It was a dream come true for me when the leading games scholars from all over the world came to my city, Kolkata, to discuss games and literary theory. The topic, too, was dear to me: videogames at the margin. Here's the CfP and the Conference Programme:

Call for Papers

In one of the first books on the subject, Adrienne Shaw says ‘Teaching classes on minority representation in games, I heard this refrain repeated yet again by my students. Video games are a niche medium; they are fantasy environments; and they are designed for a narrow market. Of course games are not diverse—so what? […] I realized that I recognized myself in my participants’ responses. After all, I too grew up playing a medium for which I was not the primary market and media in which only certain aspects of my identity were ever shown’ (Shaw 2015). Shaw’s concern is an urgent one and recent events related to racism, sexism and other kinds of discrimination in the videogame industry and in the content of the games, highlights the importance of academic dialogues around gaming ‘at the margins’, as it were.

These concerns, of course, echo much older debates on diversity and difference in Literary and Cultural Studies. Identity and indeed, even the body, are constructs in the Foucauldian framework of biopower and beyond the actual control of individuals. Thinkers such as Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva and bell hooks point out how the the body is marginalised based on gender, race and class. Similarly, the constructedness of the ‘Orient’ and the ‘Oriental’ in colonial discourse as shown by Edward Said and also how the colonial system also renders certain groups of people ‘subaltern’ and how this affects the discourse of diversity as Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak and Homi Bhabha make evident. Often, the discourse of diversity and the margins pervades games as well although the connection is not often made evident in the older and more traditional disciplines.

Recent games scholarship has started addressing issues of diversity in games through the new Diversity Group that is now part of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA), books on gender, race and colonialism (Shaw 2015; Murray 2018; Mukherjee 2017) as well as edited journal issues and panel discussions. As crucial to discussions of both games and literary theory, these issues form the main theme of this year’s Games and Literary Theory Conference, being held in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India. 

Beautiful is an understatement: Tromso from my hotel.

Emil Hammar, the co-editor on the forthcoming 'Videogames and Postcolonialism' special issue being published by the Open Library of Humanities, is probably the northernmost Game Studies PhD scholar in the world. He and his supervisor, Holger Pötzsch, are doing interesting stuff in faraway Tromso. Emil's work on postcolonialism in videogames and recently, on counterplay and the representations of race and diversity in the upcoming titles (such as Kingdom Come!) have already attracted attention. I was also fascinated by Holger's brief introduction to his work on the current digital 'remediated' perceptions of war where war, or iWar as he terms it, is personalised and even customised to preference. My day started with a class taken by Holger, Emil and their colleague, Juliana. Juliana spoke about the remediation in the movie Downfall and how history is reproduced in the remediated filmic medium and then on, even in memes that show Hitler ranting at a whole variety of things that we wish to laugh at. Emil's talk led to an exploration of who and what is the Other(ed) and how normative constructions affect our understanding of life around us.

The northernmost games studies PhD scholar is on his way with flying colours

The assessment procedure was pretty simple and friendly. I got a whole lot of very useful ideas from the discussion with Emil and Holger. I'm hoping that my two penn'orth of thoughts was of some use to them as well. The other highlight (and it was really high) was the cable car ride up to a mountain peak overlooking Tromso and our many slippery trysts with the ice. And then there was a fantastic three-course dinner. I usually reserve my opinions on things culinary for a different space but I can't help commenting on this one since this was a three-course grand affair with wines to match each course. Not something I'll get anywhere outside Europe. I'm sure.

I gave two talks. The first, my usual rant on the need to figure in postcolonial themes into the historiography that videogames engage in, took place in the Peace Centre - with Gandhi ji's statue right outside. As I spoke on how the terribly insensitive treatment of history in the depiction of Gandhi's nuclear rage in Civilization games upsets me, I believe Gandhi ji outside might just have approved. There has been some intense activity on how videogames represent history (but too little too late if you ask me) and that's a good thing. What I don't get is that the historians seem to have a European or North American bias. This is what I addressed in my discussion of subaltern history(ies) in videogames and the way these games can help us look beyond the archives (that are mostly created by those in a position of power and advantage). Some of the questions that I got were quite thought provoking. For example, one of the faculty members spoke about the Sami people and the lack of archives - how the Sami drum is not something that people really know about and how the Sami language had to be reconstructed from scratch in recent times. A student (who is clearly a gamer) asked me why the prevalent historical presentations in videogames are often so inaccurate - he used the example of the much-touted historical accuracy of the WW1 game, Battlefield One. Again, following E.H. Carr's famous description of history as a 'hard kernel of interpretations surrounded by facts' I spoke of history as constructed according to a certain preferred politics. This for me is the politics of Empire as I have discussed at length in Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back.

