Playing Subaltern: Videogames and Postcolonialism

The postcolonial has still remained on the margins of Game Studies, which has now incorporated at length, contemporary debates of race, gender and other areas that challenge the canon. It is difficult to believe, however, that postcolonial ideas do not influence the way in which videogames are perceived; the effect, it can be argued, is often subtle. For the millions of Indian gamers, it is a moot question whether their gameplay of Max Payne 3 (2012) or Assassin’s Creed (2007) is influenced in any way by their colonial history. When they play games such as Empire: Total War (2009) or East India Company (2009), however, their encounter with colonial history is direct and unavoidable. Likewise, the Middle-Eastern Arabic youth playing America’s Army (or conversely, mods such as Under Ash) as well as the gamer from Central Africa playing Far Cry 2 (2008) could certainly be expected to engage with a distinct political consciousness where discourses of power and colonization are involved. This paper aims to examine the complex ways in which some videogames construct conceptions of spatiality, political systems, ethics and society that are often deeply imbued with a notion of the colonial and therefore, also with the questioning of colonialism.