Legitimacy

Notions of legitimacy are often called upon within the Western gaming community to deny games that fall outside of the traditional video game industry their meaningful contribution to global franchises. In the case of unlicensed games and romhacks like Final Fantasy VII Demake, this denial devalues the productive forces of fans and independent laborers that went into their creation. To expand the definition of what labor is considered legitimate, I call for a more nuanced understanding of fan and pirate productions as hybrids of the modern glocalized gaming medium; one that factors in class, location, and access as defining markers of regional gaming identity. Continue Reading →