Race, colonial history and national identity: Resident Evil 5 as a Japanese game

Resident Evil 5 is a zombie game made by Capcom featuring a White American protagonist and set in Africa. This paper argues that approaching this as a Japanese game reveals aspects of a Japanese racial and colonial social imaginary that are missed if this context of production is ignored. In terms of race, the game presents hybrid racial subjectivities that can be related to Japanese perspectives of Blackness and Whiteness where these terms are two poles of difference and identity through which an essentialised Japanese identity is constructed in what Iwabuchi calls “strategic hybridism” (Iwabuchi, 2002). In terms of colonialism, the game echoes structures of Japanese colonialism through which Japanese colonialism is obliquely memorialised and a “normal” Japanese global subjectivity can be performed

Vocal disruptions in the aural game world: The female entertainer in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Transistor and Divinity: Original Sin II

The voice as disruption is not a new concept. Disruptions to discourses, relationships and lifestyles can be caused by the insertion of the voice. In video games, voices can be disruptive to player progressions, gameplay and character relationships through dialogue and performances. The female entertainer frequently disrupts the aural space of a game through her uniqueness as a performer at the forefront of the diegetic space, using song to tell her own story. The video games The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015), Transistor (2014) and Divinity Original Sin II (2017) use diegetic female entertainer voices to disrupt the video game’s continuity. These case studies consider performance as disruption to gameplay, which is significant for the growth of the story and its characters, alongside the player’s understanding of the game’s musical meanings

Ghouls 'N Ghosts

Ghouls 'N Ghosts game box for the Sega Genesis

Street Fighter II

Street Fighter II game box for the Sega Genesis

MAP - Multimedia-Arbeitsplatz der Zukunft Abschlussbericht

Available from TIB Hannover: F04B1194+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEBundesministerium fuer Bildung und Forschung, Berlin (Germany)DEGerman