I've said it in the past, but modern-day video game history has a serious problem – it's too focused on what happened in North America and doesn't offer a balanced view on the global story of gaming.
Given the numerous authors and content creators from the US (and their popularity worldwide), this is somewhat understandable, but a new book project aims to shift the balance slightly and present a broader perspective on the history of interactive entertainment.
It's being spearheaded by Brazilian author and game historian Felipe Pepe, who is perhaps best known for The CRPG Book.
"I’m putting my money where my mouth is and launching a new project — a book focused on game history outside of the usual North American perspectives," says Pepe, before adding:
"The de-centralization / de-colonization of video game history has been debated for at least a decade now in the English-speaking academia, with several works trying to provide a more global perspective — such as Video Games Around the World, Video Games and the Global South, Gaming Globally, Cultural Code, Game History and the Local, among others.
Unfortunately, mainstream conversations remain dominated by the same perspectives and biases, presenting what happened in the US (in an idealized & sanitized form) as the default. This is aggravated by how the many excellent books, articles, podcasts and videos that dive into other realities rarely ever get translated into English and other languages, making them hard to access. Everything outside of the US becomes “local”, even if it’s actually more representative of global gaming."
He's looking to fix this with the aforementioned book, which he hopes will be "accessible and impactful. Not a deep dive, but rather an exciting glimpse at different landscapes and a roadmap for further exploring."
Pepe is open to pitches from prospective contributors and is paying $300 per article, with an expected word count of around 3,000-5,000 words.
Topics such as MUDs in China, Russian browser games, PS2 mod chips, sports games in India and bootleg translations into regional languages are suggested as possible topics, but it seems that Pepe is open to any piece that expands our knowledge of gaming outside of North America – a very noble venture.