Gaming the Nation. An Intersectional Investigation of Nation, Identity and Video Gaming

Post-Doc Projekt 

Duration: March 2022 to March 2025

Subject

The research project addresses the multiple interrelations between video gaming and constructions of national identity by connecting two often juxtaposed research perspectives – media aesthetics and communication studies. It does so by investigating a) how nations and national identities are represented and made experienceable through audio-visual, narrative, spatial and procedural structures of the medium, and b) how these constructions are negotiated by gamers. The focus is on AAA video games with historical settings. Particular attention is paid to how notions of national identity not only formulate a sense of ‘us’, but also frame ‘others’ in demarcation thereto in order to find out whether or how video games’ constructions of the nation may serve to pass on and possibly consolidate social inequalities in times of deep mediatization. In theoretical terms, the project aims to further develop Anderson’s notion of nations as ‘imagined communities’ in the context of theories of deep mediatization by applying it through the theoretical lens of ‘gamevironments’ and extending it through an intersectional perspective. The project’s essential innovative value lies in its combination of media-aesthetic and actor-centered perspectives. The primary objective is, hence, to systematically explore the interrelation between video gaming and constructions of national identities on the levels of the games and the gamers and thereby not only contribute significantly to the development of the research field of nation, identity, and video gaming, but also, on a metalevel, to serve as an example of how to productively connect two research perspectives that are often juxtaposed.