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Imagined Commodities: Video Game Localization and Mythologies of

Cultural Difference
Rebecca Carlson and Jonathan Corliss
Games and Culture 2011 6: 61 originally published online 19 October 2010
DOI: 10.1177/1555412010377322

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 Games and Culture
6(1) 61-82
ª The Author(s) 2011
Imagined Commodities: Reprints and permission:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Video Game Localization DOI: 10.1177/1555412010377322
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and Mythologies of
Cultural Difference

Rebecca Carlson1 and Jonathan Corliss1

Abstract
Broadly interested in the agents and institutions that structure social imaginations
and subjectivities by mediating which images are available to what audiences to imagine
through, this paper specifically considers the power at play when intermediaries—in
this case, video game localizers—filter the images and narratives that are sold and
marketed to global consumers, and the way these mediating processes in turn are
both produced by, and productive of, (cultural) imaginings. This paper also discusses
the way that localization practices—while often framed by a discourse that positions
cultural differences as both incommensurable and easily and discretely bounded by the
borders of nation-states—typically involve a nuanced negotiation of contradictions,
dilemmas and interests.

Keywords
video games, localization, imagination, subjectivities, Japan

Great games often exceed local and cultural boundaries; If you’ve got a product you
want to license to overseas territories, we can help make it happen.
Interone, Inc (2009).

1
The University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Rebecca Carlson, The University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Email: rlc47@pitt.edu

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62 Games and Culture 6(1)

Mediated Imaginings
‘‘See, okay, the problem is, I want to be Japanese. That’s my problem.’’ Sophie1 laid
her sunglasses down on the table and smiled, a bit embarrassed; it was clear that our
conversation had been orbiting this point since we started talking about her interest
in Japanese television dramas over an hour ago. Sophie explained to me that she felt
drawn to Japanese dramas, just as she had first been drawn to the anime shows she
saw on Toonami2 when she was in middle school. Now that she was a college
student, her fascination with Japanese media was motivating her to study Japanese.

I guess, when I started watching anime and the dramas in particular, I got really
attached to the culture. I don’t even know what it is about it, there’s something about
the culture that really drew me in and I wanted to get to the point where I could be on
the same, I guess I’ll never be on the same level because I’m a foreigner, but where I
could have a good conversation with a native or even at some point go there and live
and maintain a job and attempt to integrate myself into the culture.

Sophie laughed at herself as she completed this statement, acknowledging the ten-
uous prospect of fully integrating herself into Japanese society. Sophie was partic-
ularly self-conscious of the ways in which her experience with, and her
excitement for Japanese mass culture, had produced in her a mediated imagination
of Japan. She described for me the way the narrative structure of Japanese romance
television dramas—which typically feature a brooding male protagonist who, in the
end, is won over by the female lead—helped to create in her a ‘‘false conception,’’ an
idea that most Japanese men are similar to their television counterparts. Yet, despite
Sophie’s skepticism, and her full awareness that she is more engaged with an ima-
gined, media constructed Japan than an actual place she has yet to encounter, her
desire to become Japanese remains.
As Benedict Anderson argued (1983), national identity is constructed as an ima-
gined belonging to other (mostly distant) people and places and is produced in part
with the help of nationally oriented media objects such as newspapers. Sophie’s
longing suggests that national, even ethnic identity is a modern dilemma staged at
a site of contestation; while embedded in the imagination and produced through
engagement with media as Anderson suggests, identity (both personal and national)
becomes a matter of consumer choice, a bricolage filled, possibly, with tension and
inconsistencies.
Quite obviously, the cultural mythologies we produce as we sift through and
devour global media impact, in turn, the ways we imagine our selves. Arjun Appa-
durai links what he argues is a ‘‘new order of instability in the production of modern
subjectivities’’ (1996, p. 4) directly to (a shift in) the work of the imagination.

The imagination—expressed in dreams, songs, fantasies, myths, and stories—has

always been part of the repertoire of every society, in some culturally organized way.
But there is a peculiar new force to the imagination in social life today. More persons in

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Carlson and Corliss 63

more parts of the world consider a wider set of possible lives than they ever did before.
(Appadurai, 1996, p. 53)

Appadurai cites the increasingly rapid circulation of electronic media and of people
as the major contemporary features that texture the work of the imagination, and he
draws attention to the sites of their contingent intersection: ‘‘as Koreans in Philadel-
phia watch the 1988 Olympics in Seoul through satellite feeds from Korea, and as
Pakistani cabdrivers in Chicago listen to cassettes of sermons recorded in mosques
in Pakistan or Iran . . . moving images meet deterritorialized viewers’’ (Appadurai,
1996, p. 4). Although these examples focus on the meeting of migrating—but cate-
gorically analogous—people and media, audiences that appear as stationary subjects
may be equally transformed by circulating electronic texts;3 a joining of people with
a global media that does not remind them of a ‘‘home,’’ but ignites in them an exci-
tement for places they have yet to go. As these audiences search through and filter
the narratives and images presented to them, they engage with and produce (alter-
nate) identities; as in Sophie’s case, an identity that resonates with difference.4 Sub-
jectivity then may be actively created and performed through an engagement with
circulating—and therefore often not local—people and things.

Channeling
In her discussion of Appadurai’s work on the imagination and the digital portable
‘‘pet’’ tamagotchi (2006), Anne Allison ties contemporary experiences of migration
and media (more broadly figured as interactive technology) to the cultural state of
late capitalism. With increasing mobility, necessary or desired,5 and the blurring
of previously impervious borders (of all kinds), Allison argues that subjectiv-
ities—as they are formed and performed—are themselves reconfigured in ways
directly connected to ‘‘flexible accumulation, fragmented demand, and postindus-
trial capitalism’’ (2006, p. 186). Characteristically then, subjectivities are fashioned
from and through engagement with difference, mobility, and flux.

