Call for Contribution: Playable Southeast Asia: Gaming Cultures, Politics, and Aesthetics in a Multiethnic Region edited volume (will be proposed for publication at Duke UP) Editors: Peichi Chung, Byron Fong, Iskandar Zulkarnain Deadline for abstract: December 1, 2025 Notification of abstract acceptance: February 1, 2026 Deadline for full chapter: December 1, 2026 (tentative) Expected date of publication: 2027 While video games have always been a global phenomenon, they have been received, played, and created differently in different regions and localities (Hjorth and Chan 2009; Huntemann and Aslinger 2013; Penix-Tadsen 2019). These differences add multiple levels of complexity to how we experience them. Games can be, and often are more than just an entertainment medium, capable of serving as a subversive means of self-expression under authoritarian regimes (Svelch 2018), or being converted into cultural currency for both game designers and players (Penix-Tadsen 2016). Games can also exist as platforms of ideological protest, representing voices from below (Mukherjee 2017), or can reveal the “upside/down” logics that have defined the Asia/America geopolitical relationship since the 19th century (Patterson and Fickle 2024). Especially important is how they can also be used as a lens to explore how nations struggle with the legacies of war, colonialism and religious strife that define part of the nation-building process (Kang, Yang, Mochocki, Majewski, and Schreiber 2024). Yet, despite these valuable insights, much of the purportedly global focus of video game studies still emphasizes the experience of regions in the Global North and other conventionally prominent centers for the production and consumption of games, while largely omitting the experiences of the Global South from consideration. By following the path of scholars who focus on regions that have traditionally been underserved by dominant industry players, and thus aiming to rectify the broadly lacking examination of these regions by journalists and academics, this edited collection will focus on gaming cultures, politics, and aesthetics in Southeast Asia. As a region, Southeast Asia offers layered, vast levels of complexity. It is a geopolitical and economic construct deeply rooted within the history of global colonialism. It invites multiple approaches in its mapping and description. The region’s nuances are evident in its most prominent geopolitical construction, ASEAN, as an anti-communist bloc while also having two nominally communist countries in the region (Vietnam and Laos). There is mainland Southeast Asia and there is also maritime Southeast Asia. The southern region has a predominantly Muslim population and the northern region is predominantly Buddhist. Meanwhile, the Philippines and East Timor are the only predominantly catholic countries in the region. The region also has the largest number of Chinese diaspora in the world, mostly living in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. All these cultural connections and political configurations have shaped and are currently being shaped by the production, circulation, and consumption of video games both from within and outside the region. In terms of video game theory, for instance, a specific play practice in Southeast Asia–Balinese cockfight–contributes to the theoretical formulation of “gamic action” (Galloway 2006), even though it is somewhat underexplored. Furthermore, within the video game industry framework, there is a conscious effort–driven by data analytics–of “mythifying” Southeast Asia as “the world’s fastest growing game region” to attract foreign (i.e. western) investors, creating a depoliticized configuration of the region and flattening cultural and racial differences (Wong 2023). Meanwhile, in an effort to collectively re-imagine Southeast Asia’s regional identity through game art, some independent game studios in the region have adopted two types of approaches: following the production formula of global popular media to achieve “niche globality,” or presenting their version of “contested regionalism” (Chung 2016). In some cases, game developers and professional players in Southeast Asia also participate in the promotion of digital nationalism (Zulkarnain 2014; Jiwandono 2024). In this context, this edited collection aims to further study gaming practices in Southeast Asia that reflect and reshape cultural paradigms in local and regional settings while simultaneously attending to global gaming progression. Here, we want to frame the concept of “Southeast Asia as a method,” following the