Japanese Role-Playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG

The book "Japanese Role-Playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG" explores the origins, boundaries, and transnational effects of the Japanese role-playing game genre, addressing formal elements, narrative themes, character construction, and player involvement. Contributors from Japan, Europe, North America, and Australia employ various theoretical approaches to analyze popular game series and individual titles, introducing English-speaking audiences to Japanese video game scholarship and extending postcolonial and philosophical readings to the Japanese game text. The collection examines genre, representation, and liminality, engaging with concepts such as stereotypes, intersectionality, and the political and social effects of JRPGs on players and industry conventions. It considers JRPGs as networked systems, including evolved iterations of MMORPGs and card collecting "social games" for mobile devices. Scholars of media studies, game studies, Asian studies, and Japanese culture will find this book particularly useful.

Format: Hardback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 15 April 2022
Publisher: Lexington Books

Japanese Role-playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG examines the origins, boundaries, and transnational effects of the genre, addressing significant formal elements as well as narrative themes, character construction, and player involvement. Contributors from Japan, Europe, North America, and Australia employ a variety of theoretical approaches to analyze popular game series and individual titles, introducing an English-speaking audience to Japanese video game scholarship while also extending postcolonial and philosophical readings to the Japanese game text. In a three-pronged approach, the collection uses these analyses to look at genre, representation, and liminality, engaging with a multitude of concepts including stereotypes, intersectionality, and the political and social effects of JRPGs on players and industry conventions. Broadly, this collection considers JRPGs as networked systems, including evolved iterations of MMORPGs and card collecting “social games” for mobile devices. Scholars of media studies, game studies, Asian studies, and Japanese culture will find this book particularly useful.

Weight: 630g
Dimension: 38 x 207 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781793643544