“Emergent countries play, too!”
The Zeebo console as a (partial) decolonial project
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22409/contracampo.v40i2.50267Palavras-chave:
zeebo, history of videogames, Global South, platform, piracyResumo
The present paper discusses questions related to the histories of videogames, more specifically in how we approach videogames in Global South. By using Zeebo, a Brazilian console produced in the late 2000s as an epistemic tool, I discuss the limitations of universalist, mainstream-centric epistemological models for exploring videogames as cultural phenomena. By investigating Zeebo’s discourses about piracy and players in the Global South, I argue that this platform can be seen as a partial decolonial project, destabilising conventional historical narratives about South-North relationships in videogames, but refraining from challenging a mainstream, Global North oriented epistemology. This exploratory work, therefore, elaborates on how a decolonial project of history of videogames, one that is more epistemically just to Global South, could be sought.
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