Introduction: Game History and the Local

Abstract

AbstractLocality has largely been left out of game history. That many histories have been written by journalists and ‘insiders’, largely accepting the game industry’s ‘global’ rhetoric, has no doubt contributed to this situation. An appreciation of socio-cultural and geographic specificity is important to develop if other histories are to be told. But the local also needs to be critically situated if it is not to simply become a new orthodoxy, celebrated for its own sake. This chapter critiques game history’s silence with respect to locality, poses questions about the critical potential of locality for game history, and surveys the different figures of locality that are brought together in the anthology.