In our postmodern era of technologized labor and play, people acquire subjectivity not
through seeing or thinking of themselves as whole beings (interpellation through mir-
roring) but through interactive relations (interfaces in chat rooms, Internet, e-mail) that
split and shift. (Allison, 2006, p. 187)

If, as Appadurai argues, our subjectivities are increasingly constructed from—and

through engagement with—materials in global circulation, and as Allison adds,
these materials are often uneven interfaces, then it is important to remember that
spaces such as Internet chat rooms—and other types of objects with which we form
‘‘interactive relations’’—have been produced deliberately and with particular
motives, often profit. Once they have been designed, crafted, packaged, shipped, and
advertized, these objects (media texts, sound bites, and images) go in motion; these

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64 Games and Culture 6(1)

movements are rarely uncontested, rather they are challenged, complicated travels,
during which goods are negotiated, reworked, and revalorized at various stages
along their routes. Indeed, circulation—whether it is of objects, ideas, or people—
is never free-form, neutral, or apolitical. The movement of people and things, and
the hands, perspectives, and laws that motivate and process these migrations, do
much more than facilitate or create interconnections and networks; instead global
movements are active processes that involve the ‘‘recarving of channels and the
remapping of the possibilities of geography’’ (Tsing, 2000, p. 327). Similarly for
Steiner, goods enter and exit ‘‘border zones’’ (2001), moments when global circula-
tions are slowed to a standstill while mediators wrestle with and negotiate the mean-
ing and value that goods will assume when they ‘‘land’’ (or get downloaded or
streamed). These mediations shape not only what goods and images global consu-
mers have access to—as various forces work to determine how easily or along what
routes things can travel—but also in turn, construct the imaginative possibilities
from which people are able to craft understandings of their selves and of the globe.
Video games are especially relevant to the argument of Appadurai and Allison.
Products such as video games (in their range of formations)6 have achieved unpre-
cedented success across international markets—these products represent the social
and technological vanguard of emerging interactive media. Not only do video games
circulate transnationally themselves, modern video games increasingly serve as
interactive platforms that enable a sort of virtual mobility through which gamers
might chat, interact, and play both cooperatively and competitively with people from
other regions of the world.
When video games (distributed through legitimized means) do circulate—cross-
ing borders in search of international profits—they are ‘‘localized’’ or altered for
their international distribution. They are translated, and they are adapted for national
regulatory boards and regional software requirements. Images, animations, and
overall design aesthetics, game mechanics and interface, narrative, and even button
mapping might be modified to accommodate the perceived differences between
regional markets. Notably, localization is predicated on origins and destinations—
specifically, navigating the difficulties of linking two groups of locally situated peo-
ple. Over the years, there have been countless examples of entrepreneurs who profit
from their ability to successfully navigate cross-cultural negotiations. As economies
rely more and more on the rapid transnational circulation of goods, services, and
finances, and on global networks of high-speed digital communications technolo-
gies, they have also come to rely increasingly on the incorporation of cross-
cultural ‘‘expertise’’ in various forms. People such as translators, international mar-
keters, and localizers, then may have a more direct and immediate impact on our
everyday lives than in the past. Most importantly, these people are often in the posi-
tion to mediate aspects of our knowledge about the world. When a marketer says a
game will not sell in the United States, or when a translator changes a joke to make it
more ‘‘culturally appropriate,’’ they become a kind of gatekeeper, shaping and chan-
neling (and sometimes preventing entirely) the transnational circulation of these

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Carlson and Corliss 65

stories and images. Thus, it seems especially important to examine the contexts and
consequences of these decision-making practices.
Pointing out the way Appadurai’s discussion of the imagination remains ‘‘sketchy
on the issues of both power and production,’’ Allison asks ‘‘how precisely is the
imagination produced, by and for whom, in what forms, and with what vested inter-
ests?’’ (2006, p. 180). We are interested in the agents and institutions that structure
our social imaginations—and our subjectivities—by mediating which images are
available to what audiences to imagine through. In this essay, we consider the power
at play when intermediaries—in our case, video game localizers—filter the images
and narratives that are sold and marketed to global consumers, and the way these
mediating processes in turn are produced by, and productive of (cultural) imagin-
ings. Furthermore, while localization practices are often framed by a discourse that
positions cultural differences as both incommensurable and easily and discretely
bounded by the borders of nation-states, the day-to-day work of localizers typically
involves a much more nuanced negotiation of contradictions, dilemmas, and
interests.

Localizing Play
In the video game industry, localization refers primarily to the translation of text and
voice-work within a game, the game’s instruction manual, and any additional packa-
ging. In this usage, a ‘‘localizer’’ is very specifically a translator, editor, or tester
involved in this translation process. When we use the word ‘‘localization,’’ however,
we are referencing the broader sense, which encapsulates any of a wide range of
activities designed to adapt products to the perceived differences between local mar-
kets. In this sense, individuals who do not specifically identify as ‘‘localizers’’ are
responsible for much of the localization process. Many aspects of video game loca-
lization begin well before there are even any assets to translate—deciding, for exam-
ple, where the game will be sold, and what languages it will be translated into. A
game developer might decide not to invest in a Japanese localization, if market
research predicts low enough sales in Japan, and this is a localization decision.
Over the years, games have grown more technologically and aesthetically sophis-
ticated. Contemporary games increasingly use intricate play mechanics or textured
narratives and render complex interactive experiences framed in highly detailed vir-
tual worlds. Over the last decade, the games industry has also become dramatically
more profitable, with the most successful titles consistently generating higher profit
margins than the year’s top-grossing films. Alongside these changes, of course, loca-
lization practices have also evolved. Although stories from decades past describe
overworked programmers with bilingual phrasebooks—spackling together transla-
tions such as ‘‘All your base are belong to us’’ or ‘‘Take off every Zig for great jus-
tice’’7—today localization is increasingly integrated into the production process,
with a larger share of the overall budget. Many developers have taken more direct,
even reflexive, interest in the process (see Heather Chandler’s [2005] The Game

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66 Games and Culture 6(1)

Localization Handbook, for example), not only questioning how to improve game
localization but also pondering the broader implications or consequences of locali-
zation practices. Profit always remains a priority, but some developers, increasingly
invested in interactive narrative as an artistic endeavor, for example, have also begun
to consider how localization practices might affect the integrity of their creative
projects. A number of developers are more interested in translation practices, allo-
cating added resources to professional translation specialists with the understanding
that quality translation extends beyond dictionaries and bilingual ability.
As a visual medium, localization often involves making decisions about images
that may or may not be culturally ‘‘appropriate’’—what symbols might not make
sense in different cultural contexts, what character designs might attract or alienate
different regional audiences.8 Erik Louden, a Localization Engineer for ENLASO
Corporation explains:

