[Air-L] Call for Contribution: Playable Southeast Asia edited collection

[iskandar zulkarnain]

Call for Contribution:

Playable Southeast Asia: Gaming Cultures, Politics, and Aesthetics in a
Multiethnic Region edited volume (will be proposed for publication at Duke
UP)

Editors: Peichi Chung, Byron Fong, Iskandar Zulkarnain

Deadline for abstract: December 1, 2025

Notification of abstract acceptance: February 1, 2026

Deadline for full chapter: December 1, 2026 (tentative)

Expected date of publication: 2027

While video games have always been a global phenomenon, they have been
received, played, and created differently in different regions and
localities (Hjorth and Chan 2009; Huntemann and Aslinger 2013; Penix-Tadsen
2019). These differences add multiple levels of complexity to how we
experience them. Games can be, and often are more than just an
entertainment medium, capable of serving as a subversive means of
self-expression under authoritarian regimes (Svelch 2018), or being
converted into cultural currency for both game designers and players
(Penix-Tadsen 2016). Games can also exist as platforms of ideological
protest, representing voices from below (Mukherjee 2017), or can reveal the
“upside/down” logics that have defined the Asia/America geopolitical
relationship since the 19th century (Patterson and Fickle 2024). Especially
important is how they can also be used as a lens to explore how nations
struggle with the legacies of war, colonialism and religious strife that
define part of the nation-building process (Kang, Yang, Mochocki, Majewski,
and Schreiber 2024).

Yet, despite these valuable insights, much of the purportedly global focus
of video game studies still emphasizes the experience of regions in the
Global North and other conventionally prominent centers for the production
and consumption of games, while largely omitting the experiences of the
Global South from consideration. By following the path of scholars who
focus on regions that have traditionally been underserved by dominant
industry players, and thus aiming to rectify the broadly lacking
examination of these regions by journalists and academics, this edited
collection will focus on gaming cultures, politics, and aesthetics in
Southeast Asia.

As a region, Southeast Asia offers layered, vast levels of complexity. It
is a geopolitical and economic construct deeply rooted within the history
of global colonialism. It invites multiple approaches in its mapping and
description. The region’s nuances are evident in its most prominent
geopolitical construction, ASEAN, as an anti-communist bloc while also
having two nominally communist countries in the region (Vietnam and Laos).
There is mainland Southeast Asia and there is also maritime Southeast Asia.
The southern region has a predominantly Muslim population and the northern
region is predominantly Buddhist. Meanwhile, the Philippines and East Timor
are the only predominantly catholic countries in the region. The region
also has the largest number of Chinese diaspora in the world, mostly living
in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. All these cultural
connections and political configurations have shaped and are currently
being shaped by the production, circulation, and consumption of video games
both from within and outside the region.

In terms of video game theory, for instance, a specific play practice in
Southeast Asia–Balinese cockfight–contributes to the theoretical
formulation of “gamic action” (Galloway 2006), even though it is somewhat
underexplored. Furthermore, within the video game industry framework, there
is a conscious effort–driven by data analytics–of “mythifying” Southeast
Asia as “the world’s fastest growing game region” to attract foreign (i.e.
western) investors, creating a depoliticized configuration of the region
and flattening cultural and racial differences (Wong 2023). Meanwhile, in
an effort to collectively re-imagine Southeast Asia’s regional identity
through game art, some independent game studios in the region have adopted
two types of approaches: following the production formula of global popular
media to achieve “niche globality,” or presenting their version of
“contested regionalism” (Chung 2016). In some cases, game developers and
professional players in Southeast Asia also participate in the promotion of
digital nationalism (Zulkarnain 2014; Jiwandono 2024).

In this context, this edited collection aims to further study gaming
practices in Southeast Asia that reflect and reshape cultural paradigms in
local and regional settings while simultaneously attending to global gaming
progression. Here, we want to frame the concept of “Southeast Asia as a
method,” following the theoretical formulation of Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010),
to emphasize the use of Southeast Asia as an imaginary anchoring point that
allows for inter-referentiality between countries within and outside of the
region in terms of their gaming cultural practices (e.g. E-sports,
industry, indie games, streaming, etc). We are also interested in having a
mix of contributions from scholars from the region (or in close proximity
to the region, geographically and/or culturally) and perspectives
from/interviews with people who are involved in Southeast Asian gaming
cultures (e.g. game developers, studios, archivists, gaming communities,
etc).

