Pathfinding Affect: Reading Maps, Bodies and the Affective in Colonial Videogames

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Magnet, “Playing at Colonization Interpreting Imaginary Landscapes in the Video Game Tropico.”2 Cooper, The Pathfinder, 11.3 Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play, xi and passim.4 Massumi, “The Autonomy of Affect,” 86.5 Deleuze, Cinema 1, 87–111.6 Massumi, The Autonomy of Affect,” 96.7 Galloway, Gaming, especially 8–10, 18–19.8 Ash, “Technologies of Captivation,” 32.9 Ash and Mukherjee, “Interview with James Ash….”10 Calleja, In-Game.11 Cremin, Exploring Videogames with Deleuze and Guattari, 3.12 Anable, Playing with Feelings.13 Mukherjee, Videogames and Storytelling, 174.14 Mukherjee, Video Games and Storytelling.15 Lammes, “Postcolonial Playgrounds;” Magnet, “Playing at Colonization;” Apperley, “Modelling Indigenous Peoples;” Majkowski, “King Solomon’s Mines (Cleared);” Murray, “The Work of Postcolonial Game Studies in the Play of Culture;” Hammar, “Counter-Hegemonic Commemorative Play.”16 Mukherjee, Videogames and Postcolonialism.17 Trammell, “Torture, Play, and the Black Experience.”18 Ahmed, Strange Encounters, 45.19 Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 210; italics in the original.20 Ibid., 214.21 Ibid., 209.22 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 112.23 Khanna, The Visceral Logics of Decolonization, 136.24 Ibid., 135.25 Ibid., 9.26 Brennan, The Transmission of Affect, 2.27 Ahmed, Strange Encounters, 147–148.28 Devi, Imaginary Maps, 94.29 Morton, “Subaltern Affect,”318.30 Ibid.31 See Mukherjee and Hammar, “Introduction to the Special Issue on Postcolonial Perspectives in Game Studies.”32 Sepinwall, Slave Revolt on Screen, 208.33 Trammell, “Torture, Play, and the Black Experience.”34 Ibid.35 Mukherjee, “‘Here Be Dragons’.”36 Thrift, “Space.”37 Flatley, Affective Mapping, 78.38 Majkowski and Kozyra, “Lost Worlds of Andromeda,” 2739 Ibid., 34.40 Bushell, “Mapping Victorian Adventure Fiction,” 612.41 See Mukherjee, Videogames and Postcolonialism for a more detailed analysis.42 See Mukherjee, “Video Games and Slavery.”Additional informationNotes on contributorsSouvik MukherjeeSouvik Mukherjee is assistant professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and a pioneering games studies scholar from the Indian Subcontinent. In his research spanning two decades, he looks at a diversity of topics starting with a poststructuralist reading of videogames as storytelling media, videogames as colonial and postcolonial media, videogame production studies in the Indian Subcontinent and currently, Indian boardgames and their colonial avatars. He is the author of two monographs, Videogames and Storytelling: Reading Games and Playing Books (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), as well as many articles and book chapters in national and international publications. He has been a board member of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) and a founder-member of DiGRA India and DHARTI, the Digital Humanities group in India. He has been named a ‘DiGRA Distinguished Scholar’ in 2019. He is also an affiliated senior research fellow at the Centre of Excellence, Game Studies at Tampere University. Email: souvik@cssscal.org