In different parts of the world, colors, symbols, wording and shapes can have different
meaning . . . or no meaning at all . . . One project I worked on had a light bulb that
signified an idea in the pop-up help text. However, in the target language a light bulb
signified nothing more than a light bulb. The graphics were replaced with the transla-
tion for the word ‘‘idea.’’ (Louden quoted in Chandler, 2005, p. 86)

This can mean limiting cultural references as much as possible in the production
stages of a game (e.g., stressing the use of generic characters over specific refer-
ences) or altering references to fit new audiences. At the same time, video games are
interactive and localization might even entail adjustments to gameplay mechanics.
As an example, for the U.S. version of the 2006 Square Enix game Dirge of Cer-
berus, the movement speed of the player’s onscreen avatar was 150% faster than
in the Japanese version—industry ‘‘experts’’ hold that U.S. gameplayers prefer
faster paced gameplay, whereas Japanese players are more subject to video game-
induced motion sickness (the in-game ability to execute a ‘‘double jump’’ was also
added). Another important aspect of video game localization is the technical nature
of the video game medium. Video game software must be adapted to different
regional hardware standards. A translator might be responsible for translating text
strings, but a programmer has to make sure the translated strings fit on screen, or that
the appropriate character sets are enabled.
One of the most important aspects of video game localization is the negotiation of
national regulatory boards. Video game ratings boards function much like the
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) does for films released in the
United States. Although submission to the Entertainment Software Rating Board
(ESRB) is strictly voluntary, for example, most U.S. retailers refuse to carry an
unrated video game, which, as Chandler explains, ‘‘can be bad for game sales’’
(2005, p. 29). The ESRB reviews game content and provides both an age rating
(from ‘‘Early Childhood’’ to ‘‘Adults Only’’) as well as more informative ‘‘content
descriptors’’ (e.g., ‘‘cartoon violence,’’ ‘‘crude humor,’’ or ‘‘simulated gambling’’)

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Carlson and Corliss 67

for games released in the United States. Different regions have different regulatory
boards, varying submission procedures, and vastly divergent sensitivities. Games
deemed appropriate for all ages in one region may require heavy censorship in
another or be banned entirely. Successful video game localization, then, includes
understanding and carefully navigating the idiosyncrasies of these regulatory boards.
Although the immersive, interactive nature of the video game medium requires a
different, more intensive process of localization than an average print advertisement
or television commercial, localization across a broad variety of forms share several
basic ideologies and organizing principles. Central to these is the naturalization of a
(particular kind of imagined) ‘‘global world’’ that must be proactively managed by
producers to see their goods ‘‘make it’’ in today’s international marketplace. In
Michael Anobile’s introduction to the second edition of The Localization Industry
Primer (2003), published by the Localization Industry Standards Association
(LISA), he explains:

A company’s products, services, documentation, customer support and maintenance

procedures, marketing, etc. must all reflect the needs of the local market in terms of
culture, language and business requirements. Multiple local market versions have to
be produced simultaneously to stay ahead of the competition and ensure a return on
investment within today’s shrinking product lifecycles. (2003, p. 3)

This conception of the global market place assumes that products must appear as
if they were manufactured domestically, suggesting that consumers only want
goods that feel familiar and ‘‘local.’’ This understanding is facilitated by the fact
that products like software do need to be translated for regional markets, if they
are to be used and understood (of course, linguistic translation for regional
markets is most often a privileging of the dominant or national language). Addi-
tionally, many goods still contend with borders as they are physically transported
across national lines; even Internet-circulated commodities (downloadable games
and websites) must adapt to local languages and, and at the insistence of govern-
ing bodies, submit to local laws (Google China, for example). As a result, nation-
states remain dominant organizing categories and convenient geographies for
localizers to map their ‘‘regional markets,’’ collapsing the textures of linguistic
and cultural diversity into smoother homogenous zones. Video game localization
then often develops a logic rooted in cultural divides bounded by the borders of
nation-states: conservative Germans do not like blood, competitive American
gamers are naturally better at first-person shooters and the isolationist Japanese
do not like anything that is not Japanese.
Implicit in the activities and discourses of localization agents is a structuring
logic that simultaneously naturalizes cultural mythologies and the need for loca-
lizers to navigate those differences. Addressing the role of ‘‘glocalization’’ in
advertisement, Michael Maynard (2003) suggests that it becomes possible to sys-
tematically refashion media to better ‘‘suit’’ the tastes of another culture. In his

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68 Games and Culture 6(1)

cross-cultural comparison of two Gillette magazine advertisements, Maynard

writes:

Each ad reflects the culturally preferred posture a woman would assume in washing.
Also, in the U.S. ad the woman appears to be nude, whereas in the Japanese ad, the
woman is wearing a bathrobe. In these differences, Gillette the global brand, is accom-
modating to the local, and positioning the SensorExcel as compatible with Japanese
sensibilities. (2003, p. 68)

Echoing Maynard, Anoblie describes the kinds of details, or assets, that concern
localizers: ‘‘Product presentation (size and shape, language, colors, graphics, icons,
etc.) and functionality must be adapted to local conventions’’ (2003, p. 3). For video
games, interactivity again complicates the localization process where functionality
is a central concern. Gamers do not simply scan an image or flip through text, they
very clearly use a game. As participatory agents, gameplayers without at least sui-
tably translated manuals can find gameplay difficult to impossible. However,
clear-cut standards and rules for making these kinds of changes (a nude woman in
the shower transformed as a seated women in a bathrobe), become tools for imagin-
ing, then fixing cultural tastes and differences; as a result, localization rhetoric tends
to strategically reify localities, as well as local tastes, humor, and meanings—in
hopes of successfully anticipating the desires of regional audiences and generating
a profit.

