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ber seven: 1+6=7, 2+5=7, 3+4=7. In otherwords, in a book that unfolds in a looselychronological sequence, chapters 1 and6, 2 and 5, and 3 and 4 each complement
one another to demonstrate how ludoOrientalism has reverberated across spaceand time. For example, chapters 1 and 6
together illustrate how Asia has long been
associated with “the ‘dark’ side of gaming”(p. 178). In chapter 1, Fickle examines how
gambling served as a device for framing
Chinese Americans in the nineteenth century as threats to the ostensibly “honest”
labor of the white working class. Chapter 6
identifies an echo of this history in the discourses surrounding Chinese gold farmers
accused of undermining the putative fairness of massive multiplayer online gamesby playing for profit.
Similarly, chapters 2 and 5 serve as acomplementary pair: Chapter 2 looks at
how ludic metaphors of strategy and probability became rationales used to justify
Japanese American incarceration, while
chapter 5 studies how Pokémon GO transformed the threat of the Japanese empire
into the soft power of a kawaii (“cute”)
game based on virtual conquest. Finally,
chapters 3 and 4 together form the heartof the book’s argument. In chapter three,
Fickle illuminates how the same gambling
logics that fed nineteenth-century Yellow Peril discourse helped construct themodel minority myth in the midtwentieth century. During this time, the idea of
Asian Americans as consummate gamblers was reworked into the myth’s glorification of Asian immigrants who “risk itall” to achieve economic success in a newcountry. If chapter 3 thereby reframes themodel minority, chapter 4 reframes playtheory by exposing its Orientalist founda-tions. Here, Fickle casts light on how Johan
Huizinga and Roger Caillois relied on“Orientalist notions of the mystical Eastand rational West” to structure their theories of play as a “magical circle” marked offfrom everyday life (p. 25).
Altogether, The Race Card is agroundbreaking book that makes profound contributions to game studies,
Asian American studies, and global Asianstudies. Fickle reaches across wide-ranging historical phenomena to connect more
obvious examples of ludo-Orientalism toinstances in which the discovery of playproves far more surprising. For scholarsof play, The Race Card models a uniquemethod of analysis that attends to thespecificity of distinct media forms while
casting light on how they reflect surrounding cultural discourses. Moreover, given
the prominence of Asia and its diasporas
to the rise of gaming technologies today,
this book is an important read for anyone
desiring to understand better the racial
politics in which games are necessarilyenmired.
—Erica Kanesaka Kalnay, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI

Gamer Trouble: FeministConfrontations in Digital
CultureAmanda Phillips
New York: New York University Press,2020. List of figures, introduction,
acknowledgments, notes, bibliography,index, and about the author. 247 pp.
$29.00, paper. ISBN: 9781479834921

Book Reviews

Amanda Phillips provides a fresh reboot
to video game studies in this new work,
drawing from feminist, queer, and womenof color scholarship. This research pushes
the boundaries of game studies throughwhat Phillips calls a “disciplinary remix”(p. 181), opening up the study of video
games to a range of fields and centering
analyses of race, gender, technology, andpolitics. Each chapter explores discourses
surrounding particular “troubles” ingames, ranging from online harassment
and trolling campaigns such as #Gamergate to industry practices and technologies
that reinforce oppressive cultural norms
to how players push back against thesecontroversies.
Phillips invokes the term “trouble”
for many purposes. Trouble refers to thestruggles within gaming culture, especiallyas it relates to misogyny and racism. But
Phillips also uses the term to refer to what
the late U.S. Representative John Lewisdubs as “good trouble,” or challenging
established norms for social justice ends.
Her end goal is to show how video games
are influential storytelling platforms thatallow players to imagine new ways of
being, even if there is still some work to
be done.
One of the long-standing troubles
within gaming culture has been antifeminist sentiment as feminists haveentered these spaces. In chapter 1, Phillips describes the dynamic of boundary
policing within gaming communities
both inside and outside of the academy,reflecting anxieties about diversity ingaming. Women’s critiques of misogynistic practices in gaming culture, including
rape jokes, as well as the marginalizationof feminist academic research in the field,

show how feminist knowledge production
has always been deemed illegitimate.
Racism and misogyny cannot be
separated from the technologies that produce these conditions. Throughout thetext, Phillips connects software design
with cultural notions of race and gender.
In chapter 2, Phillips deconstructs quantization—the animation process of breaking
down facial characteristics to reflect racialand ethnic characteristics. The video gameindustry celebrates technological advancements for developing more raciallyand ethnically diverse characters, yet
Phillips convincingly argues that these aremodern-day forms of physiognomy. Whatappears on the surface to be diverse actually masks the social and political choicesthat software designers make in creatingcharacters. Using a novel deformance
methodology, in which Phillips tests thelimits of the avatar interface, the author
reveals how customizable faces are variations of Caucasian male faces, reinforcing
scientific conceptions of race and gender.
The limits of technology become clear
in chapter 4, with the case study of Femshep, the female version of Mass Effect’s(Bioware 2007–2012) customizable hero.
Femshep is a female avatar built on theframework of a male body. The gamewas praised for appealing to players whowanted a female protagonist, yet this caseshows that the narrative within the gamereinforced heteronormativity. It was in thefan production of alternative storylines
and videos, however, that nondominantgroups were able to queer the system.
Another important contribution
to the field is Phillips’s discussion of thegamic gaze, an alternative to Laura Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze that has389

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been dominant in film studies and somegame studies research. Through close
readings of Portal (Valve Corporation,2007) and Bayonetta (Platinum Games,2009), Phillips shows how the gamic gazeoffers voyeuristic entry into the game’s
virtual world while also allowing players
to be present alongside the avatars. The
gamic gaze flips the male gaze, offering tohelp liberate different forms of identification. While Phillips recognizes the postracial and postfeminist tendencies of bothgames, their reading offers alternatives toavailable research.
Throughout the book, Phillips troubles what is meant by diversity, as definedby the game industry, academics, players,and politicians. In the final chapter, thetroubles speak to the tension inherent inconceptualizations of diversity that tend toneutralize difference rather than confront
frictions that can emerge in these communities. This critique is especially salient

given contemporary social movements forracial and gender justice. Their end goal,
then, is to “understand how the forces ofhegemony shape any particular system sothat we game it in ways that move towardjustice” (p.183).
One of the strengths of the book is
the road map provided in both the introductory and concluding chapters. Phillips
takes complex concepts and makes themaccessible to a broader audience who may
be unfamiliar with game studies scholarship. By engaging in conversations withscholars such as Chantal Mouffe, Gloria
Anzaldúa, Sara Ahmed, and bell hooks,
this text will be of value to a range of disciplines including critical race studies,
women’s and gender studies, communication, anthropology, and sociology.
—Carolyn M. Cunningham, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA