Manufacturing Consent in Video Games: The Hegemonic Memory Politics of «Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain» (2015)

Emil Lundedal Hammar

doi:10.7557/13.5016

Authors

Emil Lundedal Hammar UiT The Arctic University of Norway https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2640-5949

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5016

Keywords:

cultural memory, political economy, video games, postcolonialism

Abstract

In this article I argue that the structural conditions of global capitalism and postcolonialism encourage game developers to rearticulate hegemonic memory politics and suppress subaltern identities. This claim is corroborated via an application of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model to the Japanese-developed video game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. This case study highlights that the hegemonic articulations of colonial histories are not exclusive to Western entertainment products where instead modes of production matter in the ‘manufacturing of mnemonic hegemony’. I also propose that the propaganda model, while instructive, can be improved further by acknowledging a technological filter and the role of the subaltern. Thus, the article furthers the understanding of the relation between production and form in contemporary technological phenomena like video games and how this relation motivates hegemonic articulations of the past in contemporary mass culture.

Author Biography

Emil Lundedal Hammar, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

is a PhD candidate in Game and Memory Studies at the Department of Language and Culture at UiT The Arctic University of Norway under the supervision of Dr. Holger Pötzsch. He holds a cand.it in Games Analysis from the IT University of Copenhagen and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Copenhagen. In 2016 he won first prize with a personal essay on the relation between being a citizen of a former slave nation of Denmark and playing contemporary digital games dealing with the 18th-century Caribbean slave system in the essay contest ‘Digital Lives’ organized by the Norwegian cultural organization Fritt Ord. He currently coordinates the international ENCODE research network at UiT and is part of the WAR/GAME research group. Together with Dr. Souvik Mukherjee, Emil also co-edited a special issue on postcolonial perspectives in game studies for the Open Library of Humanities. His research interests include game studies, memory studies, critical race theory, the political economy of communication, critical and materialist approaches to media, and postcolonialism.

Acknowledgements: Emil Lundedal Hammar would like to thank the reviewers and editors for excellent feedback and guidance.

References

Aarseth, Espen, and Gordon Calleja. 2015. “The Word Game: The Ontology of an Undefinable Object”, in Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, June 22–25, editor unknown. Pacific Grove: FDG. Available online: http://www.fdg2015.org/papers/fdg2015_paper_51.pdf [March 22, 2019].

Alexander, Leigh. 2015. “The Final Word on The Phantom Pain, a Video Game About Video Games”, Vice, October 26. Available online: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gqmn7q/the-final-word-on-the-phantom-pain-a-video-game-about-video-games-1015 [March 22, 2019].

Alford, Matthew. 2015. “How Useful Is a Propaganda Model for Screen Entertainment?”, in Noam Chomsky, edited by Alison Edgley. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 141–164. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-32021-6_8.

Ashcraft, Brian. 2012. “Japanese Game Developer Apparently Harassed so Much, She Attempted Suicide”, Kotaku, May 18. Available online: https://kotaku.com/5911353/japanese-game-developer-apparently-harassed-so-much-she-attempted-suicide [March 22, 2019].

Bay, Michael (dir.). 1997 [1996]. The Rock. Feature film. DVD. Burbank: Hollywood Pictures.

Beverley, John. 2001. “The Im/Possibility of Politics: Subalternity, Modernity, Hegemony”, in The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader, edited by Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez. Durham: Duke University Press, 47–63. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822380771-003.

Bonsu, Samuel K. 2009. “Colonial Images in Global Times: Consumer Interpretations of Africa and Africans in Advertising”, Consumption Markets & Culture 12:1, 1–25. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1080/10253860802560789.

Boyer, Eric. 2014. “Zombies All! The Janus-Faced Zombie of the Twenty-First Century”, The Journal of Popular Culture 47:6, 1139–1152. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12202.

Calafell, Bernadette Marie. 2015. Monstrosity, Performance, and Race in Contemporary Culture. New York: Peter Lang. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4539-1719-0.

Campbell, Colin. 2018. “Why Are Game Companies so Afraid of the Politics in Their Games?”, Polygon, June 20. Available online: https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/20/17480666/video-games-companies-lying-politics [March 22, 2019].

Capcom. 2009. Resident Evil 5. Osaka: Capcom, PC game.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2002. Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cochran, Robert, and Joel Surnow (dirs.). 2001–2010; 2014. 24. Action drama television series. New York: Fox Broadcasting Company.

D’Acci, Julie. 2004. “Television, Representation and Gender”, in The Television Studies Reader, edited by Robert Clyde Allen and Annette Hill. London/New York: Routledge, 373–388.

Donald, Iain. 2019 [2017]. “Just War? War Games, War Crimes, and Game Design”, Games and Culture 14:4, 367–386. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412017720359.

Dorfman, Ariel, and Armand Mattelart. 1975. “How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic” [translated by David Kunzle], International General 22, 43–46. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv62hf1k.

Dyer, Richard. 2002 [1993]. The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation. Reprint edition. London/New York: Routledge.

Edwards, David, and David Cromwell. 2018. Propaganda Blitz: How the Corporate Media Distort Reality. London: Pluto Press. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv69tg4v.

Erll, Astrid. 2011. Memory in Culture. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230321670.

Fanon, Frantz. 1963 [1961]. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constantin Farrington. Broadway: Grove Wedfield.

Femia, Joseph V. 1987 [1981]. Gramsci’s Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process. Reprint edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Ford, Dom. 2016. “‘EXplore, EXpand, EXploit, EXterminate’: Affective Writing of Postcolonial History and Education in Civilization V”, Game Studies 16:2, without page numbers. Digital object identifier not available: http://gamestudies.org/1602/articles/ford [October 31, 2019].

Fron, Janine, Tracy Fullerton, Jacquelyn Ford Morie, and Celia Pearce. 2007. “The Hegemony of Play”, in DiGRA 2007—Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play, editor unknown. Tokyo: DiGRA. Available online: http://ict.usc.edu/pubs/The%20Hegemony%20of%20Play.pdf [March 22, 2019].

Fujihara, Masahito. 2014. “Career Development Among Japanese Female Game Developers: Perspective from Life Stories of Creative Professionals”, in Gender Considerations and Influence in the Digital Media and Gaming Industry, edited by Julie Prescott and Julie Elizabeth McGurren. Pennsylvania: IGI Global, 110–124. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-6142-4.ch006.

Galloway, Alexander R. 2006. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press.

GamesRadar (author unknown). 2015. “Metal Gear Solid’s Least Safe-for-Work Moments”, GamesRadar, April 9. Available online: https://www.gamesradar.com/metal-gear-solids-least-safe-work-moments/ [link defunct as of December 22, 2018].

Gandolfi, Enrico, and Mariacristina Sciannamblo. 2019 [2018]. “Unfolding Female Quiet in Wargames: Gender Bias in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain from Representation to Gameplay”, Feminist Media Studies 19:3, 331–347. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1467476.

Garnham, Nicholas. 1979. “Contribution to a Political Economy of Mass-Communication”, Media, Culture & Society 1:2, 123–146. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/016344377900100202.

Geyser, Hanli, and Pippa Tshabalala. 2011. “Return to Darkness: Representations of Africa in Resident Evil 5”, in DiGRA ’11—Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play, editor unknown. Utrecht: DiGRA. Available online: http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/11312.58174.pdf [March 22, 2019].

Gramsci, Antonio. 2005 [1971; 1929–1935]. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Translated and edited by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Noell-Smith. Reprint edition. London: Lawrence and Wishart.

Gray, Kishonna L. 2014. Race, Gender, and Deviance in Xbox Live: Theoretical Perspectives from the Virtual Margins. Waltham/Oxford: Elsevier. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315721378.

Green, Amy M. 2017. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Trauma, and History in Metal Gear Solid V. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62749-6.

Grubb, Jeff. 2015. “September 2015 NPD: NBA, NFL Games Have Big Month as Hardware Sputters”, VentureBeat (blog). October 19. Available online: https://venturebeat.com/2015/10/19/september-2015-npd-ps4-wins/ [March 22, 2019].

Hall, Stuart. 1982. “The Rediscovery of ‘Ideology’: Return of the Repressed in Media Studies”, in Culture, Society and the Media, edited by Michael Gurevitch, Tony Bennett, James Curran, and Janet Woollacott. London: Routledge, 61–95.

Hall, Stuart. 1997. “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’”, in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, edited by Stuart Hall. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage, 223–290.

Hammar, Emil Lundedal. 2017. “Counter-Hegemonic Commemorative Play: Marginalized Pasts and the Politics of Memory in the Digital Game Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry”, Rethinking History 21:3, 372–395. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2016.1256622.

Harrer, Sabine, and Martin Pichlmair. 2015. “Black Skin[,] White Guns: Becoming Colonizer in Resident Evil 5”, in Meaning and Computer Games: International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games, editor unknown. Berlin: PCG. Available online: http://gamephilosophy.org/pcg2015/gamephilosophy2015.btk-fh.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/HarrerPichlmair-PCG15.pdf [March 22, 2019].

Hartmann, Tilo. 2017. “The ‘Moral Disengagement in Violent Videogames’ Model”, Game Studies 17:2, without page numbers. Digital object identifier not available: http://gamestudies.org/1702/articles/hartmann [October 31, 2019].

Haynes, John Earl. 1995. Red Scare or Red Menace? American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. 2002 [1988]. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Reprint edition with a new introduction. New York: Pantheon Books.

Higgin, Tanner. 2009a. “Blackless Fantasy: The Disappearance of Race in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games”, Games and Culture 4:1, 3–26. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412008325477.

Higgin, Tanner. 2009b. “‘Turn the Game Console off Right Now!’: War, Subjectivity, and Control in Metal Gear Solid 2”, in Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games, edited by Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne. New York/London: Routledge, 268–287.

Himmelman, Natasha. 2012. Hollywood’s Africa After 1994. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Joseph, Daniel. 2018. “The Discourse of Digital Dispossession: Paid Modifications and Community Crisis on Steam”, Games and Culture 13:7, 690–707. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412018756488.

Kaldor, Mary. 1991. “After the Cold War”, Feminist Review 39:1, 109–114. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.1991.45.

Keogh, Brendan. 2015. “On Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain”, Brendan Keogh (blog), September 18. Available online: https://brkeogh.com/2015/09/18/on-metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain/ [March 22, 2019].

Kerr, Aphra. 2017. Global Games: Production, Circulation and Policy in the Networked Era. New York/London: Routledge. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203704028.

Kiple, Kenneth, and Virginia Kiple. 1980. “The African Connection: Slavery, Disease and Racism”, Phylon 41:3, 211–222. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.2307/274784.

Konami Computer Entertainment. 1987. Metal Gear. Tokyo: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo [KCET], MSX2 game.

Konami Holdings Corporation. 2015. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Tokyo: Konami Digital Entertainment, PC game.

Lammes, Sybille. 2010. “Postcolonial Playgrounds: Games and Postcolonial Culture”, Eludamos—Journal for Computer Game Culture 4:1, 1–6. Digital object identifier not available: https://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/view/vol4no1-1 [October 31, 2019].

Lynch, Teresa, Jessica E. Tompkins, Irene I. van Driel, and Niki Fritz. 2016. “Sexy, Strong, and Secondary: A Content Analysis of Female Characters in Video Games Across 31 Years”, Journal of Communication 66:4, 564–584. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12237.

Martin, Paul. 2018. “Race, Colonial History and National Identity: Resident Evil 5 as a Japanese Game”, Games and Culture 13:6, 568–586. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412016631648.

Massanari, Adrienne. 2017. “#Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures”, New Media & Society 19:3, 329–346. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815608807.

Metal Gear Wiki (author unknown). 2018. “Afghanistan”, Metal Gear Wiki. Available online: https://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/Afghanistan [March 22, 2019].

Mir, Rebecca, and Trevor Owens. 2013. “Modeling Indigenous Peoples: Unpacking Ideology in Sid Meier’s Colonization”, in Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History, edited by Matthew Kapell and Andrew B. R. Elliott. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 91–106.

Molden, Berthold. 2016. “Resistant Pasts versus Mnemonic Hegemony: On the Power Relations of Collective Memory”, Memory Studies 9:2, 125–142. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698015596014.

Molina-Guzmán, Isabel. 2016. “#OscarsSoWhite: How Stuart Hall Explains Why Nothing Changes in Hollywood and Everything Is Changing”, Critical Studies in Media Communication 33:5, 438–454. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2016.1227864.

Mosco, Vincent. 2009 [1996]. The Political Economy of Communication. Second edition. London: Sage. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446279946.

Mukherjee, Souvik. 2016. “Video Games and Slavery”, Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association 2:3, 243–260. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.26503/todigra.v2i3.60.

Mukherjee, Souvik. 2017. Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54822-7.

Mukherjee, Souvik. 2018. “Playing Subaltern: Video Games and Postcolonialism”, Games and Culture 13:5, 504–520. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015627258.

Murray, Soraya. 2017. On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space. London/New York: I.B. Tauris.

NationFusion (author unknown). 2015. “Interview with Rika Muranaka from ‘Metal Gear Central’ Feat[uring] ‘Daley’”, NationFusion (YouTube channel), July 27. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I9I1KwD3DY&t=34m57s [March 22, 2019].