Lost in Translation
Cultural differences and divides are often supported, enforced, and elaborated on by
‘‘locals.’’ In an article by Steven Kent entitled ‘‘Video games that Get Lost in Trans-
lation: Why Most U.S. Titles Don’t Fare Well in Japan (and Vice Versa)’’ (2004),
Konami Director/Producer Hideo Kojima suggests, ‘‘Japanese players do not like
being thrown into an arena in which they are given very little instruction’’ (p. 3).
Kent suggests Japanese gamers ‘‘prefer fantasy, strategy, and role-playing games,
while U.S. gamers prefer crime, shooters, and sports;’’ Namco managing director
Keiji Tanaka adds, ‘‘Violent games are not so popular in Japan’’ (p. 2). Kojima’s
quote, referencing the unsuccessful Japanese launch of the Western blockbuster
Grand Theft Auto III (Rockstar Games, Inc., 2001), disregards two important details:
the Japanese version was released with notably poor localization and despite the
industry’s widespread anticipation for the title to flop in Japan, steady long-term
sales ‘‘mostly due to word-of-mouth’’ have in fact established Grand Theft Auto
III’s popularity among Japanese audiences (Carless, 2004). Similarly, the spectacu-
lar and unwavering Japanese success of Capcom’s graphic survival-horror series
Biohazard—from the original, genre-defining 1996 release to the 2005 multiplat-
form ‘‘Game of the Year,’’ through over 10 sequels, remakes, and spin-offs each
refining the disturbing flesh-eating zombie formula and imagery to increasingly

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Carlson and Corliss 69

gory heights—represents only one example of market evidence to call into question
the all-too-common argument that ‘‘Violent games do not sell in Japan.’’ Such mis-
leading generalizations often reveal more about distributors’ motives or preconcep-
tions than the tastes of international game audiences, although this does not limit
their lingering impact on localization practices. An article by Andrew Vestal
(2005) offers some interesting input concerning game difficulty as a localization
issue.
For many years, Japanese games were made explicitly less difficult for U.S.
audiences—or simply not exported as in the case of Final Fantasy V. J. C. Herz writes:

At Nintendo, I’m told that titles arriving from Japan are regularly made slower and eas-
ier for their American release. The theory is that Japanese children are more proficient
at video games and what they consider challenging fun would simply frustrate and
quash American grade-schoolers. (1997, p. 119)

More recently, the reverse is true, with higher difficulty levels accompanying U.S.
releases. Vestal quotes Japanese developer Tomonobu Itagaki’s insights into this:

[The best players come from] North America. The basis of this opinion comes from
Americans’ extremely active attitude towards video games [and] the inherent competi-
tiveness present in their national identity. (Vestal, 2005)

Although both accounts theorize the difference in skill sets between U.S. and Japa-
nese gameplayers, Vestal proposes that the changes in difficulty level do not reflect
differing skill levels between gameplayers at all but differences in markets (2005).
At the time, Japanese laws prohibited video game rental, encouraging instead a
lively used game market where fast turnovers kept gamers happier without dama-
ging a developer’s profits. By purchasing a title at full price and completing it
quickly, players maximize the game’s buyback value, so higher, more time-
consuming difficulty levels are neither popular among gameplayers nor profitable
for developers. However,

American developers live in mortal fear their games will be deemed ‘‘just a rental.’’
Developers strive to make their games ‘‘rental-proof’’ with more hours of gameplay
than can be easily completed in a single rental. The best way to do this is to have tons
of content; the less elegant way is to increase the difficulty and slow the player’s prog-
ress. (Vestal, 2005)

Despite an overarching rhetoric that reifies inherent cross-cultural differences, loca-

lization practices are tied to a variety of forces, including as Vestal illustrates, deftly
calculated marketing strategies. The industry’s ‘‘mantra’’ (Lommel, 2004) that loca-
lizers work to make games appear as if they were made for each local audience,
obfuscates the fact that localization decision-making practices reflect a wide range

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70 Games and Culture 6(1)

of aims and influences and not simply imaginations of discrete regions of marketable
cultural difference.

Managing Uncertainty
It is important to point out that we do not suggest that ‘‘markets’’ are not themselves
cultural; as Theodore Bestor explains in his discussion of commodity chains, trans-
national networks as well as ‘‘the markets they flow through—are inherently cultural
in their processes and effects’’ (2001, p. 77). In this respect, the market is a social
institution that not only supplies perceived demand but also acts to produce and con-
struct consumer needs and desires (2001, p. 85).
Commodity chains then, and the ‘‘markets they flow through’’ are not disembo-
died entities of economic processes; rather they are both distinctly tied to and
embedded within social institutions and everyday interactions. What we do hope
to suggest, however, is that the cultural mythologies produced and used by localizers
are often dislodged from social realities; as Vestal’s example of video game sales
and rentals in Japan illustrates, it is the imagination of ‘‘natural’’ cultural differences
made manageable by cultural ‘‘do’s and don’ts’’ checklists, that become discursive
scapegoats for other, more nuanced factors. Localizers themselves are often very
aware that translation is necessary, not to account for distinct cultural differences,
but to manage contemporary political climates. The cultural checklists that do
appear may be, in some ways, implemented and circulated in an attempt to manage
uncertainty.
As the above example illustrates, the assumption that market preferences and
consumer desires are determined above all by national or cultural difference (spe-
cifically a desire for goods that appear to be ‘‘made-for-me’’ local) is often posi-
tioned in localization discourse as the primary motivation for localization.
However, as Marianne Lien demonstrates in her research of marketers in Norway
(1997), the discourse used by marketers to talk about what they do often varies a
great deal from their day-to-day experiences and decision-making practices. As
Lien discusses, ‘‘talk’’ surrounding the practices she observed tended to frame
marketing as warlike, a battlefield where consumers and their purchasing power
were fought for, and over. However, the ways marketers made decisions in the
everyday practice of selling goods was quite different, characterized instead by
continual inconsistencies and uncertainties. We are similarly interested in the
ways that video game localizers may frame what they do, for themselves and for
others, along divides of presumed ‘‘natural’’ cultural differences, while the prac-
tice of localizing a video game is in fact a much more nuanced act, which negoti-
ates, rather than always takes as given, cultural, linguistic, or national difference.
Additionally, localization practices are shaped by, and react to, a variety of (at
times unacknowledged) forces and pressures that frequently have little to do with
cultural divides.

