Feminist War Games?

Jon Saklofske is a literature professor at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. His interest in the ways that William Blake’s composite art illuminates the relationship between words and images on the printed page has inspired current research into alternative platforms for open social scholarship, as well as larger correlations between media forms and cultural perceptions. In addition to experimenting with virtual environments and games as tools for academic research, communication, and pedagogy, Jon’s other research interests include virtuality and environmental storytelling in Disney theme parks, research creation experiments, and the relationship between networks and narratives in video games. Alyssa Arbuckle is Associate Director of the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) at the University of Victoria, Canada. Through this role she serves as the Project Manager of the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Partnership, and assists with the coordination of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI). Arbuckle is also an interdisciplinary PhD Candidate at the University of Victoria, studying open social scholarship and its implementation. She holds a BA Honours in English from the University of British Columbia and an MA in English from the University of Victoria, where her previous studies centred around digital humanities, new media, and contemporary American literature. Currently, she explores open access, digital publishing, and how we communicate scholarship generally. To this end, Arbuckle's work has appeared in Digital Studies, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and Scholarly and Research Communication, among other publications. She has also recently co-edited a print and online collection called Social Knowledge Creation in the Humanities. Jon Bath is an associate professor of Art and Art History at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, where he teaches electronic art, design, and the book arts, and researches the connection between the form and content of communication technologies.

Part I: Introduction

Feminist War games? Mechanisms of War, Feminist Values, and Interventional Games

Alyssa Arbuckle, Jon Saklofske, Jon Bath, and the Implementing New Knowledge Environments Partnership

Part II: Play as Inquiry

1. Are There (Can There Be/Should There Be) Feminist War Games?

Jon Saklofske, Emily Cann, Danielle Rodrigue-Todd, and Derek Siemens

2. Gendered Authorship in War Gaming: Whose Fantasy is it Anyway?

Anastasia Salter

3. An Overview of the History and Design of Tabletop Wargames in Relation to Gender: From Tactics to Strategy

Matt Shoemaker

4. Reframing the Domestic Experience of War in This War of Mine: Life on the Battlefield

Ryan House

Part III: Feminism as War

5. Gamified Suburban Violence and the Feminist Pleasure of Destructive Play: Rezoning Warzones

Adan Jerreat-Poole

6. Because We are Always Warring: Feminism, Games, and War

Suzanne de Castell and Jennifer Jenson

7. Exploring Agency and Female Player–Character Relationships in Life is Strange: What Choice do I Have?

Andrea Luc

8. ‘What is a Feminist War Game?’: A Game Jam Reflection

Sarah Stang

Part IV: Challenging the Industry

9. Feminism and the Forever Wars: Prototyping Games in the Time of ‘America First’

Elizabeth Losh

10. Seven Dimensions of a Feminist War Game: What We Can Learn from This War of Mine

Christopher Kampe

11. Failed Feminist Interventions in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Mark Kaethler

12. Subversive Game Mechanics in the Fatal Frame and Portal Franchises: Having Your Cake and Eating it Too

Gabi Kirilloff

13. Toxic Pacifism and the Problems with or Potential of Non-Violent Playthroughs

Jon Bath and Elly Cockroft

Part V: Afterword

Taking Binaries Off the Table

Mary Flanagan