Abstract

This article examines representative games from Zapak.com: India’s most-popular gaming website (highest number of daily visitors) to conceptualize the relationship between masculinity and colonialism within digital geographies, in postcolonial spaces. Three of the four games chosen here, Sleeping at the Meeting, Zombie Pirate and Yoga Teacher, are representative of games categorized as ‘Girl’s Games’ on Zapak.com: where the ludic engagement is limited to dressing and undressing of white women in a variety of professional or social contexts. The fourth game Bipasha’s Beach Blaze is a continuation of such reductive stereotyping, albeit in the different but culturally significant site of Bollywood. The four games were selected using a case-study methodology and represent discrete but related artifacts. Following a survey of key literature, the authors address the limitations of traditional game studies approaches and propose a replicable methodology located at the intersection of two epistemic frames: one of critical masculinity studies and the other of ludology. Through analyzing the strategic ideologies behind the production, circulation and the game-play of these digital artifacts we argue that Zapak.com not only enables online sexism but also becomes a representative digital space where anxious performances of postcolonial masculinity – that has its historical basis in India’s colonial legacy – can be materialized. Further in highlighting the status of these ‘Girl’s Games’ as artifacts that do not allow for any substantial ludic or narrative involvement – we emphasize the need to constantly interrogate digital spaces as sites where hegemonic ideologies about race, gender and colonialism are reproduced and reified.

摘要

本文研究了Zapak.com上的代表性游戏：Zapak.com：印度最受欢迎的游戏网站（每日访问量最多的网站），以概念化地理解后殖民空间中男性地理和殖民主义之间的关系。在这里选择的四款游戏中的三款，《在会议上睡觉》，《僵尸海盗》和《瑜伽老师》是Zapak.com上被归类为“女孩游戏”的游戏的代表：荒诞的参与仅限于各种白人女性的着装和脱衣服专业或社会背景。第四局比帕莎的海滩大火是这种还原性刻板印象的延续，尽管在宝莱坞的不同但具有文化意义的地点。使用案例研究方法选择了这四个游戏，它们代表了离散但相关的工件。在对主要文献进行调查之后，作者解决了传统博弈研究方法的局限性，并提出了一种可复制的方法，该方法位于两个认识论框架的交集上：一项是重要的男性气质研究，另一项是性学研究。通过分析这些数字产品的生产，发行和游戏背后的战略意识形态，我们认为Zapak.com不仅使在线性别歧视成为可能，而且成为了代表数字空间，在该空间中，殖民后男性气质的焦虑表现-具有其历史基础。印度的殖民遗产可以实现。