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Episode 30 – Cute
What makes something cute, and what does a cute thing do in the context of video games? As a surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) dominant aesthetic of the contemporary era, cuteness is an area of interest for various scholars. In the episode, Sian and Heather unpack some of the developing ideas around cuteness within and outside the discipline of cute studies. We discuss Sianne Ngai, Emma Reay, Ina Saltz, Erica Kanesaka, vocaloids, vtubers, and eebly-fying of everyday life. We also catch up on what we’ve been playing recently and our favourite cute games.
Ludography
2K Boston and 2K Australia. 2007. Bioshock. 2K.
CD Projekt Red. 2020. Cyberpunk 2077. CD Projekt.
Game Freak. 2022. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company.
Irrational Games. 2013. Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea. 2K Games.
Massive Monster. 2022. Cult of the Lamb. Devolver Digital.
Maxis. 2014. The Sims 4. Electronic Arts.
miHoYo. 2020. Genshin Impact. HoYoverse.
Nintendo EPD. 2020. Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Nintendo.
ParanoidHawk. 2022. Lookouts. Itch.io
Q_dork’s games available at https://q_dork.itch.io/
Sketchy Logic. Aviary Attorney. 2015.
Team Salvato. 2017. Doki Doki Literature Club!.
Triskell Interactive. 2023. Pharaoh: A New Era. Dotemu.
ZA/UM. 2019. Disco Elysium.
References
Allison, Anne. 2004. ‘Cuteness as Japan’s Millennial Product’. In Pikachu′s Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokemon, edited by Joseph Tobin, 34–49. Durham: Duke University Press.
Annett, Sandra. 2017. ‘What Can a Vocaloid Do? The Kyara as Body without Organs’. Mechademia 10: 163–77. https://doi.org/10/ghp4mw.
Brazil, Kevin, 2020. Interview with Sianne Ngai, The White Review.
Carpenter, Nicole, 2023. Cosy games are getting darker, Polygon.
Kanesaka, Erica, 2023. The Mixed-Race Fantasy Behind Kawaii Aesthetics, Catapult.
Matsue, Jennifer Milioto. 2017. ‘The Ideal Idol: Making Music with Hatsune Miku, the “First Sound of the Future”’. In Vamping the Stage: Female Voices of Asian Modernities, edited by Andrew N Weintraub and Bart Barendregt, 320–48. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Ngai, Sianne. Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting, Harvard University Press, 2012
Özdal, Öznur, and Güven Çatak. 2022. ‘Breaking the Fourth Wall in Video Games: A New Terminology and Methodology’. In Games and Narrative: Theory and Practice, edited by Barbaros Bostan, 45–59. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81538-7_3.
Pellitteri, Marco. 2018. ‘Kawaii Aesthetics from Japan to Europe: Theory of the Japanese “Cute” and Transcultural Adoption of Its Styles in Italian and French Comics Production and Commodified Culture Goods’. Arts 7 (3): 24. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts7030024.
Reay, Emma. 2021. Cute, cuddly and completely crushable: Plushies as avatars in video games. Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, 13(2), 131–149.
Saltz, Ina. 2004. “Step Out: The Aesthetics of Cute.” Step Inside Design, vol. 20, no. 6, pp. 14.
Waszkiewicz, Agata, and Martyna Bakun. 2020. ‘Towards the Aesthetics of Cozy Video Games.’ Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 12 (3): 225–40. https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw_00017_1.
Credits
Music created with Per Nyblom’s Abundant Music.
View all episodes
By Sian Tomkinson and Heather Blakey
5
11 ratings
What makes something cute, and what does a cute thing do in the context of video games? As a surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) dominant aesthetic of the contemporary era, cuteness is an area of interest for various scholars. In the episode, Sian and Heather unpack some of the developing ideas around cuteness within and outside the discipline of cute studies. We discuss Sianne Ngai, Emma Reay, Ina Saltz, Erica Kanesaka, vocaloids, vtubers, and eebly-fying of everyday life. We also catch up on what we’ve been playing recently and our favourite cute games.
Ludography
2K Boston and 2K Australia. 2007. Bioshock. 2K.
CD Projekt Red. 2020. Cyberpunk 2077. CD Projekt.
Game Freak. 2022. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company.
Irrational Games. 2013. Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea. 2K Games.
Massive Monster. 2022. Cult of the Lamb. Devolver Digital.
Maxis. 2014. The Sims 4. Electronic Arts.
miHoYo. 2020. Genshin Impact. HoYoverse.
Nintendo EPD. 2020. Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Nintendo.
ParanoidHawk. 2022. Lookouts. Itch.io
Q_dork’s games available at https://q_dork.itch.io/
Sketchy Logic. Aviary Attorney. 2015.
Team Salvato. 2017. Doki Doki Literature Club!.
Triskell Interactive. 2023. Pharaoh: A New Era. Dotemu.
ZA/UM. 2019. Disco Elysium.
References
Allison, Anne. 2004. ‘Cuteness as Japan’s Millennial Product’. In Pikachu′s Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokemon, edited by Joseph Tobin, 34–49. Durham: Duke University Press.
Annett, Sandra. 2017. ‘What Can a Vocaloid Do? The Kyara as Body without Organs’. Mechademia 10: 163–77. https://doi.org/10/ghp4mw.
Brazil, Kevin, 2020. Interview with Sianne Ngai, The White Review.
Carpenter, Nicole, 2023. Cosy games are getting darker, Polygon.
Kanesaka, Erica, 2023. The Mixed-Race Fantasy Behind Kawaii Aesthetics, Catapult.
Matsue, Jennifer Milioto. 2017. ‘The Ideal Idol: Making Music with Hatsune Miku, the “First Sound of the Future”’. In Vamping the Stage: Female Voices of Asian Modernities, edited by Andrew N Weintraub and Bart Barendregt, 320–48. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Ngai, Sianne. Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting, Harvard University Press, 2012
Özdal, Öznur, and Güven Çatak. 2022. ‘Breaking the Fourth Wall in Video Games: A New Terminology and Methodology’. In Games and Narrative: Theory and Practice, edited by Barbaros Bostan, 45–59. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81538-7_3.
Pellitteri, Marco. 2018. ‘Kawaii Aesthetics from Japan to Europe: Theory of the Japanese “Cute” and Transcultural Adoption of Its Styles in Italian and French Comics Production and Commodified Culture Goods’. Arts 7 (3): 24. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts7030024.
Reay, Emma. 2021. Cute, cuddly and completely crushable: Plushies as avatars in video games. Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, 13(2), 131–149.
Saltz, Ina. 2004. “Step Out: The Aesthetics of Cute.” Step Inside Design, vol. 20, no. 6, pp. 14.
Waszkiewicz, Agata, and Martyna Bakun. 2020. ‘Towards the Aesthetics of Cozy Video Games.’ Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 12 (3): 225–40. https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw_00017_1.
Credits
Music created with Per Nyblom’s Abundant Music.