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Carlson and Corliss 71

Negotiating Nations
In his article ‘‘Rights of Passage: On the Liminal Identity of Art in the Border Zone’’
(2001), Steiner writes about the way definitions of fine art are contested when
objects travel across national borders. Steiner argues that, as things (including works
of art) pass through ‘‘border zones,’’ their mobility, and their momentary ‘‘in-
between’’ status, provoke various forms of reclassification or evaluation. He writes
of: ‘‘the emergence of definitions of value out of the very liminality engendered by
transit and passage across formal boundaries’’ (Steiner, 2001, p. 212). For many
game developers, the early stages of localization entail attempts to craft games, stor-
ies, and characters that transcend territorial boundaries to court a perceived ‘‘global’’
audience. Later stages—translation, local, and regional adaptation, marketing,
encounters with national regulatory boards, for example—each explicitly entail the
negotiation and transformation of meanings and values. Steiner’s image of rapidly
circulating material culture objects slowed for a moment as they shift between cul-
tural systems, between regimes of value or frameworks of meaning—temporarily
held still for the necessary evaluations, negotiations, and reclassifications—is help-
ful for thinking about video game localization. In addition, Steiner emphasizes the
importance of not overlooking the significant political and economic implications
of these decision-making practices. Consider the argument that some software loca-
lizers have made that Castilian functions as a universal, neutral Spanish. Typically,
however, developers release two Spanish-language versions of a title, one for Spain
and one for Spanish-speaking Latin American markets. But why not release a Mex-
ican Spanish version, or accommodate any number of the widely varied Latin Amer-
ican Spanish speaking communities, or even dialects within Spain itself? Of course,
there are occasions when developers determine that the extra expense for even two
versions is unwarranted and release a single Spanish-language version across all
regions. Sometimes this makes practical sense—for example, a game that uses so
little language (‘‘START’’ and ‘‘QUIT’’) that the versions would be identical. Some-
times it is a budgetary decision. But even preliminary localization decisions such as
which languages to release in (and which to not) are obviously neither politically nor
economically neutral.
When video games are submitted to national regulatory boards, they enter a ‘‘bor-
der zone’’ where their meanings are explicitly recategorized and redefined. Yet
often, localization discourse makes the tenuous leap in logic from ratings board reg-
ulations to cultural realities.

[W]e sometimes need to make changes to account for cultural differences. We all know
about removing blood and gratuitous violence from games for the German market.
(Pitts quoted in Chandler, 2005, p. 42)

Concerning cultural differences, we regularly remove blood and violence from the Ger-
man versions of our titles. (Clune quoted in Chandler, 2005, p. 129)

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72 Games and Culture 6(1)

Both Pitts and Clune are of course referencing the well-documented stringency of
Germany’s mandatory ratings system, not German ‘‘cultural differences.’’ But per-
haps in hopes of anticipating the likelihood of a game’s success in different regional
markets, or in an attempt to proactively manage the hurdles put forward by regula-
tory boards, and to consistently streamline and standardize localization tasks, culture
and national politics are reified and then neatly collapsed into each other. In any
case, games must remain flexible, if they are to traverse the multiple, subjective, and
divergent censorships of ratings boards.10
For Kearney, ‘‘globalization implies the decay of [center-periphery] distinc-
tions,’’ and these processes make it inherently more difficult to think in terms of
borders or boundaries (1995, pp. 548–550). Instead, we would suggest that, as likely
as both transnational processes and processes of globalization are to disrupt center–
periphery distinctions, national borders, or similar instantiations of territorially
inscribed power, it is essential to acknowledge that they are equally likely to partic-
ipate in the maintenance or reproduction of those relationships in any given context.
Appadurai evokes the image of nation-states ‘‘struggling to retain control’’ against
transformations brought about by the increasingly rapid transnational circulation
of electronic media (1996, p. 189). At the very least, the fact that global and transna-
tional phenomena have the potential to ‘‘conflict with the jurisdiction and power of
states’’ (Kearney, 1995, p. 549) might be enough of a provocation for states to insti-
tute new or more rigorous mechanisms of ‘‘border patrol’’—even if only a kind of
backlash, these mechanisms are inextricably linked with transnational and globaliz-
ing processes.
What we find interesting is the way this ‘‘border patrol’’ becomes integrated into the
day-to-day practices of localizers. Through the enacted politics, power, and censorship
of ratings boards, nation-states act to reterritorialize games for the people, places, and
cultures they contend to circumscribe. Developers and localization vendors then, enact-
ing decision-making practices enforced by these forms of censorship and mediation,
might, as Pitts and Clune do, equate politics of nationalism with culture; in turn, they
reproduce this discourse through the production and distribution of localized (modified
and censored) games.

Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
As authors writing about globalization have reminded us (see e.g., Barrett, 2002),
whatever processes may fall under the umbrella of ‘‘globalization,’’ they seem to
simultaneously move in directions of both cultural differentiation and convergence.
This is helpful for thinking about the way video game localizers often seem to be mov-
ing in two different directions when preparing software for different regional markets.
Consider for example the way in which ‘‘foreignizing’’ and ‘‘domesticating’’ has been
used to describe translation techniques. Foreignizing translations attempt to retain the
cultural and historical provenance of the source text while domesticating translations
work toward crafting a translated text that appears as if it is in fact an original target

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Carlson and Corliss 73

language text. A domesticating translation might replace details that are deemed too
culturally specific to the source language with parallel materials more familiar to the
target language reader—substituting slot machines for pachinko and dollars for yen as
a text moves from Japanese to English, for example. A foreignizing translation would,
of course, retain the pachinko and yen. Either technique entails compromise. Foreign-
izing translations may sacrifice much of the style, rhythm, and poetics of the source
material and risk exoticizing and thereby drawing disproportionate attention to what
may have been intended as mundane, routine, or otherwise innocuous details. For-
eignizing translations are often more didactic and less accessible, further distancing
the target language reader’s experience from the way a ‘‘native’’ reader would likely
experience the text in its original source language. However, domesticating transla-
tions may sacrifice technical and ‘‘literal’’ aspects of the source material, or even the
work’s overall atmosphere, similar to what happens when a film endeavors to ‘‘mod-
ernize’’ Shakespeare.
Of course, translators negotiate both foreignizing and domesticating decisions
throughout the course of any project. As discussed earlier, localizers often insist that
their work is fundamentally a domesticating endeavor:

The brief of the localiser is to produce a version that will allow the players to experi-
ence the game as if it were originally developed in their own language and to provide
enjoyment equivalent to that felt by the players of the original version. (Mangiron &
O’Hagan, 2006, p. 15)

