https://gamestudies.org The international journal of computer game research Mark Hines https://gamestudies.org/2602/articles/hines Age of Wonders 4, a 4X strategy game, breaks with fantasy as a genre by allowing players to create their own fantasy racial groups. This sort of gameplay has become more common following widespread critique of the genre in 2020. Despite the immense freedom afforded by this mechanic, I find that harmful racial logics remain in the game. Kristine Jørgensen,Arne Campbell https://gamestudies.org/2602/articles/jorgensen_campbell This article investigates how game enthusiasts in Norway understand the “political” and what they associate with “politics” in the context of videogames, and to what degree players experience game discourses as political. Results show that respondents associate these terms with contested values, such as in identity politics and social issues. Nuri Kim https://gamestudies.org/2602/articles/nuri_kim This article traces the contested history and legacy of the video game arcade in South Korea before the rise of the PC bang and online gaming. Stanisław Krawczyk,Tereza Fousek Krobová ,Larissa Wild,Agata Waszkiewicz,David Krummenacher https://gamestudies.org/2602/articles/krawczyk_krobova_wild_waszkiewicz_krummenacher_ The article highlights the challenges of defining national video games in a globalised context. Drawing mainly on European examples, it proposes a framework for analysing the nationality of games through developer, gameworld, language and audience. Thomas Spies,Alex Urban https://gamestudies.org/2602/articles/spies_urban This study explores virtual photography, focusing on the Society of Virtual Photographers as an online community. By analyzing interviews and card-sorting activities, it defines virtual photography through a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, highlighting its unique characteristics from a practitioner’s perspective. Jaroslav Švelch https://gamestudies.org/2602/articles/svelch_playdate Following the growing body of literature on cozy games and platform studies, the article analyzes Panic’s Playdate as a cozy platform. It argues that Playdate embodies the ambiguities of cozy aesthetics by offering, on the one hand, consumerist escapism and nostalgia, and on the other hand, social critique and “resistance through care.”