The Game Studies journal has recently published an article titled “What is a National Video Game? A Central and Eastern European Perspective“, which was written by Stanisław Krawczyk, Larissa Wild, Agata Waszkiewicz, David Krummenacher and Tereza Fousek Krobová, a member of the Prague Game Production Studies research group, including the GAMEINDEX project.

The article examines the growing interplay between video games and national identity. Tracing a research trend that has gained momentum in game studies since the mid-2010s, it addresses the lack of comprehensive scholarship on the concept of national video games and criticises the practice of using the “national game” concept as uniform and self-evident. Instead, it suggests that, in order to better understand the complex influence the context of creation might have on a game, one could benefit from considering various loci of the game’s nationality. Thus, a framework is introduced to categorise games based on their developer, gameworld, language and localisation, and target audience and marketing.