The International Journal of Games and Social Impact

Cover and Front Matter

2025-12-30T19:31:52+00:00

Editorial

2025-12-30T19:31:53+00:00

CULTURAL HERITAGE IN YAKUZA 0: REPRESENTING JAPAN’S BUBBLE ECONOMY

2025-12-30T19:31:57+00:00

The growing implementation of video games to depict cultural heritage goals has sparked an increased interest in research opportunities. This study presents a research opportunity on the portrayal of tangible and intangible cultural elements in Yakuza 0 during bubble economy of the late 1980s. The bubble economy is an important milestone in Japan not only for its impact on economy but also a cultural paradigm due to liquidity of money among its citizen who loosened themselves in over consumption of goods and services. The study relied on a framework that used dimensions of cultural heritage to analyze the tangible and intangible cultural aspects portrayed in the game through extensive gameplay and text analysis. It focused on different elements from Yakuza 0, identifying the cultural heritage represented by those elements, suggesting Yakuza 0 as an effective representative of Japan’s bubble economy culture. The world design, landmarks, in-game objects, as well as the story, environment, and side activities replicate the cultural impact of bubble economy in Japan due to liquidity of money and the desire for excessive consumption. The study highlights the effectiveness of Yakuza 0 as a time capsule for the later generation to learn the Japanese cultural heritage during bubble economy.

‘Cornerstones for Creativity and Success’

2025-12-30T19:32:01+00:00

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are value-based principles that are widely utilised in building more socially and culturally sustainable environments that are experienced as welcoming and fair for all – also in diverse game cultural contexts. In this study, we investigate how different types of game cultural organisations in Finland understand DEI in the context of their own activities, and what kind of guidelines and practices they have for promoting DEI. The results are based on a reflexive content analysis on 18 public DEI documents from 11 Finnish game cultural organisations focusing on digital games and gaming. Based on our analysis, it seems that Finnish game cultural organisations view DEI as a pathway for their continuous success as well as for building better game culture for everyone. The examined organisations were actively expressing their commitment to promoting DEI both by working to prevent discrimination and harassment and by utilising practices to build safer and more inclusive environments. However, it was not always clear if these organisations had set specific goals for their DEI work and if they were following their progress in this area. Importantly, our investigation illustrates that a wide range of different types of organisations can contribute to the cultural ecosystem in which digital games are created, consumed, and utilised in various ways, and that inspecting this variety of organisations operating on different sectors of game culture may reveal more widely shared cultural values and practices within this environment.

DESIGNING WITH AMBIGUITY: Iterating Equity in Game Jam Design

2025-12-30T19:32:10+00:00

This paper examines how inclusive, pluriversal, and transversal design lenses can reimagine game jams with youth, supporting and qualifying them as equitable, transformative, and empowering interventions. Drawing on theoretical and analytical insights from a contemporary research and innovation project that develops and experiments with cultural game jams, we examine how the design and iteration of these as collaborative game-making spaces can foster creativity, equity, and new forms of collective care.

We initially frame the emerging field of game jams and their design, along with framing the three design lenses of inclusive, pluriversal, and transversal design. Through a retrospective analysis of the iterative processes involved in planning, designing, executing and evaluating cultural game jams with youth as participants and partners, we discuss how these lenses might inform more just and participatory design processes and propose relevant design questions. We argue that they offer valuable frameworks for addressing power, fostering care, and enabling young people to imagine and shape their futures. The paper contributes a theoretically grounded and practice-based framework for designing game jams to foster ethical, inclusive, and co-creative participation through the lenses of inclusive, pluriversal, and transversal design approaches.

Heroes, Helpers and Villains: Representations of the Carnation Revolution through Cultural Game Jam Outputs

2025-12-30T19:32:16+00:00

The present article aims to analyse the content of nine game prototypes produced in the Óbidos Cultural Game Jam, organized in the context of EPIC-WE, a European project dedicated to game-making through a cultural lens. The research focus was on its representation of the Carnation Revolution, an historical event that led to the implementation of democracy in Portugal. Games were divided into three categories, based primarily on the protagonist’s role and depiction of revolutionary action. Games under the “hero” category attributed maximum importance to the protagonist as a revolutionary agent, “helpers” focused on small tasks that contributed to the revolution as a whole and “villains” opted for thrusting the player into oppressive roles as a way to critique the dictatorship

Gaming for Social Change: Sharmila and the Representation of Otherness

2025-12-30T19:32:23+00:00

Digital games have evolved beyond entertainment to become tools for social activism, education, and cultural representation. Scholars in game studies have highlighted their unique rhetorical capacity, enabling narratives to shape users' perceptions through digital environments and simulations of real-world challenges. This capacity is central to serious games, which aim to raise awareness about global issues such as humanitarian crises, hunger, and climate change. Despite research on their pedagogical impact, the potential of serious games to represent marginalized themes, especially in global inequalities and humanitarian efforts, remains underexplored. Using thematic analysis grounded in extended gameplay sessions and deductive coding, this research examines Sharmila, a serious game by the World Food Programme (WFP) that highlights food insecurity and the struggles of vulnerable populations. The game immerses players in the realities of hunger, displacement, and survival, offering a form of situated learning that links knowledge acquisition with real-world contexts. Sharmila serves as a case study to explore the depiction of “the other” and the construction of difference, raising critical questions about the representation of marginalized voices and the framing of poverty and crisis narratives in serious games. This research situates Sharmila within broader debates on serious games and cultural representation, highlighting their role in shaping perceptions of social justice and global inequality.

A QUALITATIVE CONTENT ANALYSIS OF AFRICAN VIDEO GAMES DEVELOPED BY STUDENTS

2025-12-30T19:32:29+00:00

It is necessary to move away from non-colonised perspectives in video games. There have been numerous issues with the representation of Africa and the portrayal of Africans in video games. It is necessary to discuss the essential aspects of Africanisation in video games to ensure that the African perspective is represented clearly. By utilising the participatory culture framework, students were grouped together to create video games with African themes. Students developed 17 unique games, all based on African themes. Eight unique characteristics were extracted from the video games. These characteristics include aesthetics, music and dance, mythological creatures, religion, race, play style, landscape, and language. This paper aims to inspire the representation of the rich African heritage in video games of African origin. In this way, we can ensure that the knowledge of indigenous African entities is projected, transmitted, and protected, despite the prevalence of Western approaches worldwide. Therefore, the paper recommends proper representation of African culture in both local and Western games and suggests further research to better understand the African phenomenon.