Gandhi ji outside the Peace Studies Centre where I gave my talk.

The second talk was on a very different topic - Indian boardgames as precursors to gamification. I had given this talk to a packed gallery in the Indian Museum (thanks to the efforts of the wonderful education officer, Sayan Bhattacharya) but I have never written about it. Here was a far smaller audience and certainly one that was unfamiliar with Indian boardgames and some had never even played Snakes and Ladders! The mechanics of the game is, thankfully, very easy to explain  because of how our former colonial masters simplified it from the original Gyan Chaupar. So I was able to move the discussion from the simple race game that was about a straightforward telos to the very complex and almost unending game of rebirth. Quite fulfilling to talk at length about karma and its complicated working through what is considered a children's game. Again, I was asked interesting questions about how during gameplay people start creating narratives of their own and also whether these games are more like simulations than games. One of my biggest takeaways, however, was the translation of the Persian text in one of the Gyan Chaupar boards. Azadeh Isaksen, who originally hails from Iran, was quick to spot almost literal translations of the Hindu terms into Persian in the bilingual Gyan Chaupar board that I showed in my slides. This has set me thinking - why translate it? and is it actually possible to translate the religious ideas?

Persian translations underneath the Sanskrit terms on this Gyan Chaupar board.

The stay in Tromso was all too short - just two days and I was on the plane again. All the way from Oslo to Dubai, I was sitting beside a Croquet player from Norway (there are only forty-five in the country) who was on his way to Cape Town for a Croquet World Championship. It was kind of hard to get through the hoops of the Croquet conversation (literally) and finally, fatigue and sleep took over.

Sami Game Jam

Sami drum

While I was in Tromso learning about Sami culture, my friend Shailesh Prabhu was attending a Sami game jam somewhere in Northern Finland. They have made some fantastic game prototypes representing Sami culture and the subaltern narratives that do not get represented in our majoritarian discourse. Here's the link to some of the games - https://itch.io/jam/sami-game-jam.

I hope I can go back again and learn more about the Sami culture.

In the past five years, I have travelled to many places. Each time, however, when there was a conference to attend, sightseeing and doing my own thing was limited to a rushed half-day after or before the conference. This time I decided to travel for the sake of travelling. A vacation, nonetheless. As the plane crossed over from India into Nepal and I saw the high Himalayas in the distance, I knew I had been here before. Not deja vu this. This was Kyrat - the little mountain-country that is the locale of Ubisoft's videogame, Far Cry 4. Later, in the course of my journey I would spot many similarities between the sites of Nepal and Kyrat - the chorten or small stupas that are scattered in the landscape, the winding Himalayan roads, the muted Buddhist chants, the little villages so characteristic of a third-world country and finally, even the ultralights that fly rich tourists towards vistas of the high mountain peaks all make their appearance in the Kyrat of Far Cry 4. The name Kyrat, I was soon to realise, is no figment of the Ubisoft story writers' imaginative powers.

In Sanskrit, Kyrat  means 'crown' and Nepal and its neighbouring Indian state of Sikkim both have links to the historical and mythical Kyrat. Situated at the 'top of the world' in the high Himalayas, this claim to crowning glory comes as no surprise. In the 6th Century Sanskrit text, Kiratarjuna, the Pandav hero Arjun shoots a boar and then discovers that a Kirata man has also shot the animal. In the contest that ensues, Arjun is nonplussed at being unable to defeat the man and the tale ends with him discovering that the Kirata is none other than the God Shiva in disguise. The Kirateshwar temple in West Sikkim is said to mark the spot of their encounter. Arguably the same as the Kirata of the Indian epic, the Kirati people today comprise multiple tribes - the Limbu, Kaccha, Sonwar and others. Ubisoft's Far Cry 4 has combined all of them into one people living in a country that resembles Nepal in more ways than one. 

Like the Maoist struggle in Nepal of not-so-long ago, Kyrat is experiencing civil strife. The government is under the dictator, Pagan Min  - strangely, the name is the same as that of the Burmese emperor whom the British hounded out of Burma after committing gross acts of aggression in the Second Anglo-Burmese War in 1852. The key architect of that war was Lord Dalhousie, governor-general of India and arguably, also responsible in part for the events of 1857 in India. Now  why the villain of Far Cry 4 should have the same name as a Burmese king who opposed British colonialism is something that eludes me. There is an obvious inference that one can make though: the powers that defy the European rules of the game, are to be cast as villains and the name Pagan also, of course, has distinct non-Christian echoes. In the game, Min has seized power after the fall of the country's royal dynasty and now styles himself the king of Kyrat.

