~ What Is Gaming
Content Good For? ~

Jentery Sayers | MDIA 360 | UVic Media Studies

Slides Online: jentery.github.io/360content/

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What's "gaming content"?

What is gaming content good for?

Consider two phenomena.

1. Games are global commodities.

See Bellingua Translations, "Localisation Done Right."

"Across more than 73,000 consumers worldwide,
85% engage with games in one way or another,
64% view gaming content, and
35% engage in other ways."

See Newzoo, "Our New Gamer Research..." Next slide also care of Newzoo.

2. The content industry generates
most of its revenue from circulation.

Next image care of AWE me on YouTube.

Issues in the Global
Games + Content Industry

The industry privileges monetization
over an informed public.

Play becomes precarious labour
for proprietary platforms.

Play also becomes an instrument for hate
speech, harassment, and disinformation.

Twitch is well aware of this problem.

Next slide care of Twitch.

Thousands of content creators, especially women,
girls, Two Spirit, trans, and non-binary people who
are Indigenous, Black, POC, or disabled are dissuaded from producing gaming content for Twitch and YouTube due to concerns for their health and safety.

See, for instance, recent initiatives by Public Safety Canada.

The fact that games are global commodities
amplifies these health and safety issues.
Which country's laws should apply to gameplay?
Which agencies or governmental bodies can
regulate play or the content industry?

Gamers pushed to the margins have nevertheless
developed strategies to ⁠"stay with the trouble."
Those strategies include using their content to address discrimination in the games + content industry and moderating user engagement (such as chat) to protect themselves from targeted harassment.

"Stay with the trouble" is a phrase Amanda Phillips uses by way of Donna J. Haraway in Gamer Trouble.

Those Gamers Include . . .

Ashley ML Guajardo, Gita Jackson, Renata Price, Samantha Blackmon, and Austin Walker,
among many others

Questions

How is gaming content a question of social control?

How does gaming content demonstrate
power through exclusion?

How does gaming content naturalize stereotypes,
which gamers may then internalize?

How does gaming content deconstruct games and
their stereotypes or representations?

The Video Essay

What is it?

How might it feed back into
the global games industry?

Into the content industry?

Night In The Woods: Do You Always Have A Choice?

Care of "What's So Great About That?" by Grace Lee

Discussion

How does Lee's essay articulate play with critique?

How does it broaden the audience for games or
engage players affected by toxicity?

How does it deconstruct Night in the Woods
and gaming in general?

How does it shape your thoughts on representation
in the global games + content industry?

Thank you

And thanks to Sara for inviting me!