Aditya Deshbandhu

Bio: Aditya Deshbandhu is an academic researcher from University of Hyderabad. The author has contributed to research in topics: Educational technology & Context (archaeology). The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 7 publications receiving 20 citations.

Gaming Culture (s) in India: Digital Play in Everyday Life

Abstract: This volume critically analyzes the multiple lives of the "gamer" in India. It explores the "everyday" of the gaming life from the player’s perspective, not just to understand how the games are consumed but also to analyze how the gamer influences the products’ many (virtual) lives. Using an intensive ethnographic approach and in-depth interviews, this volume situates the practice of gaming under a broader umbrella of digital leisure activities and foregrounds the proliferation of gaming as a new media form and cultural artifact; critically questions the term gamer and the many debates surrounding the gamer tag to expand on how the gaming identity is constructed and expressed; details participants’ gaming habits, practices and contexts from a cultural perspective and analyzes the participants’ responses to emerging industry trends, reflections on playing practices and their relationships to friends, communities and networks in gaming spaces; and examines the offline and online spaces of gaming as sites of contestation between developers of games and the players. A holistic study covering one of the largest video game bases in the world, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, media and communication studies and science and technology studies, as well as be of great appeal to the general reader.

Player Perspectives: What It Means to Be a Gamer

Abstract: The term gamer has been applied in various, often simplistic ways to anyone who plays video games as a preferred leisure activity. Being heavily value-laden both socially and culturally, the term has spawned fiery debates on a variety of issues ranging from perpetuation of stereotypes to gender inequality. This paper seeks to understand the gamer tag by charting and critically analysing the gaming journeys of three video game players in an everyday context.The paper uses an ethnographic approach, based on in-depth interviews with and observation of the gaming activity of three individuals over a year. Drawing from Nick Couldry’s Media as Practice approach the gaming practices of the players were examined in relation to how they themselves reflect upon their experience and its various components, and the ways in which they construct and express their gamer/gaming identity. The emergent themes from the analysis have been used to build a tentative framework that could enable a more holistic understanding of the gamer within the gaming world and more generally in popular culture.

Anxious postcolonial masculinity in online video games: race, gender and colonialism in Indian digital spaces

Abstract: This article examines representative games from Zapak.com: India’s most-popular gaming website (highest number of daily visitors) to conceptualize the relationship between masculinity and coloniali...

Hybrid habitats: Remediating leisure, space and youth through Pokémon Go in India

Abstract: Abstract This paper is set within the context of a rapidly urbanizing India with shrinking avenues of physical play and social engagement. The loss of traditional play spaces has redefined leisure activities for youth beyond offline sites into online spaces. These newer leisure engagements including gaming, binge-watching and social media interactions are predominantly virtual and sedentary. This shift, and the restrictions in their physical movements, reduce youth interactions with their social and material environments. Operationalizing Soja’s “Thirdspace,” this paper argues that Pokémon Go generates hybrid habitats at the confluence of leisure, youth, and digital gaming. Through qualitative interviews and co-playing sessions, this study draws from an engagement experience pool spanning 400 h of gameplay with five respondents in the Indian context. It examines how the everyday leisure activities of youth in augmented environments can lead to new spatio-cultural meanings, redefine immediate social environments, and create dynamic possibilities for youth development.

Postcolonial pandemic publics: examining social media health promotion in India during the COVID-19 crisis.

Abstract: Affordances offered by new media platforms are perceived as revolutionary instruments for removing the inequities of access to health promotion and communication. However, the production and dissemination of health promotional material on digital platforms does not necessarily translate into uniform access across diverse demographics. This article addresses the lacuna when it comes to analyzing Health Promotion initiatives in India, with a specific focus on the governmental publicity carried out on social media during the four phases of COVID-19 national lockdown between 24 March and 31 May 2020. Our intervention examines how governmental social media health promotion in India played a key role in shaping the 'outbreak narrative' during the lockdown across different levels of social and economic privilege. Through a combination of quantitative data analysis and qualitative interview methods, this article analyzes the circulation and impact of official publicity in online and offline spaces, during the COVID-19 lockdown in India. Resultant findings allow for a comprehensive assessment of whether such publicity contributed to democratized citizen science discourses: enabling social protection measures for vulnerable majorities or potentially reified the existing privileges of the economically and socially affluent minority. We find that health promotion campaigns during a pandemic must focus on reaching the widest possible audience in the most efficient manner. Specifically, in the Indian context, health promotion through mass-media like Television and Radio, and participatory media platforms needed to be implemented in tandem with new media platforms, to achieve required engagement with vulnerable communities on key health issues.

Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming

Abstract: Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer GamingT. L. TaylorCambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Appendix, notes, bibliography, index. 304 pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780262017374In Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming, author T. L. Taylor examines the ups and downs of a slowly emerging industry, e-sports (electronic sports). The e-sports industry aims to turn real-time video game competition into the next major professional sport-complete with franchises, broadcast tournaments, superstar players, and mogul team and league managers. Those who would make e-sports a success point to South Korea, the only country so far in which the industry has taken hold. Taylor tells us that tournaments like the World Cyber Games draw sponsors like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Samsung and that Korean Telecom companies, and even the Korean Navy have-or sponsor-teams. Outside of the promised land of South Korea, however, e-sports have struggled and exist as a generally small, niche industry.Taylor's book does an excellent job of examining e-sports through numerous lenses. Providing historical context, she takes us back to the roots of e-sports, delving into the early days of informal, head-to-head video game competitions around the first computer game, Space War! (1962) and the inclusion of highscore record keeping on arcade machines to arcade-based tournaments (still happening today on the old machines like Pac Man and Donkey Kong and chronicled in the 2007 documentary King of Kong) and the video game-themed Starcade (1982- 1984) television show. She then moves to the emergence of the on-line networked play of Id Software's Doom (1993) and Quake (1996) through today's current live and networked tournaments of firstperson shooters and other video game competitions. Yet Raising the Stakes is not just a historical effort. With her first book, Play between Worlds: Exploring On-Line Game Culture, Taylor established herself as a solid analyst of games as media and community.And Taylor brings those skills to bare on gaming as a sport. For example, in her second chapter, titled "Computer Games a Professional Sport," Taylor guides us through an in-depth, well-reasoned, and documented analysis. She cites the literature on the debates around computer games as play. She examines the modification of rules, and occasionally of systems, of the games themselves for tournament play, judging, and broadcast. She compares the requirements and practices of professional sports and professional athletes (mental and physical training, hours and routines of practice, preferences for specific brands and makes of equipment or insistence on the use of personal equipment) in other sports to those of professional gamers. …

Masculinities, Violence, and Culture

Abstract: Masculinity, War and ViolenceMurder and MasculinityThe Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and CultureThe Dynamics of Masculinity in Contemporary Spanish CultureRape on Prime TimeTransforming MasculinitiesDoing Justice, Doing GenderCrime, Criminal Justice and MasculinitiesTurn This World Inside OutCultures of MasculinityMen, Masculinities and ViolenceMasculinities, Violence and CultureThe Tough StandardCleansing Honor with BloodTransfigurationsCaptain America, Masculinity, and ViolenceMasculinities and CultureMasculinities and ViolenceMen, Masculinities and Intimate Partner ViolenceNine LivesViolent MasculinitiesMasculinities, Gender Relations, and SportEducation and MasculinitiesViolence and NonviolenceGender, Crime and VictimisationYouth Gangs and Street ChildrenMale Roles, Masculinities and ViolenceDismantling Rape CultureTropical CowboysMental Health, Men and CultureCultures of MasculinityWhat Causes Men's Violence Against Women?Violent ManhoodMasculinities and CultureComrades in ArmsMen in PrisonMen and MasculinitiesMisreading MasculinityThe Media and the Models of MasculinityMasculinities in Contemporary American Culture

Self-identification as a “gamer” among college students: Influencing factors and perceived characteristics:

Abstract: Much of the research involving perceived characteristics of so-called “gamers” has been directed at deconstructing traditional stereotypes associated with the term. As gaming has become mainstream,...