Gamers in Nepal responded quite positively on the whole to the game's setting but complained that the Kyrati people speak Hindi instead of Nepali, which is a different language altogether. The Kyrati people are shown as following one religion, quite comfortably avoiding the multi-religious complexity of the region, where Hinduism and Buddhism co-exist. The people worship the god Banashur and his daughter, Tarun Matara, who is worshipped as a living goddess. As Ajay Ghale, the non-resident Kyrati who returns to Kyrat from the USA after his mother's death, the player-protagonist has a lot to take in. Not least among them is how the game's developers have introduced various complexities and hinted at a plural culture, only to end up perpetuating the set of oriental stereotypes that belie the initial potential of the game. 

The player will most likely join the Golden Path (there is a possibility of choosing otherwise but of that later), which is the armed resistance to Min's government and was founded by his father Mohan Ghale.  The two leaders of the Golden Path have sharply contrasting world-views. Sabal, the traditionalist is described by the Far Cry Wiki thus:

Amita has a different agenda:

Ajay can let either of these two agendas prevail when he liberates Kyrat. There is also the more complex world-view of Pagan Min that seems outright evil at the outset but is complicated by his criticism of the practice of having a young girl consecrated as the Tarun Matara, exposed to the leering gaze of the gathering of men around her - exactly what Amita preaches. Min also continually points out problems with the religious practices in Kyrat and goes to the extreme of  closing down the sacred Jalendu Temple and stopping religious worship altogether. 

Although Min may have shut down the temples, he has barely dented the religious beliefs of Kyrati society. The role of religion in the game is one that game researchers have not focused on so far. Coming from a Hindu background myself, I was somewhat surprised at the amalgam of Hindu and Buddhist rites shown in the Kyrati religion. The importance of religion has already been underscored as one of the reasons behind the people's dissatisfaction with Min's rule and as the key factor in determining the events beyond the game's ending. Evidence of religion in practice abound all over the landscape with many locations showing shrines to some god and usually these places have fresh garlands and flowers on them. Many of them have religious names, especially connected to Banashur (incidentally an asura or demon in Hindu mythology who has, rather irreverently, been turned into a god in the game) and there is also the Chal Jama Monastery, where Ajay goes on a pilgrimage, 'which includes spinning a mani wheel, adding powder to fire, lighting a candle and lighting a stick of incense', hinting at a complex mix of Hindu and Buddhist religious practices. Adding to the controversy is the figure of the Tarun Matara - despite the disapproval shown through characters as disparate as Amita and Min.

The Tarun Matara, in the game, is the daughter of the God Banashur who is embodied in a living child selected by the community for this purpose. Those unfamiliar with local traditions will fail to see the clear similarity to the Kumari in Kathmandu, Nepal, who is still worshipped as a living goddess. The Kumari puja is a longstanding tradition among Hindu communities across the Indian subcontinent and it is popular among all sections of society. Indeed, the abolition of the tradition as a way of upholding women's rights might be considered problematic even in South Asian Feminist discourses. For example, here is an alternative point of view:

Chanira Bajracharya, a 19-year-old Nepalese student, was a Kumari of Patan, a city within Kathmandu Valley. Fulfilling the role from age five to 15, she says she still looks up to the goddess: "I feel I'm blessed and a lot of my success comes from those blessings." She says the tradition encourages respect for women in a male-dominated society. (for the full article, click here).

There are many views on the status and role of the Kumari and they present a complexity that cannot be easily described. The straightforward option of choosing to ban the tradition by either siding with Amita or letting Min rule is way too simple if one believes that abolishing the Tarun Matara custom, will be a major pro-women reform. The game seems to suggest this as a solution but then again, like any open-world game, it leaves the final choice to the player. 

Anyone who knows the history of Nepal would recognise  in Pagan Min's usurpation of power a reference to the end of the Nepali Royal Family (the Shah dynasty) that ruled the country for centuries until in the previous decade, the Crown Prince gunned down his entire family and the country ended up facing civil war involving Maoist rebels and government forces in the years after. This also effectively closed the country to tourists for a long time. A BBC report from 2003 states "While the Maoists are not targeting tourists, the war has started directly hitting the tourism sector - Nepal's most important industry." Ajay is also shown as entering Kyrat at a time when tourism has all but closed down. While reflecting the recent history of the region, the Kyrati civil strife also helps the designers to set the context for the adventures in the gameplay of Far Cry 4. 