Nieborg, David. 2011. Triple-A: The Political Economy of the Blockbuster Video Game. Doctoral thesis. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Available online: http://dare.uva.nl/search?arno.record.id=383251 [March 22, 2019].

Nieborg, David. 2016. “From Premium to Freemium: The Political Economy of the App”, in Social, Casual, and Mobile Games: The Changing Gaming Landscape, edited by Michele Willson and Tama Leaver. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 225–240.

Nitta, Yuji, and Shotaro Tani. 2017a. “The Konami Exodus”, Nikkei Asian Review, June 14. Available online: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/The-Konami-exodus [March 22, 2019].

Nitta, Yuji, and Shotaro Tani. 2017b. “The Hard Life of an ‘Ex-Kon’”, Nikkei Asian Review, June 22. Available online: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/The-hard-life-of-an-ex-Kon [March 22, 2019].

Ochsner, Amanda. 2019 [2017]. “Reasons Why: Examining the Experience of Women in Games 140 Characters at a Time”, Games and Culture 14:5, 523–542. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412017709418.

Okabe, Tsugumi. 2018. “Rule Makers vs. Rule Breakers: The Impact of Legislative Policies on Women Game Developers in the Japanese Game Industry”, in Feminism in Play, edited by Kishonna L. Gray, Gerald Voorhees, and Emma Vossen. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 125–141. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90539-6_8.

Otness, Eric. 2016. “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Cassette Transcripts: Proxy War Without End”, Metal Gear Wiki, March 1. Available online: https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_V:_The_Phantom_Pain_cassette_transcripts [March 22, 2019].

PAL Charts (author unknown). 2015. “PAL Charts: Week 38, 2015”, NeoGAF. Available online: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/pal-charts-week-38-2015.1114961/ [March 22, 2019].

Pandey, Gyanendra. 1995. “Voices from the Edge: The Struggle to Write Subaltern Histories”, Ethnos—Journal of Anthropology 60:3–4, 223–242. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.1995.9981519.

Parkin, Simon. 2014. “Hideo Kojima: ‘Metal Gear Questions US Dominance of the World’”, The Guardian, July 18. Available online: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/18/hideo-kojima-interview-metal-gear-solid-phantom-pain [March 22, 2019].

Parkin, Simon. 2015. “Hideo Kojima’s Mission Unlocked”, The New Yorker, December 17. Available online: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/hideo-kojimas-mission-unlocked [March 22, 2019].

Pearson, Dan. 2015. “Inside Konami: Public Shaming, Tyrannical Management and Punitive Reassignment”, GamesIndustry.biz, August 3. Available online: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-08-03-nikkei-article-paints-a-picture-of-konami-in-disarray [March 22, 2019].

Pearson, Dan. 2016. “MGS V Sells 6m, Pushes Konami Digital Profits up by 150%”, GamesIndustry.biz, January 29. Available online: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-01-29-mgs-v-sells-6m-pushes-konami-digital-profits-up-by-150-percent [March 22, 2019].

Pfister, Eugen. 2018. “Games Are Never Innocent”, Spiel—Kultur—Wissenschaften (blog), April 19. Available online: https://spielkult.hypotheses.org/1689 [March 22, 2019].

Phillipson, Robert. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pötzsch, Holger. 2017 [2015]. “Selective Realism: Filtering Experiences of War and Violence in First- and Third-Person Shooters”, Games and Culture 12:2, 156–178. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015587802.

Reading, Anna. 2016 [2015]. Gender and Memory in the Globital Age. Reprint edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-35263-7.

Rigney, Ann. 2016. “Cultural Memory Studies: Mediation, Narrative, and the Aesthetic”, in Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies, edited by Anna Lisa Tota and Trever Hagen. New York: Routledge, 65–76.

Romano, Sal. 2015. “Media Create Sales: 10/26/15–11/1/15”, Gematsu (blog), November 4. Available online: https://gematsu.com/2015/11/media-create-sales-102615-11115 [March 22, 2019].

Rosenstone, Robert A. 1995. “The Historical Film as Real History”, Filmhistoria Online 5:1, 5–23. Digital object identifier not available: http://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/filmhistoria/article/view/12244 [October 31, 2019].

Said, Edward W. 1979 [1978]. Orientalism. Reprint edition. New York: Vintage Books.

Said, Edward W. 1994 [1993]. Culture and Imperialism. Reprint edition. New York/London: Vintage Books.

