• Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? – Racial representation and gaming

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    My interviewee this time is André Brock from the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa. His recent article in Games and Culture called ‘‘When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong: Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers” was the topic of our conversation. Brock writes that, “videogames’ ability to depict cultural iconographies and characters have occasionally led to accusations of insensitivity. This article examines gamers’ reactions to a developer’s use of Africans as enemies in a survival horror videogame, Resident Evil 5. Their reactions offer insight into how videogames represent Whiteness and White privilege within the social structure of ‘‘play.’’ … Videogames construct exotic fantasy worlds and peoples as places for White male protagonists to conquer, explore, exploit, and solve. Like their precursors in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, videogame narratives, activities, and players often draw from Western values of White masculinity, White privilege as bounded by conceptions of ‘‘other,’’ and relationships organized by coercion and domination.”

  • Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? – Racial representation and gaming

  • Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? – Violence and Video Game Play Revisited

  • Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? – Family Life and Video Game Play

  • Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? – Problem Video Game Play and Genre

  • Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? – Video Games Let You Be All You Can Be

  • Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? – What is a gamer identity or gamer culture?

  • Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? – Video game technology supporting the elderly

  • Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? – Women in Gaming

  • Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? – Culture-jamming activists in video games

  • Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain? – A senior artists view of computers

Video Games: Brain Gain or Drain?

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Video games. Sometimes demonized, always compelling – and wildly popular, video games have become ingrained as part of our society. Yet it is still largely unknown how these games affect the minds of those who play. Find out the truth, the questions, the research – and what we don’t about this highly controversial part of our society and what they may mean for both the future and for our dreams.