[India] Call for Papers: Special Issue "The Playful Postcolonial: Culturing Videogames in India"

[DiGRA India]

Dear friends,

I hope this email finds you well.

I am delighted to inform you that Souvik Kar and I will be guest-editing a
special issue of *Press Start* on videogames, postcolonialism, and India.
Do reach out to us if you are interested. The call for papers is attached
below. We look forward to receiving abstracts by Oct 3, 2022. Please let us
know if you have any queries.

Thank you for your interest.

Warmly,
Zahra

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Call for Papers: Special Issue “The Playful Postcolonial: Culturing
Videogames in India”

Guest editors: Zahra Rizvi & Souvik Kar



“the empire plays back . . . with its own rules of play.”

—Souvik Mukherjee (2017, p. 7)



At the DiGRA 2022 conference, DiGRA India presented a panel on videogames
and India, announcing a turn in game studies—the “waking up” to the
discursive possibilities and critical engagement of what game developer
Ernest Adams (2009) calls “the sleeping giant” of the gaming
industry—India. This giant presents some of the most complex and diverse
gaming cultures that are both unique in their experience—informed by the
intersection of class, gender, religion, caste, and more (Chowdhury &
Rizvi, 2021)—and, simultaneously, have strong affinities with the rest of
South Asia and the postcolonial Global South (Mukherjee, 2017; Mukherjee &
Hammar, 2018). At the same time, there still exists a paucity of in-depth
scholarly engagement with videogames in India, both produced within the
country itself as well as globally, that draws on non-Western, specifically
Indian cultures and geographies. These constructed absences hide behind
them a world of postcolonial possibility, ranging from Nodding Head Games
*’ *incorporation of Hindu mythology and Indian art in *Raji: An Ancient
Epic *(2020) to Studio Oleomingus’ attempt to explore “how interactive
fiction might be used to pollute a single reductive record of the past or
of a people” (Jani, 2014, para. 2). As a system that is informed by
capitalist and colonialist ideologies, the videogame industry finds itself
facing these playful and yet hopeful possibilities of resistance and
subversion in the gaming cultures of India, where participation in and
through postcolonial media opens up a field of questions that need urgent
tending to.

What happens when pleasures of play are revealed to be imperial (Jayanth,
2021)? How do gamers in India negotiate play? How do videogames mirror
*and* affect
India in the popular imagination and on-ground? Where is India in the map
of game studies? This special issue is an ambitious venture in seeking to
understand and bring to the fore not only these complexities but also to
redress some of the most glaring absences in games research.

The issue will be seeking submissions on themes such as, but not limited
to, the following topics:

   - Postcolonialism and videogames
   - Game design and India
   - Representations of India in videogames
   - Gamers and gaming cultures in India
   - History of games in India
   - Analysis of specific Indian games
   - Platform debates in India
   - Videogames, social media, and the Indian cyberspace
   - Situating play in India vis-à-vis play in South Asia and the Global
   South
   - Identity politics in videogames
   - Game studies in India

If you are interested in participating in this special issue, please email
a 400-500 word abstract (plus references) to rs.zrizvisasuke at jmi.ac.in and
eic.press.start at gmail.com by October 3, 2022. Notifications of acceptance
will be sent out within a few weeks and full papers will be due by January
31, 2023. The expected date of publication is February 2024.

Articles are expected to be 5000–8000 words (including references and
abstracts) and to use the *Press Start* template. Informal enquiries may be
directed to Zahra Rizvi (rs.zrizvisasuke at jmi.ac.in) and Souvik Kar (
la20resch11010 at iith.ac.in). We also invite you to  join our friendly
Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/PressStartJournal), where
we will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.



References:

Adams, E. (2009). The promise of India: Ancient culture, modern game
design. *The Designer’s Notebook: The Personal Website of Dr. Ernest W.
Adams*. http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/India/india.htm

Chowdhury, P., & Rizvi, Z. (2021). Gaming as ghosts: Spectres and absences
in games and game Cultures [Keynote address]. *2021 DiGRA India Conference
on Games, Culture(s), and India: Dispatches from a Playful Subcontinent*.
November 20-21, India (virtual conference).

Jani, D. (2014). About. *Studio Oleomingus*. https://oleomingus.com/about-1.
Accessed August 24, 2022.

Jayanth, M. (2021). White protagonism and imperial pleasures in game design
[Keynote address]. *2021 DiGRA India Conference on Games, Culture(s), and
India: Dispatches from a Playful Subcontinent*. November 20-21, India
(virtual conference).

Mukherjee, S. (2017). *Videogames and postcolonialism: Empire plays back*.
Palgrave Macmillan.

Mukherjee, S., & Hammar, E. (2018). Introduction to the special issue on
postcolonial perspectives in game studies. *Open Library of Humanities* *4*
(2), https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.309

Nodding Head Games. (2020). *Raji: An ancient epic *[Multiplatform].
Nodding Head Games.

Rizvi, Z., Bhattacharya, A., Lahiri, I., Chowdhury, P., Kar, S., &
Mukherjee, S. (2022). DiGRA India—Gaming the “sleeping giant”’ [Panel
presentations]. *DiGRA 2022 International Conference*.
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