Salter, Anastasia, and Bridget Blodgett. 2012. “Hypermasculinity and Dickwolves: The Contentious Role of Women in the New Gaming Public”, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56:3, 401–416. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2012.705199.

Salter, Michael. 2017. “From Geek Masculinity to Gamergate: The Technological Rationality of Online Abuse”, Crime, Media, Culture 14:2, 247–264. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659017690893.

Scott, Tony (dir.). 2002 [2001]. Spy Game. Feature film. DVD. Los Angeles: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.

Shaw, Adrienne. 2015a. Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816693153.001.0001.

Shaw, Adrienne. 2015b. “The Tyranny of Realism: Historical Accuracy and Politics of Representation in Assassin’s Creed III”, Loading... 9:14, without page numbers. Digital object identifier not available: http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/157 [October 31, 2019].

Shaw, Adrienne. 2017. “Encoding and Decoding Affordances: Stuart Hall and Interactive Media Technologies”, Media, Culture & Society 39:4, 592–602. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443717692741.

Šisler, Vít. 2008. “Digital Arabs: Representation in Video Games”, European Journal of Cultural Studies 11:2, 203–220. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549407088333.

Sotamaa, Olli, and Tero Karppi (eds.). 2010. Games as Services: Final Report. Tampere: University of Tampere Press. Available online: http://tampub.uta.fi/handle/10024/65772 [March 22, 2019].

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2010 [1988]. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” [revised edition], in Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, edited by Rosalind C. Morris. New York: Columbia University Press, 21–78.

Srauy, Sam. 2019 [2017]. “Professional Norms and Race in the North American Video Game Industry”, Games and Culture 14:5, 478–497. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412017708936.

Stahl, Roger. 2009. Militainment, Inc.: War, Media, and Popular Culture. New York/London: Routledge. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203879603.

Stanton, Rich. 2015. “Metal Gear Solid: Everything You Need to Know About the Entire Series”, The Guardian, September 7. Available online: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/07/metal-gear-solid-everything-you-need-to-know-about-entire-series [March 22, 2019].

Stenros, Jaakko, and Annakaisa Kultima. 2018. “On the Expanding Ludosphere”, Simulation & Gaming 49:3, 338–355. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878118779640.

Stronach, Ian. 2006. “Enlightenment and the ‘Heart of Darkness’: (Neo)Imperialism in the Congo, and Elsewhere”, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 19:6, 757–768. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390600975982.

Thomsen, Michael. 2015. “Guilt, Shame, and Quiet: Women in Metal Gear Solid”, Forbes, June 9. Available online: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelthomsen/2015/09/06/guilt-shame-and-quiet-women-in-metal-gear-solid/ [March 22, 2019].

Thomsen, Michael. 2018. “Made in China: Every New Video Game You Love” [later retitled as “The Universe Has Been Outsourced: The Unseen Labor Behind the Video Game Industry’s Biggest Titles”], The Outline, February 6. Available online: https://theoutline.com/post/3087/outsourcing-blockbuster-video-games-made-in-china-horizon-zero-dawn [December 22, 2018].

Valentine, Rebekah. 2018. “Konami Shows Record Operating Profits”, GamesIndustry.biz, May 10. Available online: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-05-10-konami-continues-overall-growth-with-mobile-focus [March 22, 2019].

Wainaina, Binyavanga. 2019 [2005]. “How to Write About Africa”, Granta, May 2. Originally published in Granta 92 and republished in Granta 147. Available online: https://granta.com/how-to-write-about-africa/ [May 5, 2019].

Wang, Ting-Ting. 2014. “Spy Video Games After 9/11: Narrative and Pleasure”, in All About Science: Philosophy, History, Sociology & Communication, edited by Maria Burguete and Lam Lui. New Jersey/London: World Scientific, 371–382. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1142/9789814472937_0017.

White, Hayden. 1990 [1987]. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Reprint edition. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Williams, Dmitri, Nicole Martins, Mia Consalvo, and James D. Ivory. 2009. “The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in Video Games”, New Media & Society 11:5, 815–834. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809105354.

Woodcock, Jamie. 2016. “The Work of Play: Marx and the Video Games Industry in the United Kingdom”, Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 8:2, 131–143. Digital object identifier: https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw.8.2.131_1.

Young, Iris Marion. 2004. “Five Faces of Oppression”, in Oppression, Privilege, and Resistance: Theoretical Perspectives on Racism, Sexism, and Heterosexism, edited by Lisa Maree Heldke and Peg O’Connor. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 37–63.