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The forum for inter-american research was established by the American Studies Section of the English Department at Bielefeld University in order to foster, promote and publicize current topics in the studies of the Americas. fiar is the official journal of the International Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS) Executive Director: Wilfried Raussert Editors: Yolanda Campos Stephen Joyce Luisa Raquel Lagos Ellermeier Marius Littschwager Mahshid Mayar Paula Prescod Wilfried Raussert Brian Rozema Editorial Board: Prof. Mita Banerjee, Mainz University, Germany Prof. William Boelhower, Louisiana State University, USA Prof. Nuala Finnegan, University College Cork, Ireland Prof. Emerita Lise Gauvin, Université de Montréal, Canada Prof. Maryemma Graham, University of Kansas, USA Dr. Jean-Louis Joachim, Université des Antilles, Martinique Prof. Djelal Kadir, Penn State University, USA Dr. Luz Angelica Kirschner, South Dakota State University Prof. John Ochoa, Pennsylvania State University, USA Prof. John Carlos Rowe, University of Southern California, USA Prof. David Ryan, University College Cork, Ireland Prof. Sebastian Thies, University of Tübingen, Germany Dr. Cécile Vigouroux, Simon Fraser University, Canada Design: Alina Muñoz Contact: [email protected] [49] 521-106-3641 www.interamerica.de (European Standard Time) Postfach 100131 D-33501 Bielefeld Germany The association seeks to promote the interdisciplinary study of the Americas, focusing in particular on inter-connections between North, Central, and South American culture, literatu- re, media, language, history, society, politics, and economics. www.interamericanstudies.net ____________________________________________________________________________ www.interamerica.de The forum for inter-american research ISSN: 1867-1519 Vol. 11 No. 2 (Sep. 2018): Encounters in the ‘Game-Over Era’: The Americas in/and Video Games Table of Contents A game (simulation) is a game (interactive technology) is a game (lifestyle) is a game (live archive): An Introduction � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �5 Mahshid Mayar (Bielefeld University) Let’s Play the Boston Tea Party - Exemplary Analysis of Historical Events in Digital Games � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �15 Daniel Giere (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich) “In a world without gold, we might have been heroes!” Cultural Imaginations of Piracy in Video Games � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �30 Eugen Pfister (Hochschule der Künste Bern) Columbian Nightmare: Narrative, History, and Nationalism in BioShock Infinite � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �44 Stefan Schubert (Leipzig University) The Post-Apocalyptic and the Ludic: An Interview with Dr. Stephen Joyce � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �61 Mahshid Mayar (Bielefeld University) & Stephen Joyce (Aarhus University) Book Review: Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �66 Naima Shaheen (Bielefeld University) Book Review: Digital Games as History � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �68 Leonid Moyzhes (Russian State University for the Humanities) Afterword: Regional Game Studies and Historical Representation � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �71 Phillip Penix-Tadsen (University of Delaware) FORUM FOR INTER-AMERICAN RESEARCH (FIAR) VOL. 11.2 (SEP. 2018) 5-14 ISSN: 1867-1519 © forum for inter-american research A game (simulation) is a game (interactive technology) is a game (lifestyle) is a game (live archive): An Introduction MAHSHID MAYAR (BIELEFELD UNIVERSITY) In the post-9/11 world, critics and advocates against Iran, President Obama maintained: of the so-called preemptive war have resorted to video games as a metaphor, or at least a motif, Look, if people want to say about me that I to reach opposing ends. The virtual world has have a profound preference for peace over already turned into a space where campaign war, that every time I order young men and wars are fought and elections are won. In their women into a combat theater and then capacity to engage with sociopolitical realities, see the consequences on some of them, if they’re lucky enough to come back, that video games have been continually mentioned this weighs on me—I make no apologies in debates over war: either comparable to a for that. Because anybody who is sitting in first-person shooter, or far more technically, my chair who isn’t mindful of the costs of affectively, and politically complex than any war shouldn’t be here, because it’s serious game title. On the one hand, as Roger Stahl business. These aren’t video games that reminds us in “Digital War and Public Mind,” as we’re playing here. journalism and the big screen failed to record the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, “the These are the words of a president who is video game industry squarely embraced the fondly remembered by the American gamer thematic of contemporary warfare” (144). At the community as the godfather of the video same time, however, the video game industry is game industry in the United States—“the most inherently at a loss when it comes to the realities video game-friendly president in U.S. history” of war on the ground as it is viewed at worst as a (Crecente). His remarks about the post-9/11 purgatory and at best as a medium of simulation. American ways of war as a far more complex In fact, video games as realistic documentary matter than a video game, while intentionally renderings of war have been heavily criticized downplaying the elaborate power of in-game as bland and apolitical; in the words of Ben narratives in giving force to out-game debates Fountain: and practices, could be read as an attempt by the former U.S. president to counter the debates Everything is political, if we’re living over the massive investment of the U.S. Army in among other human beings. Certainly video games as recruitment entry points.1 everything in a society is political… And On a cultural front, 2012 was also the year war perhaps is the ultimate political sphere. during which the MoMA acquired fourteen digital Some representations of the Iraq war— Hollywood movies, especially—have tried games for its Architecture and Design Collection, to be neutral, to simply present the soldiers’ ranging from Packman and Tetris to SimCity and experience on the ground without political Super Mario. These classic video game titles commentary. Well, what you get then is were selected and put on display in a permanent a video game… Any realistic exploration exhibition thanks, as the museum announced, to of the war is going to have to include the their capacity not only as art but as “interaction political element; otherwise it’s just not design.” According to the exhibition’s curator worth the time. (qtd. in Buchanan 103) Paola Antonelli: On the other hand, in a 2012 interview with As with all other design objects in MoMA’s the Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg about waging war collection, from posters to chairs to cars 6 M. MAYAR: AN INTRODUCTION to fonts, curators seek a combination of (inter-)American studies and game studies in historical and cultural relevance, aesthetic order to make arguments about their commerce expression, functional and structural in terms of both semantics and thematics. soundness, innovative approaches to Indeed, among the many lenses through technology and behavior, and a successful which the cultures of the Americas have been synthesis of materials and techniques [in examined in the new millennium, video games video games] in achieving the goal set by are a particularly productive one. In its routines the initial program. of inclusivity and exclusivity (as well as instances of lukewarm and superficial pretences to Economically speaking, too, video game 2 inclusion), videogaming as a socially significant, revenues have increased remarkably across culturally ubiquitous, and politically charged the globe. With an expanding official market practice reveals what about the Americas’ past, following decades of video game piracy in the present, and future is deemed ludic, why and in region, Latin America for one is now the second what terms. A critical examination of video games fastest growing video game market in the as medium of engagement provides insight into world. According to a 2016 Gamer Consumer the multitudinous aspects of the post-9/11 world Insights survey conducted by Newzoo, Latin order in which only certain of those aspects America closely follows Southeast Asia in are dealt with as ludic (interactively simulable its share of annual growth in video game and narratively consumable). In the meantime, revenues (Holleman). With approximately 110 topics, character types, and historical events million paying gamers in 2016, the total annual that are excluded from the gamescape (e.g., game revenues were more than $4 billion, the the intricacies of decades of drug wars in Latin research suggests. With a regimen of 20% America, the individuals and communities that annual growth, Holleman predicts that the 2019 have led the ethnic struggle in Canada, or the total game revenues in Latin American will reach eventful history of unilateral sanctions imposed $6.2 billion, with a major share of the revenues