGRA 2022 International Conference.
