Encountering Otherness in Video Game Cultures

Edited by E. Charlotte Stevens, Katja Aller, Monica Evans, and René Reinhold Schallegger | Forthcoming

Encountering Otherness in Video Game Cultures

Edited by E. Charlotte Stevens, Katja Aller, Monica Evans, and René Reinhold Schallegger | Forthcoming


Paperback ISBN: 9789464264814 | Hardback ISBN: 9789464264821 | Imprint: Sidestone Press | Format: 182x257mm | ca. 170 pp. | Language: English | 1 illus. (bw) | 19 illus. (fc) | Keywords: video games; queer game studies; historical games studies; game design | download cover | DOI: 10.59641/b6e2y3z4a5 | CC-license: CC BY-NC 4.0

Publication date: 05-11-2026

We will plant a tree for each order containing a paperback or hardback book via OneTreePlanted.org.

This book brings together a selection of papers delivered at the Video Game Cultures 2024 conference, held from 12 to 14 September 2024 at Birmingham City University, UK. The conference theme was ‘other’ in all its permutations: other, others, othered, othering, otherness, and beyond. The aim was to centre marginal practices, marginal identities, peripheral national traditions, and consider researcher positionality in/as other. Participants were asked to reflect on other spaces and sites of gaming, discuss other approaches and methods to studying games, players, and gaming cultures. Core questions were: What can we learn from (or about) other researcher practices, other player practices, other design and industrial practices? How do video games create or recognise difference, what does alternative embodiment look or feel like, and what worlds are possible in games?

This edited collection shares chapters developed from presentations at the conference, from MA and PhD students through to established scholars. Support for more junior scholars is a core part of the conference series ethos, and we are proud that the current volume has enabled certain of the contributors to produce their first academic output. We are also pleased to provide a venue for experienced scholars to share work, and to present these different chapters in conversation with each other.

Introduction: The Other in and around video game cultures
E. Charlotte Stevens, Katja Aller, Monica Evans, and René Reinhold Schallegger

Section 1: Other Histories

“There Lies Perdition” – How Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden (2024) uses Hauntology to Exorcise the Spectres of Neo-Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism
René Reinhold Schallegger

SOMA, the Slave Trade, and Computation’s Unmapped Affects
Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanfield

Another day, another play: How local structures shaped the History of videogames reception. An oral history of Swiss players (1970-2000)
Guillaume Guenat

Section 2: Other Perspectives

View from the (virtual) terraces: football fandom in videogames
Iain Donald and Andrew Reid

Marginally Different: The Ludic Tendencies of Videogame Paratexts
Regina Seiwald

Games as Therapy? The Neoliberal Commercialization and Therapization of RPG Gameplay in Hero Journey Club
Deanna Holroyd and Holly Parker

Section 3: Other Avatars

The Queer Potential of Avatar Creation
Nic Kilzer

The Evolution of Female Characters: Inclusive Design and Ethical Challenges in RPGs
Boyang Liang

Fat adventurers not included: An analysis of how character creators in digital role playing games afford the creation of fat characters
Markus Elvig

Dr. E. Charlotte Stevens

E. Charlotte Stevens is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at Birmingham City University, where she co-leads the Game Cultures research cluster. She is author of Fanvids (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), and co-editor of Alternativity in Media and Cultural Research (Intellect, forthcoming). Her current research focuses on Chinese television: the remediation of video games, and experiences of English-language audiences.

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Katja Aller MA

Katja Aller is a comparative media scholar and a PhD candidate at Cologne Game Lab (Technical University of Cologne) and a.r.t.e.s graduate school (University of Cologne). She currently works as a teaching assistant for Media and Game Studies and as the program manager for the interdisciplinary MA Game Development and Research at Cologne Game Lab. She holds a joint master’s degree in German and Comparative Literature from both Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (Germany) and St Andrews University (Scotland). Her research interests include theory of space, (transmedia) narratology, object/thing studies, and horror in both games and films.

read more

Dr. Monica Evans

Monica Evans is an Associate Professor of Game Design, Development, and Studies in the Bass School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas, United States. Her work sits at the intersection of game design, development, and production; game studies; narrative systems; educational and serious games; and science fiction studies. Dr. Evans directs the Narrative Systems Research Lab at UT Dallas.

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Dr. René Reinhold Schallegger

René Reinhold Schallegger was trained in English and American as well as French Studies, with a focus on literary and cultural criticism at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria), Anglia Ruskin University (UK), and Birmingham City University (UK). He is Associate Professor at the University of Klagenfurt, and his main areas of interest are media cultures of the fantastic, normative ethics, affect theory, Citizenship-, Gender-, Queer-, Canadian-, and Game Studies. He is President of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung (Association for Research in the Fantastic), and his most recent publication is the monograph A New Virtual Ethics: Interconnectedness and Interrelationality in Videogames (2024).

