The Cold War Will Not Take Place: The Cold War in Non-Western Videogames

Seiwald, Regina and Wade, Alex (2022) The Cold War Will Not Take Place: The Cold War in Non-Western Videogames. Studies in Eastern European Cinema. pp. 1-16. ISSN 2040-350X

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Abstract

This paper examines how the Cold War was depicted in videogames from outside the West. Using Jean Baudrillard’s double spiral of symbolic exchange and simulation as its theoretical framework, it describes the generation of the hyperreal in Western countries. The hyperreal is directly tied to machines in the welfare and warfare state that made the Cold War a battle that could never be fought. While these machines and the knowledge factories of which they were a part offered ludic alternatives to war in the West, in Eastern Europe and beyond, sitting outside of the Western hyperreal, they offer an opportunity to recollect and model human experiences of the inhumanities of their oppressors, through a certain point in history where digital technology and the downfall of the Eastern bloc coalesced. In this space, videogames from across Eastern Europe and Asia are interrogated in their form, function, content, distribution, and delivery to position non-Western videogames as offering a viable alternative to the technosphere that eventually swallows the world in its integral reality, indirect products of a war that could not take place.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number:	10.1080/2040350X.2022.2071521
Dates:	Date Event 1 May 2022 Accepted 6 May 2022 Published Online
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Videogames, Baudrillard, transpolitical, Cold War, protest games
Subjects:	CAH15 - social sciences > CAH15-01 - sociology, social policy and anthropology > CAH15-01-02 - sociology CAH24 - media, journalism and communications > CAH24-01 - media, journalism and communications > CAH24-01-05 - media studies
Divisions:	Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences > Centre for Study of Practice and Culture in Education (C-SPACE)
Depositing User:	Alex Wade
Date Deposited:	04 Jul 2022 10:04
Last Modified:	04 Jul 2022 10:04
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/13375

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