The parallel history that Ubisoft constructs is intriguing on many other counts. There is a conscious attempt at thinking through the history of South Asian nations and Kyrat is a composite of the cultures of Nepal, India, Burma and even parts of China. As mentioned earlier, the developers, however, managed to completely ignore the fact that the Nepali people have their own language, which is somewhat different from Hindi, the language spoken in Far Cry 4 . Hindi is spoken in large sections of Northern India and is also the popular language of Bollywood - no wonder the Nepali fans of the videogame were left dismayed at the developers' decision to make the Kyrati population speak Hindi in a setting that largely resemble Nepal. Maybe Bollywood has to be the stereotype for all things South Asian. There are other stereotypes too - all the villains in the story are foreigners. Pagan Min is Chinese and so is his chief general and adopted sister, Yuma Lau. His other governors, Noore and Paul Harmon "de Pleur"are both foreigners and they are both people who came to Kyrat either as tourists or as human rights workers. There is also a corrupt CIA agent and a couple of hippie drug-dealers. Ajay Ghale himself seems to be an American citizen but besides him, Kyrat does not seem to have any outside influence on its political climate. The UN, the USA and even the nearby powers such as India and China seem happy to leave it alone. Finally, the outlook on the country's and indeed, the region's history is bleak. If the player supports Sabal and let's him take over the government, a series of pogroms against the other faction begins and the country goes back to its orthodox religion that deprives women of their rights. If the player hands over the government to Amita, eventually Kyrat becomes a drug-producing state, where all the energies of its population go into cultivation narcotics and in building an army. Just as Far Cry 2 sees no happy ending for the nameless African country it is set in, Far Cry 4 too has the same fate in store for Kyrat. Another formerly-colonised country doomed to a continuing state of confusion and suffering. Clearly, the people aren't capable of looking after themselves after the European colonial powers leave. Once again, the game characteristically attempts to present plurality and complexity but ends up with extremely predictable stereotypes that seem to hint that things were better off under colonial rule. Resistance either creates villains like Pagan Min (as his real-life Burmese namesake might have seemed to the British East India Company) or confused bigots and ideologues such as Sabal and Amita, all of whom lead the country to destruction.

The best metaphor for describing the game's attitude perhaps lies in a faux-oriental dish that is part of American Chinese cuisine: as much an American invention as General Tso's Chicken, this is a type of fried wonton (Chinese dumpling) made with crab-meat or imitation crab-meat and is called Crab Rangoon. At the very beginning of the game, Pagan Min offers Ajay a plate of crab rangoons. Just like Min, the recipe also claims a dubious connection with Burma (hence the 'rangoon' in its name - Rangoon or Yangon is the capital of Myanmar). In a very strange gameplay device, the whole outcome of the game depends on what the player does with the crab rangoons. If the player ignores everything and sits for long enough eating the crab rangoons, the game takes a very different turn to its alternate ending where there is no meeting the Golden Path rebels, the player is able to immerse his mother's ashes and life goes on undisturbed under Min's rule.  Not eating the crab-rangoons will lead to all the adventures and bloodshed that make up the gameplay of Far Cry 4. 

The crab-rangoons, for me, are quite important because they symbolise how the local culture is treated in the game. Just like the dish is a mix of many Asian cuisines and at the same time, a very North American fabrication, Kyrat in Far Cry 4 is kind of similar. With its hotch-potch of South Asian and Western influences, the game seems to struggle with representing an unfamiliar (to the West) and exotic part of the Orient and to end up with a very Western notion of the place. Kyrat itself is like a crab rangoon - a Western impression of a mix of South Asian cultures. Although most would like their money's worth and play out the game battling Min's forces, the hidden message is that whatever heroics Ghale performs, Kyrat is doomed anyway and perhaps the best way is to let Min continue his rule and keep supplying the West with heroin and slaves. Eating the crab rangoons and opting for the status quo would mean not rocking the boat at all - it would also mean accepting a very  Orientalist (in the sense Edward Said uses the term) notion of South Asia, where the next best thing to colonialism is the perpetuation of colonial codes within the so-called postcolonial nation-states. As for me, I do not like crab-rangoons much so I naturally ended up upsetting the apple cart (or the plate of crab-rangoons, as it were). Then again, I guess there are a lot of people who'd prefer the crab-rangoons. Who knows!