Contributors to this issue examine the role of video games in American culture, approaching games through the lenses of transpacific studies, queer historiography, cultural history, critical race and ethnic studies, and border studies. They explore interactions between the United States and Asia through the genre of visual novels; investigate representations of the AIDS crisis in video game history; consider how games like Papers, Please address concepts of borders and national belonging; and show the aesthetic and political challenges that games like Assassin’s Creed III face in telling counterhistories of marginalized peoples. Taken together, these essays show how games can contribute to an expanded understanding of the United States and of the ways that cultural forms circulate nationally and transnationally.

Contributors. Patrick Jagoda, Stephen Joyce, Gary Kafer, Jennifer Malkowski, Katrina Marks, Josef Nguyen, Christopher B. Patterson, Bo Ruberg, Arthur Z. Wang