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Stevens, E. C., Aller, K., Evans, M., & Reinhold Schallegger, R. (Eds.). (in press). Encountering Otherness in Video Game Cultures. Sidestone Press. https://doi.org/10.59641/b6e2y3z4a5

Abstract:

This book brings together a selection of papers delivered at the Video Game Cultures 2024 conference, held from 12 to 14 September 2024 at Birmingham City University, UK. The conference theme was ‘other’ in all its permutations: other, others, othered, othering, otherness, and beyond. The aim was to centre marginal practices, marginal identities, peripheral national traditions, and consider researcher positionality in/as other. Participants were asked to reflect on other spaces and sites of gaming, discuss other approaches and methods to studying games, players, and gaming cultures. Core questions were: What can we learn from (or about) other researcher practices, other player practices, other design and industrial practices? How do video games create or recognise difference, what does alternative embodiment look or feel like, and what worlds are possible in games?

This edited collection shares chapters developed from presentations at the conference, from MA and PhD students through to established scholars. Support for more junior scholars is a core part of the conference series ethos, and we are proud that the current volume has enabled certain of the contributors to produce their first academic output. We are also pleased to provide a venue for experienced scholars to share work, and to present these different chapters in conversation with each other.

Contents

Introduction: The Other in and around video game cultures
E. Charlotte Stevens, Katja Aller, Monica Evans, and René Reinhold Schallegger

Section 1: Other Histories

“There Lies Perdition” – How Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden (2024) uses Hauntology to Exorcise the Spectres of Neo-Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism
René Reinhold Schallegger

SOMA, the Slave Trade, and Computation’s Unmapped Affects
Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanfield

Another day, another play: How local structures shaped the History of videogames reception. An oral history of Swiss players (1970-2000)
Guillaume Guenat

Section 2: Other Perspectives

View from the (virtual) terraces: football fandom in videogames
Iain Donald and Andrew Reid

Marginally Different: The Ludic Tendencies of Videogame Paratexts
Regina Seiwald

Games as Therapy? The Neoliberal Commercialization and Therapization of RPG Gameplay in Hero Journey Club
Deanna Holroyd and Holly Parker

Section 3: Other Avatars

The Queer Potential of Avatar Creation
Nic Kilzer

The Evolution of Female Characters: Inclusive Design and Ethical Challenges in RPGs
Boyang Liang

Fat adventurers not included: An analysis of how character creators in digital role playing games afford the creation of fat characters
Markus Elvig

Dr. E. Charlotte Stevens

E. Charlotte Stevens is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at Birmingham City University, where she co-leads the Game Cultures research cluster. She is author of Fanvids (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), and co-editor of Alternativity in Media and Cultural Research (Intellect, forthcoming). Her current research focuses on Chinese television: the remediation of video games, and experiences of English-language audiences.

read more

Katja Aller MA

Katja Aller is a comparative media scholar and a PhD candidate at Cologne Game Lab (Technical University of Cologne) and a.r.t.e.s graduate school (University of Cologne). She currently works as a teaching assistant for Media and Game Studies and as the program manager for the interdisciplinary MA Game Development and Research at Cologne Game Lab. She holds a joint master’s degree in German and Comparative Literature from both Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (Germany) and St Andrews University (Scotland). Her research interests include theory of space, (transmedia) narratology, object/thing studies, and horror in both games and films.

read more

Dr. Monica Evans

Monica Evans is an Associate Professor of Game Design, Development, and Studies in the Bass School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas, United States. Her work sits at the intersection of game design, development, and production; game studies; narrative systems; educational and serious games; and science fiction studies. Dr. Evans directs the Narrative Systems Research Lab at UT Dallas.

read more

Dr. René Reinhold Schallegger

René Reinhold Schallegger was trained in English and American as well as French Studies, with a focus on literary and cultural criticism at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria), Anglia Ruskin University (UK), and Birmingham City University (UK). He is Associate Professor at the University of Klagenfurt, and his main areas of interest are media cultures of the fantastic, normative ethics, affect theory, Citizenship-, Gender-, Queer-, Canadian-, and Game Studies. He is President of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung (Association for Research in the Fantastic), and his most recent publication is the monograph A New Virtual Ethics: Interconnectedness and Interrelationality in Videogames (2024).

read more










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