[Commlist] Call for Contribution: Playable Southeast Asia: Gaming Cultures, Politics, and Aesthetics in a Multiethnic Region edited volume

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

Link: 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NUz_G8GzGSEkYUXPDS2QTIRar3mC288XrCRx5kkCB5s/edit?usp=sharing 

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:

Abstract (250-500 words)
Author information (short biographical statement of 200 words)

Submissions should be sent to (playablesea /at/ 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:
Full-length article (5000-9000 words), including references and a 
bibliography, or
Perspectives/Interviews (3000-5000 words) in English or translated
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


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