Rainforest Scully-Blaker and I have a new article that just came out in the International Journal of Cultural Studies – “Making Players Care: The Ambivalent Cultural Politics of Care and Video Games.” It’s about the messy relationship between care and games, which simultaneously has the feminist potential to make video games more inclusive and the problematic potential to promote exploitation of game workers and marginalized people. Here’s the abstract:
The relationship between care and video games is fraught. While the medium has the potential to allow players to meaningfully express and receive care, the cultural rhetorics that connect video games to care are often problematic. Even among game designers and scholars committed to social justice, some view care with hope and others with concern. Here, we identify and unpack these tensions, which we refer to as the ambivalent cultural politics of care, and illustrate them through three case studies. First, we discuss “tend-and-befriend games,” coined by Brie Code, which we read through feminist theorists Sarah Sharma and Sara Ahmed. Second, we address “empathy games” and the worrisome implication that games by marginalized people must make privileged players care. Lastly, we turn to issues of care in video game development. We discuss Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead series (2012–18) and strikingly care-less fan responses to recent employee layoffs.
If you don’t have institutional access to the article, you can view it here. Thanks for reading!
