Situated Play: Negotiating Place and Identity in Global Gaming Networks

Gunbound: World Champion is a free Internet-based computer game, that is made by the Korean company Softnyx, which is popular in many parts of the globe. Taking Gunbound as a case study, my research explores gaming as a global and transnational phenomena, in particular the flow of gaming products from the North to the South, and the new assemblages of networks that this flow allows. Using data gathered during ethnographic fieldwork in Melbourne, Australia during the summer of 2005-6, this paper will focus on the specific local contexts of the play of Gunbound. Rather than approaching the game as a text, my concern is to examine the ways by which this game is insinuated into the everyday life of various Chinese speaking diasporic communities, to maintain pre-existing – and establish new – social networks. In this paper I will argue that Gunbound acts as a space in which diasporic players may enter into negotiations between a variety of sites, in particular the local and the global. For these players the stakes of play include exploring issues of place and identity in relation to transnational global networks.