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Made in Asia/America

Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us

Power Play: Games, Politics, Culture

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Book

Pages: 376

Illustrations: 29 illustrations

Published: April 2024

Editors: Christopher B. Patterson, Tara Fickle

Contributors: Matthew Seiji Burns, Edmond Y. Chang, Naomi Clark, Miyoko Conley, Toby Đỗ, Anthony Dominguez, Sarah Christina Ganzon, Yuxin Gao, Domini Gee, Melos Han-Tani, Huan He, Matthew Jungsuk Howard, Rachael Hutchinson, Paraluman (Luna) Javier, Sisi Jiang, Marina Ayano Kittaka, Minh Le, Haneul Lee, Rachel Li, Christian Kealoha Miller, Patrick Miller, Keita Moore, Souvik Mukherjee, Christopher B. Patterson, Pamela Punzalan, Mike Ren, Takeo Rivera, Yasheng She, Dietrich Squinkifer, Lien B. Tran, Prabhash Ranjan Tripathy, Emperatriz Ung, Gerald Voorhees, Joe Yizhou Xu, Robert Yang

Subjects
Asian American Studies, Cultural Studies, Media Studies > Digital Media

Made in Asia/America explores the key role video games play within the race makings of Asia/America. Its fourteen critical essays on games, ranging from Death Stranding to Animal Crossing, and five roundtables with twenty Asian/American game makers examine the historical entanglements of games, Asia, and America, and reveal the ways games offer new modes of imagining imperial violence, racial difference, and coalition. Shifting away from Eurocentric, white, masculinist takes on gaming, the contributors focus on minority and queer experiences, practices, and innovative scholarly methods to better account for the imperial circulation of games. Encouraging ambiguous and contextual ways of understanding games, the editors offer an “interactive” editorial method, a genre-expanding approach that encourages hybrid works of autotheory, queer of color theory, and conversation among game makers and scholars to generate divergent meanings of games, play, and “Asian America.”

Contributors. Matthew Seiji Burns, Edmond Y. Chang, Naomi Clark, Miyoko Conley, Toby Đỗ, Anthony Dominguez, Tara Fickle, Sarah Christina Ganzon, Yuxin Gao, Domini Gee, Melos Han-Tani, Huan He, Matthew Jungsuk Howard, Rachael Hutchinson, Paraluman (Luna) Javier, Sisi Jiang, Marina Ayano Kittaka, Minh Le, Haneul Lee, Rachel Li, Christian Kealoha Miller, Patrick Miller, Keita C. Moore, Souvik Mukherjee, Christopher B. Patterson, Pamela (Pam) Punzalan, Takeo Rivera, Yasheng She, D. Squinkifer, Lien B. Tran, Prabhash Ranjan Tripathy, Emperatriz Ung, Gerald Voorhees, Yizhou (Joe) Xu, Robert Yang, Mike Ren Yi

Praise

“Made in Asia/America represents a truly vital intervention into the study of race, power, and play by turning much-needed attention to the narratives of racialization that surround games. It insightfully lays bare the many ways in which Asia, America, and gaming have long been intertwined. Simultaneously, it pushes the study of games in exciting new directions by bridging theory and practice, foregrounding dynamic conversations between game designers.” - Bo Ruberg, author of Video Games Have Always Been Queer

“Christopher B. Patterson and Tara Fickle’s volume brings together gamers, designers, developers, and scholars who lay out the stakes of (not) being seen as Asian in the gaming industry. The power, eloquence, and vulnerability of these voices provocatively call for reflection and action across scholarly, commercial, and geographic communities. The book captures the depth and breadth of the critical intersection of Asian/American studies and game studies. Its impact will reverberate over time and place for all who inhabit it.” - Betsy Huang, author of Contesting Genres in Contemporary Asian American Fiction

"Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and professionals." - Choice

"Asia and America are the two giant references in the world of video game production. Even more than that, they are the two principal references in the cultural and visual imaginaries of video games. In itself, these two affirmations do not tell us much, and in particular they do not tell us anything about the interfaces between the two. This book is a major intervention in the consideration of these interfaces, which it carries out from many angles, many speaking positions, and in both academic and informal registers." - David Callahan, The AAG Review of Books

"The book serves as a strong entry point for readers, whether they are situated within game studies or entirely new to the field. . . . [Made in Asia/America] offers an incredibly diverse and innovative approach to game studies." - Saeed Hani Said Dabbour, International Journal of Communication

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information Funding Information

Author/Editor Bios

Christopher B. Patterson is Associate Professor of Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia and author of Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games.

Tara Fickle is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at Northwestern University and author of The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities.

Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Asia / Games \ America / Tara Fickle and Christopher B. Patterson 1
Part 1. Gaming Orientalism
Designer Roundtable #1: Mixed Connections / Emperathriz Ung, Patrick Miller, Minh Le, and Matthew Seiji Burns 27
1. Gaming while Asian / Edmond Y. Chang 35
2. The Asiatic and the Anti-Asian Pandemic On Paradise Killer / Christopher B. Patterson 52
3. Asian, Adjacent: Utopian Longing and Model Minority Mediation in Disco Elysium / Takeo Rivera 66
Part 2. Playable Bodies
Designer Roundtable #2: Choose Your Mothership / Sisi Jiang, Domini Gee, Toby Đỗ, and Naomi Clark 89
4. Playable Deniability: Biracial Representation and the Politics of Play in Metal Gear Solid / Keita Moore 99
5. Designing the Global Body: Japan’s Postwar Modernity in Death Stranding / Yasheng She 115
6. The Trophy Called “Asian Hands”: On the Mythical Proficiency of Asian Gamers / Prabhash Ranjan Tripathy 132
Part 3. Localizing Empire
Designer Roundtable #3: De-Cultural Imitation Games / Joe Yizhou Xu, Lien B. Tran, Christian Kealoha Miller, and Paraluman (Luna) Javier 149
7. Colonial Moments in Japanese Video Games: A Multidirectional Perspective / Rachael Hutchinson 159
8. The Video Game Version of the Indian Subcontinent: The Exotic and the Colonized / Souvik Mukherjee 176
9. The High-Tech Orientalism in Play: Performing South Koreanness in Esports / Gerald Voorhees and Matthew Jungsuk Howard 190
Part 4. Inhabiting the Asiatic
Designer Roundtable #4: The Crumbs of Our Representation / Robert Yang, Dietrich Squinkifer (Squinky), Rachel Li, and Marina Ayano Kittaka 207
10. Chinese/Cheating: Procedural Racism in Battle Royale Shooters / Huan He 217
11. Romancing the Night Away: Queering Animate Hierarchies in Hatoful Boyfriend and Tusks / Miyoko Conley 232
12. The Fujoshi Trophy and Ridiculously Hot Men: Otome Games and Postfeminist Sensibilities / Sarah Christina Ganzon 250
Part 5. Mobilizing Machines
Designer Roundtable #5. How Do We Talk about Things that Are Happening without Talking about Things That Are Happening? / Mike Ren Yi, Pamela Punzalen, Melos Han-Tani, and Yuxin Gao 269
13. Hip-Hop and Fighting Games: Locating the Blerd between New York and Japan / Anthony Dominguez 277
14. “This Is What We Do”: Hong Kong Protests in Animal Crossing: New Horizons / Haneul Lee 290
Coda. Role / Play \ Race / Christopher B. Patterson and Tara Fickle
Bibliography 319
Contributors 349
Index 353

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Funding Information

Open access support provided by the University of British Columbia Open Access Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences Research and the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation, the University of Oregon, and the Oregon Humanities Center.