theoretical formulation of Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010), to emphasize the use of Southeast Asia as an imaginary anchoring point that allows for inter-referentiality between countries within and outside of the region in terms of their gaming cultural practices (e.g. E-sports, industry, indie games, streaming, etc). We are also interested in having a mix of contributions from scholars from the region (or in close proximity to the region, geographically and/or culturally) and perspectives from/interviews with people who are involved in Southeast Asian gaming cultures (e.g. game developers, studios, archivists, gaming communities, etc). Possible topics might include, but not limited to: - Early histories of video game cultures - Identity (e.g. national, gender, racial, sexual, religious) - “Asiatic” style or form in SEA games - Nostalgic aesthetic/themes in SEA games - Labor exploitation and unionization (or lack of) in SEA gaming industry - Historical and counterhistorical representation in SEA games - Inter-regional citation practice among indie or AAA game developers - Significance of paratextual elements in SEA games (e.g. streaming, game magazines, gaming clubs) - Cultural representations in SEA games (e.g. religious, linguistic, or national) - The roles of the state in SEA gaming cultures - Archival initiatives of SEA games - Decolonizing SEA in video games - Gaming platforms in Southeast Asian context - Video games as a heritage - Gaming preservation - E-sports cultures in SEA - Mobile gaming cultures - Video game bans by the state/state apparatuses Abstract submissions should comprise of: 1. Abstract (250-500 words) 2. Author information (short biographical statement of 200 words) Submissions should be sent to playablesea@gmail.com. Abstract submissions will then undergo an internal editorial review process. Authors will be notified of the outcome as soon as reports are received. Chapter submissions should comprise of: 1. Full-length article (5000-9000 words), including references and a bibliography, or 2. Perspectives/Interviews (3000-5000 words) in English or translated 3. Final author information (short biographical statement of 200 words) Feel free to send us questions regarding this proposed edited collection. References: Chen, Kuan-Hsing, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization, Duke UP (2010) Chung, Peichi, “The Globalization of Game Art in Southeast Asia,” in Hjorth, Larissa, and Olivia Khoo (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of New Media in Asia, Routledge (2016) Galloway, Alexander, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, University of Minnesota Press (2006) Hjorth, Larissa, and Dean Chan (Eds.), Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific, Routledge (2009) Huntemann, Nina B., and Ben Aslinger (Eds.) Gaming Globally: Production, Play, and Place, Palgrave Macmillan (2013) Jiwandono, Haryo Pambuko, “Mobile Game Esports as an Indonesian National Identity,” in Kang, Yowei, Kenneth C.C. Yang, Michal Mochocki, Jakub Majewski, and Pawel Schreiber (Eds.), Asian Histories and Heritages in Video Games, Routledge (2024) Kang, Yowei, Kenneth C.C. Yang, Michal Mochocki, Jakub Majewski, and Pawel Schreiber (Eds.), Asian Histories and Heritages in Video Games, Routledge (2024) Mukherjee, Souvik, Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back, Palgrave Macmillan (2017) Patterson, Christopher B., Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games, NYU Press (2020) Patterson, Christopher B., and Tara Fickle (Eds.), Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) About Us, Duke UP (2024) Penix-Tadsen, Phillip, Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America, The MIT Press (2016) ___________ (Ed.), Video Games and the Global South, ETC Press/Carnegie Mellon University (2019) Švelch, Jaroslav, Gaming the Iron Curtain, The MIT Press (2018) Wong, K. T., “The Data-Driven Myth and the Deceptive Futurity of ‘The World’s Fastest Growing Games Region’: Selling the Southeast Asian Games Market via Game Analytics,” Games and Culture, Vol. 18(1), 2023: 42-61 Zulkarnain, Iskandar, “‘Playable’ Nationalism: Nusantara Online and the ‘Gamic’ Reconstructions of National History,” SOJOURN, Vol. 29(1), 2014: 31-62 Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NUz_G8GzGSEkYUXPDS2QTIRar3mC288XrCRx5kkC... -- Iskandar "Izul" Zulkarnain, Ph.D. (He/him) Assistant Professor of Media and Society Global Digital Media Hobart and William Smith Colleges Personal website: http://digitalperipheries.net/ "Ilmu itu untuk dibagi, bukan untuk dimiliki!"