Despite the fact that this sentiment has become something of a mantra of the game
localization industry, the reality is that localization is not so one-sided. While many
goods that circulate globally are not always identified as ‘‘foreign’’ or directly con-
nected, in the minds of consumers, to possibly distant sites of production, some prod-
ucts develop ‘‘cultural odor’’ –the association of (stereotypical) images or ideas of a
culture with a product when it is consumed (Iwabuchi, 2004, p. 57). Iwabuchi asks,
why is it that a commodity like the Sony Walkman is considered ‘‘culturally odorless’’
when a video game like Pokémon –and all its associated media –is consumed in part
precisely because it is perceived to be Japanese? When the international appeal of a
video game, a video game franchise, or even the success of a particular developer,
is linked with perceptions of the product’s foreignness, as is increasingly often the
case, localization can no longer be oversimplified as a purely domesticating endeavor.
American consumers might be enchanted by the perceived ‘‘Japanese-ness’’ of a
game’s animation, character design, or storytelling, but simultaneously affronted
by the hypersexualization of the game’s adolescent protagonist. Describing a compa-
rable example of the translation of American science fiction novels into French during
the 1950s, Yves Gambier explains that French translators ‘‘considered that it was their
task to import an exotic genre’’ and therefore explicitly ‘‘retained traces of foreign-
ness;’’ ‘‘The translators were overtly rendering American science fiction, and they
wanted this to be as patent as possible’’ (Gambier, 1995, p. 221). In contrast:

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74 Games and Culture 6(1)

In the process of localization we have seen repeated over and over again with Japanese
cultural goods, American marketers were keen to neutralize the overt signs that Poke´-
mon came from Japan. (Allison, 2006, p. 245)

However, as Anne Allison later demonstrates, American localizers’ tendencies

toward cultural swapping—typified with Pokémon by the blotting out of rice balls
and the rotoscoping in of doughnut replacements (2006, p. 246)—eased with the rise
in global popularity of Japanese mass culture goods. When markers of ‘‘foreign-
ness’’ underlie or augment a global commodity’s international appeal, localization
demands skillful maneuvering between fashion and function.
Identifying the way globalizing processes are accompanied simultaneously by
both cultural convergence and differentiation can contribute to an understanding
of video game localization in another way as well. Chandler describes a phase of
video game localization that she refers to as ‘‘internationalization.’’ During interna-
tionalization, the emphasis is on developing assets that are both flexible and orga-
nized. As an example, consider text files that will ultimately be displayed to the
end user in the form of on-screen instructions. Here, internationalization phase flex-
ibility means that, even if the initial files are in English, the programmers will enable
a wide range of character sets in their programming code so that, when the time
comes, it is as simple as possible to substitute the English language files with trans-
lated files that might include alternate character sets (non-Roman alphabet scripts).
Making sure that these text files are well organized and easily accessible is obvi-
ously equally essential to making this transition as smooth as possible. In addition,
beyond these more technically oriented activities, during the ‘‘internationalization’’
phase of development, writers and artists might be encouraged to generate materials
with the widest possible appeal and to avoid ‘‘culturally specific references such as
the name of a popular movie star or well-known TV show’’ (Chandler, 2005, p. 11).
These considerations are not limited to language-specific assets such as text or voice
work. Perhaps, the more interesting decisions are made when it comes to storytell-
ing, visual assets, or even gameplay mechanics. Creating flexible assets often means
assets that will not alienate potential international audiences. Describing her work on
Ghost Recon 2, for example, Chandler, at the time one of the game’s producers,
explained that her development team had worked to avoid problematic political
issues by shaping storylines around personalities rather than regions (one developed
antagonist instead of a homogenous ‘‘bad country;’’ Chandler, July 6, 2005, personal
communication). (The game was ultimately banned in South Korea anyway.)
The Japanese word mukokuseki translates most literally to ‘‘statelessness’’ and is
often used today to reference a particular aesthetic sensibility. With an eye toward
the international marketplace, Japanese anime and video game artists often privilege
mukokuseki character design, generating characters with ambiguous (flexible) phe-
notypes and national origins (characters with blue hair are one recurring convention
of mukokuseki character design in Japanese mass culture media). Iwabuchi (2002)
emphasizes the relationship between mukokuseki design and the recent global appeal

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Carlson and Corliss 75

of made-in-Japan mass culture media; however, mukokuseki and internationalization

(as a phase of software localization) share the same basic principles—designing
flexible or ambiguous assets (whether they are characters, stories, images, or even
gameplay mechanics) to appeal to the broadest possible audience. In these ways,
localizers must simultaneously manage both converging and differentiating tenden-
cies; using strategies that are themselves flexible, localizers adjust, or merely
reframe, their localizations as more foreign or domestic depending on the situation.
However, localizers and localization vendors—selling themselves as experts at navi-
gating the unsteady and uncertain waters of international markets—play a role in
producing these very contexts.

Protecting Sensibilities, Producing Expertise

Just as national regulatory boards have an interest in protecting national borders and
preserving ‘‘appropriate’’ national morals and values, game distributors and publish-
ers occasionally act as cultural brokers, enacting and projecting perceptions about
local audiences and communities. When Japanese game developer Hideo Kojima
suggests that Japanese gamers do not like play environments where they ‘‘are given
very little instruction’’ (Kent, 2004, p. 3), he contributes to the cultural material that
localizers draw from when they modify games. This type of sweeping statement is
often taken at face value, as it echoes thinking about divisions between nationally
circumscribed audiences that already circulates in popular imaginaries. (Localizers,
of course, do not have to produce cultural checklists entirely on their own, they are
provided for them in part from stereotypes that appear in popular media, video
games included.) In his analysis of the cultural mythologies held by American fish-
ermen about Japan, Bestor points out that their narratives or cultural imaginings are
workable only because ‘‘contemporary North American life already provide[s] the
cultural material out of which fishers can construct their own Japan’’ (Bestor,
2001, p. 90). But as Kojima and Namco managing director Keiji Tanaka demonstrate
with their statements, cultural mythologies are also often produced and traded by
regional game makers and distributors themselves, when, for example, they declare
their own culture’s originality or uniqueness. Although these statements may origi-
nate from concerns or observations tied to trends in profit making, cultural charac-
teristics alone are often presented as root causes; in perhaps a rather self-fulfilling
process, games are likely to do poorly in markets where regional distributors are
already convinced that they would not suit or appeal to local tastes and interests.
(As discussed above, GTA III’s lack of success in Japan is blamed entirely on cul-
tural divides rather than on a lack of a coordinated marketing campaign or quality
localization.)
Often, localizers have to make changes as a result of pressures or suggestions
from, for example, marketing groups and distributors in the target country. Describ-
ing changes made to the Ratchet and Clank series when localized for Japan, Rop-
pyaku Tsurumi explains ‘‘Unlike Japanese designers, [American] level designers