Possible topics might include, but not limited to:

   -

   Early histories of video game cultures
   -

   Identity (e.g. national, gender, racial, sexual, religious)
   -

   “Asiatic” style or form in SEA games
   -

   Nostalgic aesthetic/themes in SEA games
   -

   Labor exploitation and unionization (or lack of) in SEA gaming industry
   -

   Historical and counterhistorical representation in SEA games
   -

   Inter-regional citation practice among indie or AAA game developers
   -

   Significance of paratextual elements in SEA games (e.g. streaming, game
   magazines, gaming clubs)
   -

   Cultural representations in SEA games (e.g. religious, linguistic, or
   national)
   -

   The roles of the state in SEA gaming cultures
   -

   Archival initiatives of SEA games
   -

   Decolonizing SEA in video games
   -

   Gaming platforms in Southeast Asian context
   -

   Video games as a heritage
   -

   Gaming preservation
   -

   E-sports cultures in SEA
   -

   Mobile gaming cultures
   -

   Video game bans by the state/state apparatuses

Abstract submissions should comprise of:


   1.

   Abstract (250-500 words)
   2.

   Author information (short biographical statement of 200 words)


Submissions should be sent to playablesea at gmail.com.

Abstract submissions will then undergo an internal editorial review
process. Authors

will be notified of the outcome as soon as reports are received.

Chapter submissions should comprise of:


   1.

   Full-length article (5000-9000 words), including references and a
   bibliography, or
   2.

   Perspectives/Interviews (3000-5000 words) in English or translated
   3.

   Final author information (short biographical statement of 200 words)


Feel free to send us questions regarding this proposed edited collection.

References:

Chen, Kuan-Hsing, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization, Duke UP (2010)

Chung, Peichi, “The Globalization of Game Art in Southeast Asia,” in
Hjorth, Larissa, and Olivia Khoo (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of New Media in
Asia, Routledge (2016)

Galloway, Alexander, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, University of
Minnesota Press (2006)

Hjorth, Larissa, and Dean Chan (Eds.), Gaming Cultures and Place in
Asia-Pacific, Routledge (2009)

Huntemann, Nina B., and Ben Aslinger (Eds.) Gaming Globally: Production,
Play, and Place, Palgrave Macmillan (2013)

Jiwandono, Haryo Pambuko, “Mobile Game Esports as an Indonesian National
Identity,” in Kang, Yowei, Kenneth C.C. Yang, Michal Mochocki, Jakub
Majewski, and Pawel Schreiber (Eds.), Asian Histories and Heritages in
Video Games, Routledge (2024)

Kang, Yowei, Kenneth C.C. Yang, Michal Mochocki, Jakub Majewski, and Pawel
Schreiber (Eds.), Asian Histories and Heritages in Video Games, Routledge
(2024)

Mukherjee, Souvik, Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back,
Palgrave Macmillan (2017)

Patterson, Christopher B., Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global
Rise of Video Games, NYU Press (2020)

Patterson, Christopher B., and Tara Fickle (Eds.), Made in Asia/America:
Why Video Games Were Never (Really) About Us, Duke UP (2024)

Penix-Tadsen, Phillip, Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America, The
MIT Press (2016)

___________ (Ed.), Video Games and the Global South, ETC Press/Carnegie
Mellon University (2019)

Švelch, Jaroslav, Gaming the Iron Curtain, The MIT Press (2018)

Wong, K. T., “The Data-Driven Myth and the Deceptive Futurity of ‘The
World’s Fastest Growing Games Region’: Selling the Southeast Asian Games
Market via Game Analytics,” Games and Culture, Vol. 18(1), 2023: 42-61

Zulkarnain, Iskandar, “‘Playable’ Nationalism: Nusantara Online and the
‘Gamic’ Reconstructions of National History,” SOJOURN, Vol. 29(1), 2014:
31-62


Link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NUz_G8GzGSEkYUXPDS2QTIRar3mC288XrCRx5kkCB5s/edit?usp=sharing




-- 
Iskandar "Izul" Zulkarnain, Ph.D. (He/him)

Assistant Professor of Media and Society
Global Digital Media
Hobart and William Smith Colleges


Personal website:
http://digitalperipheries.net/

"Ilmu itu untuk dibagi, bukan untuk dimiliki!"