Towards a Southern Epistemology in Game Studies: Gaming Practices, Ideological Struggle, and Common Sense in Latin America

This paper argues for a Southern epistemology in Game Studies, grounded in Latin American cultural studies, as a corrective to the field's reliance on frameworks developed in the Global North. Building on Stuart Hall-style cultural studies as articulated by Adrienne Shaw, the author draws on Latin American theorists including Paulo Freire, Jesús Martín-Barbero, Néstor García Canclini, and Beatriz Sarlo, alongside decolonial thinkers such as Aníbal Quijano and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, to build an analytical framework for understanding video game practices as sites of ideological struggle and the reconstruction of common sense.

A central claim is that video games produced for Global North markets do not simply alienate peripheral players. Instead, through processes of cultural hybridity, players reinterpret and resignify these products by integrating local temporalities, historical memory, and popular traditions. Martín-Barbero's shift of attention from media as ideological apparatus to everyday consumption and appropriation anchors this view, positioning gaming as an active, negotiated practice rather than a passive one.

The argument is illustrated through ethnographic research conducted within gaming communities in Chile. The paper presents this fieldwork as an example of the proposed epistemology rather than as a large-scale empirical study, so its evidentiary base is qualitative and illustrative, with no survey sample sizes or quantitative statistics reported. The scope is therefore conceptual and regional, centered on Latin America and situated within the broader Regional Game Studies movement, which seeks to integrate non-hegemonic contexts into the field.

The paper's contribution lies in diversifying theoretical references in Game Studies and advancing a decolonizing agenda for knowledge production. By foregrounding everyday mediations and appropriations, it argues that video games are not ideologically neutral and that they can serve as spaces of cultural resistance and creativity that reflect the tensions of Latin American modernity.