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76 Games and Culture 6(1)

seem to want to make levels with toned-down color schemes, but in Japan we get
requests from various offices asking us to please make the background more color-
ful’’ (quoted in Isbister, 2006, p. 87). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Nintendo of
America was well known for its intensive censorship policies; they regularly heavily
localized (remade) games, particularly those from Nintendo Japan. Depictions of
Christian crosses in Japanese games were consistently altered for U.S. release and
representations of violence and nudity, or sexuality deemed ‘‘excessive,’’ were also
toned down (nude characters clothed and blood turned to sweat). Nintendo of Amer-
ica’s guidelines for video game content describes their self-assigned role as cultural
mediator:

Nintendo is concerned that our products do not contain material that society as a whole
deems unacceptable . . . . Although we realize that definitions of social, cultural and
political views are highly subjective, we will continue to provide consumers with enter-
tainment that reflects the acceptable norms of society. (http://www.filibustercartoon-
s.com/Nintendo.php)

Localizers then, must often contend with the dictates of the distributors in the
region they are localizing for; distributors who for one reason or another, have
a stake in defining local tastes, contributing to national sentiments, or protecting
the sensibilities of local citizens. The localization of Shiny Entertainment’s
science-fiction platformer Wild 9 (1998) for release in Japan supplies a particu-
larly rich example. Stuart Roch, at the time Executive Producer at Shiny Enter-
tainment, writes that Wild 9 ‘‘inherently has a violent game mechanic stressing
the use of [the main character’s] weapon to torture his enemies’’ (Roch, 2000).
The original back cover describes Wild 9’s unique gameplay, its selling point:
‘‘Forget simple jumping and running. Wild 9 is the first game ever to let you tor-
ture your enemies! Use the Mangler or the Decapitator to finish them off.’’ As
part of Wild 9’s localization for the Japanese market, the description on the back
of the box was rewritten: ‘‘While solving the puzzle elements at each phase, find
your group members in the first half who have been captured by your enemies. In
the second half, use their special abilities and work together with them to
escape!!’’ The sound effects were also re-recorded to help soften the gameplay:
the blood curdling screams of tortured enemies were substituted by overall shorter
and more comical sounds. Roch explained that this allowed them ‘‘to create a dif-
ferent atmosphere for the game worlds’’ (2000). Transformed, Wild 9 became
Wildroid 9, screams became comic sound effects, and the main character Wex
became Vex—changes implemented to reframe and soften the torture so impor-
tant, so ‘‘inherent’’ in the Western version.
Roch lectured on his experience localizing Wild 9 for Japan at the Game Devel-
oper’s Conference in 2000, explaining that during localization they had to redesign
the game’s characters in what he described as the more Japanese-friendly anime
style.

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Carlson and Corliss 77

Though the visual differences between the characters are obvious, it is difficult to come
up with a standard style guide as to why Vex is more appealing to Japanese gamers than
Wex. The Japanese gamer’s attraction to the anime style character is as much a cultural
and historically conditioned affinity than anything else. (Roch, 2000)

Roch’s understanding of these ‘‘cultural affinities’’ emerges largely from the pro-
ducer at Sony responsible for distributing Wild 9 in Japan; in fact, Roch explains that
with the localization, Sony’s Japanese producer ‘‘pushed hard for the softer anime
style versions of our characters to soften the gameplay a bit’’ (2000). Wildroid 9’s
resulting character design, renamed Vex, represents the Shiny team’s perception
of a Japanese-friendly character localization. ‘‘When you compare the two charac-
ters you will notice that by nature the anime style Vex does not have the kind or
darkness and hardness that the Wex character has’’ (Roch, 2000). What is interesting
is the way the original Wex sketch features a range of design sensibilities cultivated
by contemporary Japanese animation. Roch explains that, in adapting the character
design ‘‘we were fortunate . . . having our designer Tom Tanaka on staff who
already had a solid sense of anime character design’’ (2000), though Roch does not
mention that Tanaka’s background may have influenced the game’s original charac-
ter animations and overall design aesthetic.
The recursive maintenance of local identity becomes a vital investment for
localization vendors, as the existence of local markets undergirds their currency
as specialists; in other words, in the case of localization ‘‘experts,’’ livelihood is
at stake. From his work on Trinidadian advertising agencies, Daniel Miller pro-
vides a comparable example that helps to illustrate some of the ways in which loca-
lizers may have a vested interest in maintaining notions of discrete categories of
inherent cross-cultural difference (1995). While local advertising agencies only
profit slightly from placing international advertisements in local media, if ‘‘local
agencies can persuade the transnationals that a product will not sell in Trinidad
unless there is local advertising then the agency becomes responsible for actually
creating adverts, which means a vastly larger budget . . . ’’ (1995, p. 9). Miller
explains that local advertising ‘‘agencies happily ignore evidence that the more
glamorous international adverts might be more effective in actually selling goods’’
(p. 9). In this way:

[I]t is advertising including transnational agencies which have become the major inves-
tors in preserving and promoting images of local specificity, retaining if not creating
the idea that Trinidad is different, and inculcating this belief within the population at
large. (Miller, 1995, p. 9)

In an article titled ‘‘Lost in Translation—Japanese and American Gaming’s Culture

Clash’’ (2004), Simon Carless interviews John Ricciardi, at the time an editor with
the Tokyo-based localization vendor Interone, Inc. Daniel Miller explains that local
advertisements may not be as effective as ‘‘glamourous international adverts’’ and

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78 Games and Culture 6(1)

that it is in fact advertisers who are particularly invested in the preservation of local
specificity. On a startlingly reflexive note, Ricciardi mentions:

Sadly, poor translation and voice acting don’t seem to affect game sales as much as I
wish they would. I can’t stand playing games that are littered with typos or nonsensical
English, and for the most part, the quality of voice acting in video games is just terrible.
I’d like to think that a good translation affects sales in a positive way, but unfortunately
I don’t have any evidence of this. (quoted in Carless, 2004)

