Alberto Venegas Ramos, Antonio César Moreno Cantano
French Yellow Vests demonstrating in Grand Theft Auto V, demonstrations in favor of Hong Kong in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, social riots as a background scenario in games like Watch Dogs: Legion, extremists creating communities in virtual spaces like Minecraft or Fortnite… The video game , as a cultural product that it is, cannot avoid dialoguing with its time, and in our time protest is a recurring social mechanism. Although the medium is often understood as a source of escapism, the reality is that we never fully leave our world behind when we enter a virtual one. We play, we manifest and sometimes both things come together.
The right to (peaceful) protest is explicitly included in texts such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the European Convention on Human Rights, and aims to ensure that individuals come together to collectively express themselves, denounce what they are not agree, ask for changes or promote common interests. As an ideal, it is a tool that allows open societies to adapt, accommodate difference and manage internal tensions, as well as reflecting a certain vision of public space. But what happens when that space is not physical, but virtual? When players meet in environments that are owned by private companies? Or when some developers create their own virtual space to express their positions? Or when the protest is used as a setting for popular interactive fiction? In short, what are video game protest and video games about protest like?
This book covers all these phenomena and analyzes the mechanisms of the representation of protest in video games, of video games created to protest and of online games as places of meeting and proposal, regardless of the will of their creators. In addition to a theoretical systematization of the different types and political uses of the medium, based on concepts such as "counterplay", international cases such as the protests around Hong Kong, Tibet and the Arab Spring are explored here, based on games such as 1979 Revolution: Black Friday , Unmanned , Riot: Civil Unrest , Stop Evictions or Attentat 1942 .
With this volume, the reader will be able to learn about some of the expressive springs of the video game, its imbrication in the ideas of the societies that give rise to it, and its potential to articulate groups and discourses. Far from being apolitical entertainment, the video game is revealed here as a mirror and speaker of social tensions, but also a search for solutions.
PUBLICATION DETAILS
LANGUAGE | BINDING | EDITION | ISBN | YEAR | PAGES |
Spanish | Paperback | 9788412352313 | 2021 | 162 |
OTHER NAMES
Protestas interactivas. El videojuego como medio de reivindicación política y social
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Authors: #AlbertoVenegasRamos #AntonioCésarMorenoCantano
Publishers: #Shangrila (Shangrila Ediciones)
Languages: #Spanish
Format: #Paperback
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Year: #Year2021
Genres: #GameStudies
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