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This book brings together a selection of papers delivered at the Video Game Cultures 2024 conference, held from 12 to 14 September 2024 at Birmingham City University, UK. The conference theme was ‘other’ in all its permutations: other, others, othered, othering, otherness, and beyond. The aim was to centre marginal practices, marginal identities, peripheral national traditions, and consider researcher positionality in/as other. Participants were asked to reflect on other spaces and sites of gaming, discuss other approaches and methods to studying games, players, and gaming cultures. Core questions were: What can we learn from (or about) other researcher practices, other player practices, other design and industrial practices? How do video games create or recognise difference, what does alternative embodiment look or feel like, and what worlds are possible in games? This edited collection shares chapters developed from presentations at the conference, from MA and PhD students through to established scholars. Support for more junior scholars is a core part of the conference series ethos, and we are proud that the current volume has enabled certain of the contributors to produce their first academic output. We are also pleased to provide a venue for experienced scholars to share work, and to present these different chapters in conversation with each other.

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Introduction: The Other in and around video game cultures E. Charlotte Stevens, Katja Aller, Monica Evans, and René Reinhold Schallegger Section 1: Other Histories “There Lies Perdition” – How Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden (2024) uses Hauntology to Exorcise the Spectres of Neo-Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism René Reinhold Schallegger SOMA, the Slave Trade, and Computation’s Unmapped Affects Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanfield Another day, another play: How local structures shaped the History of videogames reception. An oral history of Swiss players (1970-2000) Guillaume Guenat Section 2: Other Perspectives View from the (virtual) terraces: football fandom in videogames Iain Donald and Andrew Reid Marginally Different: The Ludic Tendencies of Videogame Paratexts Regina Seiwald Games as Therapy? The Neoliberal Commercialization and Therapization of RPG Gameplay in Hero Journey Club Deanna Holroyd and Holly Parker Section 3: Other Avatars The Queer Potential of Avatar Creation Nic Kilzer The Evolution of Female Characters: Inclusive Design and Ethical Challenges in RPGs Boyang Liang Fat adventurers not included: An analysis of how character creators in digital role playing games afford the creation of fat characters Markus Elvig

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