Mediating Circulations
Appadurai has written that the transnational circulation of both people and electronic
media shapes the way we imagine our social selves by providing a wider range of
source materials—images, encounters, and experiences—to imagine with (1996,
p. 53). Most recently authors like Tsing (2005), Eriksen (2003), and Barrett
(2002) have argued that power is an essential feature of circulation, that global flows
encounter friction, that they are facilitated, channeled, and restricted. If media interac-
tions provide people with the raw materials to craft particular understandings of the
globe and of their place within it, then we argue that localization practices—as they
mediate the transnational circulation of video games and filter the availability of par-
ticular images among particular audiences—are an important example of the kinds of
structuring mechanisms that shape our social imaginations, our perceptions of cultural
difference, and our imaginations of the other.
Yves Gambier, probing the relationship between translation practices and the
cross-cultural circulation of values and worldviews, argues that translators ‘‘take
part in the creation of values and the circulation of certain aesthetic and intellectual
options’’ (1995, p. 223). Localizers, then, are ‘‘fully implicated’’ agents in the
translation process (Salama-Carr, 1995, p. 101). Through the practices of video
game localization, localizers operationalize particular understandings of globali-
zation, culture and cultural difference, and what it means to be ‘‘global’’ or
‘‘local.’’ As specific localization practices govern the transnational movement of
video games, localizers often rely on essentialized (stereotyped) notions of ‘‘cul-
ture’’ and inherent cultural differences in their decision-making practices (Locali-
zation Industry Standards Association [LISA], 2009). Yet, while localization
rhetoric is implicitly tied to the belief that local audiences desire local goods and that
cultural differences fall neatly into circumscribed categories, the processes at work
in the day-to-day practice of localization are infinitely more textured. Localizers, as
Mazzarella argues of advertisers in India (2003), form symbiotic relationships with
the businesses that employ them, and are tasked with appeasing and appealing to
corporate representatives’ perceptions of markets and cultures, while simultane-
ously producing and protecting the expertise that makes them valuable middlemen.
In their negotiations with executives—promising that they have their fingers on the

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Carlson and Corliss 79

pulse of the regional markets they localize for—and national regulatory boards,
localizers often move far afield from the audiences they stand to represent.
If video game localization works—through self-conscious channeling—to med-
iate the transnational circulation of images, stories, and games, then at the same
time localization mediates the images consumers use in the imagination of the pos-
sibilities of social life. What then are the consequences of this self-conscious
reworking? What does it mean, for example, to read Japanese-ness—or to identify
with a cultural other as Sophie does—in a media text that has been consciously mod-
ified and adapted to suit different geographically situated audiences?9 And what, in
turn, are the implications for subjectivities that are fashioned from the narratives and
images of these mediated texts? Understanding the complexities at work in the busi-
ness of localizing video games—to trace the ways media, information, and even peo-
ple are filtered and channeled as they move across borders and between zones—is
especially valuable to the study of our increasingly interconnected social lives, to
recognize the forces that shape how we are able to, in turn, experience and imagine
those interconnections.

Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Anne Allison and Mia Consalvo for their comments
on drafts of this article and Nicole Constable and Gabriella Lukacs for their contin-
ued support.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this
article.

Notes
1. A pseudonym.
2. Toonami was a Cartoon Network block of animated shows that typically featured Japanese
anime (e.g., Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon). The segment ran from 1997 to 2008. Many of
the college students we spoke with regarding their interest in Japanese mass culture credit
Toonami with first introducing them to Japanese anime. This research was conducted with
the approval of the Institutional Review Board of the University of Pittsburgh.
3. And vice versa.
4. As Koichi Iwabuchi explains (2004, p. 57), a commodity’s ‘‘cultural odor’’ is the degree to
which it is recognized as foreign, or connected to it’s national site of production in the minds
of consumers. The appearance of cultural difference itself may often draw audiences to
particular media forms, but there may also be cross-cultural similarities that resonate with

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80 Games and Culture 6(1)

viewers. As Sophie described: ‘‘I have this false perception—I know its false—because I see
English shows doing the same thing, but I don’t see it, because its my culture.’’
5. Again, as Appadurai argues, mobility can be desired (as a possibility) in part because
mass media expose a growing number of people to ‘‘a rich, ever-changing store of pos-
sible lives’’ (1996, p. 53).
6. Video games, also sometimes called computer games, are a broad category of ‘‘interac-
tive’’ media. Products may range from virtual pet simulators like tamagotchi, hand-held
consoles such as the popular Nintendo DS, console games for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and
the Sony PlayStation, Internet flash or web-based games, online MMORPGs such as
World of Warcraft, or PC-based games (categories between which there is considerable
overlap). The question over what makes a game a ‘‘game’’ is currently under debate
within the video game industry (see Carlson, 2009 and Corliss, 2010, for a brief discus-
sion of this debate). For the purpose of this article, we are primarily concerned with the
localization of console-based video games.
7. These are memorable translations, which have even garnered something of a cult status
today (both examples are from Toaplan’s Zero Wing [1989] and survive in various forms
of nostalgia merchandise).
8. In one memorable example, the box art for the Ratchet and Clank (Insomniac Games)
series of games was drastically remade for its release in Japan: the original computer-
generated image of the main characters was redrawn in a (somewhat cliché) anime style
with a brighter color scheme and Ratchet sprouted considerably larger, bushy eyebrows.
9. Of course, many media texts do circulate with little or no direct localization and it is of
course possible to watch and download (often illegally) unedited or untranslated interna-
tional material online (we would suggest though that even these media are in some way
mediated, or pass through mediating border zones). However, we are interested here in
the sale of commodities—through more official channels—that have been consciously
adapted for sale in regional markets, to draw attention to the work of agents who directly
refashion goods for global consumption.
10. Often, despite careful advance attention to ratings board requirements, video games—as
globally circulating commodities—can be perceived as threatening to the authority of the
nation-state. For example, the release of Ghost Recon 2 (2004)—a squad-based tactical
shooter that follows a team of elite American soldiers, the ‘‘Ghosts,’’ to eruptive and
political hotspots around the world—was banned in South Korea. Citing a plotline that
goes ‘‘way too far,’’ South Korea’s Media Rating Board has rejected approval of Ubi-
soft’s Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon 2, according to American military newspaper Stars and
Stripes. This (obviously) forced the game’s Korean publisher to abandon its plans for a
localization of the squad-based shooter. (Thorsen & Surette, 2004)

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Bios
Rebecca Carlson is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh,
received an MFA in Film and Media Arts and an MA in Anthropology from Temple
University. Her area of research is foreign labor in the Japanese video game industry.
Jonathan Corliss is currently a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of
Pittsburgh studying global media trade and video games.

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