Episode 74 – When Games simulate Real World Cultures For Profit (With Andrei Zanescu)

Ethics and Video Games Podcast

When game companies simulate cultures in their games they usually focus on the tropes that their intended audiences have about those cultures and then design their game around those tropes. Is there anything wrong with that? If so, what? What can game designers do to present cultures – present and past – more respectfully?

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Andrei Zanescu is a newly minted Doctor of Communication at Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada. His research focuses on resonance and its uses for (re)producing culture, in blockbuster games both digital and analog, as well as the overlap between blockbuster films and games. He also researches the political economy of game distribution, and the monetization of game platforms. Andrei is co-author of Microstreaming on Twitch, which is forthcoming from MIT Press. And he’s co-host of the Humor and Games.

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Hosted by Shlomo Sher, Ph.D. and Andy Ashcraft

Production by Carmen Elena Mitchell

Music and graphics by Daniel Sher