Paper short abstract:

The amount of data, knowledge and mediators that we have access compared from 10 years ago, when the study of Japanese video games underwent significant progress, has increased so dramatically that we need to establish a rough sketch of every venue that we can take from now on.

Paper long abstract:

By the mid 2010’s, what was known about Japanese videogames and Japanese video game culture amounted to a fragmentary mosaic of accounts, interviews and press notes that scattered across different historial periods. Although early researchers were able to make up a somewhat stable vision of its most significant events, our main object of focus still centered around their perceived contributions to a ready-made narrative that privileged American consumers and developers as the main forces of progression within the medium. Nowadays, we can curb that tendency thanks to an increasing breadth of data that both academics and gaming enthusiasts have been able to gather. This breadth, however, doesn’t limit merely to hard data and amusing factoids, but covers several interpretations and narratives that act as mediators for many audiences and collectives that have interacted with Japanese videogames over the years.

The challenge that this seemingly endless array of venues presents can be faced head on if we adopt an epistemological instance that takes into account how each one of these interactions (no matter how small) has had an impact on the ongoing reception of Japanese video games across the world. Such an instance can be attained if we expand our sources and reach as many actors as possible, which might shed some light of alternative local histories that can counter prevailing narratives and eventually lead us into a multifaceted study of the medium. This paper will make use of the actor-network model proposed by Bruno Latour to establish a picture of our current relationship with this facet of Japanese culture (namely, the Japanese videogame), and will hopefully encourage any starting researcher to contribute as well.