Overview

A new perspective on the spatial complexity and plurality of Japanese videogames. A new perspective on the spatial complexity and plurality of Japanese videogames. Unboxing Japanese Videogames uncovers the complex and plural spatialities of commercial videogames published in Japan between 1985 and 2015. Rejecting the ""boxing"" inherent in the phrase ""Japanese videogames,"" Martin Roth explores a series of spatialities that unfold in videogame production and distribution. The book develops a notion of spatialization that is applied in the analysis of contents or genre distributions in Japan, the US, the UK, Germany, and France, the distribution of videogame works across different important markets, the geography of actors involved in videogame production and their gradual spatialization over time, and the functional spatialization of game production across a diverse range of platforms. This book is the first English-language study to provide an overview of the subject and also the first to explore the spatial history of FromSoftware games. It stands out because it does so quantitatively, offering a macro-perspective on the field of commercial videogames instead of relying on sales statistics or case studies. In addition to a wide range of related scholarship in English, the book engages actively with scholarship and other relevant resources in Japanese. Over thirty visualizations make the findings of the book tangible and invite the reader to explore the spatial complexity of commercial videogames further.

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9780262552226

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Reviews

“Unboxing Japanese Videogames fascinates us like a toy box. By mapping the subject in global and multidisciplinary scopes, Martin Roth cautiously unpacks the closet of Japanese gaming culture in a way that even Japanese researchers have never imagined before.” —Hiroshi Yoshida, Associate Professor, University of Tokyo “Roth’s excellent book brings new, accessible methods in metadata analytics to Japanese games in circulation to understand how these games are always already global and local artifacts simultaneously.” —Jennifer deWinter, Dean of Science and Letters, Illinois Institute of Technology; coeditor of the Influential Game Designers book series; author of Shigeru Miyamoto “An important and timely volume that lifts the lid on the complex spatialities of game production and distribution. Inviting the reader to rethink the fundamental concept of the ‘Japanese videogame,’ Roth’s analysis is characteristically deep, rigorously theorized, and packed full of examples.” —James Newman, Research Professor and Senior Teaching Fellow, Department of Computing, Bath School of Design

Author Information

Martin Roth is Associate Professor at Ritsumeikan University and a Research Fellow at Stuttgart Media University. He works on videogames, play, and digital culture, with a regional focus on Japan. His first monograph, Thought-Provoking Play, is available open access from ETC Press.

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