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Theorizing Whiteness as a Proceduralized Ideology in Videogames
Proceduralized whiteness functions as a foundational ideology within video games, manifesting not merely through visual representation but through the core rules, mechanics, and goal structures that govern play.
- Game design often embeds Eurocentric and settler-colonial ideologies into core mechanics, normalizing extractive and expansionist behaviors as the default logic of play.
- Proceduralized whiteness functions as an invisible, foundational ideology in digital spaces by reinforcing dominant social norms through repetitive, automatic gameplay systems.
- Western role-playing games and 4X strategy titles, such as Civilization, Mass Effect, and The Oregon Trail, frequently equate progress with territorial conquest and resource accumulation.
Black Deprivation in Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Remastered and The Last of Us Part II
Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us series functions through a framework of black deprivation, a narrative strategy that systematically relegates Black characters to disposable roles to ensure the existential longevity and emotional development of white protagonists.
- Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us series utilizes a narrative framework of 'black deprivation,' where Black characters are systematically relegated to disposable roles to facilitate the emotional development and survival of white protagonists.
- Characters such as Henry, Sam, Marlene, Nora, and Isaac are denied meaningful agency or long-term narrative arcs, functioning primarily as spectacles of death within the games' post-apocalyptic settings.
- The franchise’s reliance on tropes of nihilism and expendability for Black characters reinforces a racialized hierarchy that centers the white experience at the expense of autonomous Black representation.
Highway to the Golden Zone: PC Bangs and Techno-Orientalism in the StarCraft II Visual Novel
The visual novel SC2VN functions as a site of techno-Orientalist discourse, utilizing the South Korean pc bang as a central trope to navigate Western anxieties surrounding the nation’s dominance in mid-2010s esports.
- The visual novel SC2VN utilizes the South Korean pc bang as a trope to frame Korean esports culture as a resource for Western consumption rather than a lived reality.
- The narrative structure functions as a form of digital tourism, allowing the Western protagonist to appropriate Korean competitive practices to mitigate their own feelings of technological and economic obsolescence.
- By essentializing the pc bang as a 'racial-biopolitical womb,' the game reduces complex Korean esports success to a product of the environment, reinforcing racialized hierarchies in the global gaming industry.
The Man with the Gun is a Boy who Plays Games: Video Games, White Innocence, and Mass Shootings in the U.S.
The recurring tendency to blame video games for mass shootings in the United States functions as a strategic rhetorical device designed to preserve the concept of white innocence.
- Blaming video games for mass shootings functions as a rhetorical strategy to preserve white innocence by framing white male perpetrators as corrupted victims of media rather than agents of ideological violence.
- Empirical research consistently fails to establish a causal link between video game consumption and real-world violence, yet political and media figures repeatedly prioritize gaming as a culprit following mass casualty events.
- The focus on digital media serves as a distraction from the systemic issues of easy firearm access, misogyny, and the proliferation of political extremism in the United States.
Binaries on a Circle: Engaging Whiteness on the Playground
Traditional game studies often rely on rigid, binary frameworks such as colonizer versus colonized or white versus other, which fail to capture the fluid complexities of identity.
- Traditional game studies often rely on rigid, binary frameworks that fail to capture the fluid complexities of identity and power.
- Whiteness functions as a pervasive system of power, capital, and colonial influence that intersects with caste, class, and geography.
- Games such as hopscotch, cricket, and nursery rhymes are historically rooted in colonial structures that reinforce authoritative norms.
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