![]() We reflect on the much-rehearsed Asian "origin story" of esports-especially the popularity of the American-made game StarCraft (1998) among South Korean players in internet cafes in the late 1990s-as well as its global iterations, including alternate histories of competitive arcade gaming in the United States, Europe, and Japan. This conversation explores the Asiatic dynamics of esports-the burgeoning and highly lucrative industry of competitive video game playing among professional teams or individuals, usually for a large audience of spectators-and of competitive gaming, such as the popular practice of "speedrunning" (attempts to play through entire games as rapidly as possible, often filmed). When we use the term wholly as a demographic signifier, however, we retain the use Asian American. Note: Throughout, we follow David Palumbo-Liu (1999) in using the formulation Asian/American-as opposed to the more well-known Asian or Asian American-to emphasize the "dynamic, unsettled," constantly "sliding" (and eliding) relationship between the two terms, as designated by the solidus and discussed throughout these documents as a productive site of tension. The pieces were then lightly edited for continuity and length. Each person began or contributed to whichever document or topic thread the writer found most interesting, revisiting the documents regularly to continue the conversation. ![]() ![]() This enterprise took the form of a roundtable carried out virtually across four simultaneous Google documents over a series of a few months. We ask, How does play function within virtual spaces conceived of as Asian or Asian inflected? How are familiar Orientalist tropes reframed in the particular language of gaming? How have Asian/Americans been shaped within gaming and developer communities? The following documents explore, from four different angles, how games have been framed as forms of "Digital Asia," as products of Asia and transpacific empire, and how games have permitted forms of solidarity and resistance for Asian/American communities. We also seek to push beyond critiques of games as frivolous cultural objects or as mindless militaristic purveyors of violence and rather ask how games and gaming cultures play with forms of race, gender, sexuality, and nation and offer alternative ways of thinking about "difference" more broadly. (1) The forum looks beyond representations of Asian Americans in games to ask how games themselves have become Asiatic products even when they contain no explicit racial representations, as they are manufactured and innovated in Asian contexts and are often concerned with, and played by, sizable Asian audiences. We discuss how digital games as an "Asiatic" medium function socially, culturally, politically, and economically and how games speak to Asian/American experiences through forms of play. This Field Trip brings together three scholars and two game designers working at the nexus of Asian American studies, Asian studies, and critical game studies.
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