Title Pending 1181

Abstract

<strong>This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.</strong> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; line-height: 16.8667px;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0cm; line-height: 16.8667px;">In media industry studies, accounts of digital game production have often been at the forefront to document and theorize conditions and transformations of how games are produced, regulated, distributed, marketed, and consumed. This special section examines contemporary cultural formations of local game production, with an emphasis on urban and economic geography, genealogies of media policy and ownership, and the geopolitics of difference in institutional settings and places of circulation. We seek perspectives on local game production that dialogue with recent research on media industry and cultural work, such as research on creators and developers (O’Donnell, 2014; Ruberg, 2019), under-the-line workers (Bulut, 2020; Ozimek, 2019), cultural intermediaries (Parker, Whitson &amp; Simon, 2018), creator communities and scenes (Grimes, 2015; Young, 2021), public and regional funding schemes (Sotomaa, Jørgensen &amp; Sandqvist, 2019), content creation platforms (Foxman, 2019; Nicoll &amp; Keogh, 2019), and regional economies (Kerr, 2017; Švelch, 2021).<o:p style="margin: 0cm; line-height: 16.8667px;"></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; line-height: 16.8667px;"><span lang="EN">&nbsp;</span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; line-height: 16.8667px;"><span lang="EN" style="">Previous research highlights the perception of game production as a global industry that coexists with and contributes to the formation of national industries, including studio and publisher formation, geopolitics and laws, tax breaks and credits, regional regulatory frameworks, and cultural sovereignty. This issue seeks analyses that scrutinise the tensions between local formations of game production and the global industry of dominant, monopolistic publishers and platforms. We particularly seek accounts that critically address local game production in regions which have seen scant scholarly attention to date. We welcome textured, conceptually-robust contributions that examine conditions, sites, and practices of local game production across varied moments of development, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and circulation of games in local contexts.<font color="#000000" face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></font></span>