“You Can Be Lara Croft Too!”

Cultural heritage has been substantively identified as a vital motivator for tourism. An additional significant driver of visitor interest to specific historical locations is the influence of media properties. Among these, the influence of video games is an emerging area of scholarly interest. However, scholarship has not yet adequately addressed the troubling implications of player/tourists being incentivized by game mechanics to “replay” historical colonial extractive logics on real world spaces. As postcolonial video game scholars have pointed out, such game mechanics form the foundation of many adventure-based game franchises. Their extension to real world locations, potentially disrupting the possibility of acknowledgment of colonial histories by visitors, has serious implications. This article addresses this gap by examining the ways in which the influential Tomb Raider franchise continues to affect how visitors to the Angkor Wat Hindu-Buddhist temple complex in Cambodia choose to re/present the site in their personal tourism narratives.

Publication Details

Journal
Feminist Media Histories
Published
2025-01-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2025.11.3.86
Primary Topic
Digital Games and Media
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

“You Can Be Lara Croft Too!”

Feminist Media Histories
Digital Games and Media
article

“You Can Be Lara Croft Too!”

article en

Abstract

Cultural heritage has been substantively identified as a vital motivator for tourism. An additional significant driver of visitor interest to specific historical locations is the influence of media properties. Among these, the influence of video games is an emerging area of scholarly interest. However, scholarship has not yet adequately addressed the troubling implications of player/tourists being incentivized by game mechanics to “replay” historical colonial extractive logics on real world spaces. As postcolonial video game scholars have pointed out, such game mechanics form the foundation of many adventure-based game franchises. Their extension to real world locations, potentially disrupting the possibility of acknowledgment of colonial histories by visitors, has serious implications. This article addresses this gap by examining the ways in which the influential Tomb Raider franchise continues to affect how visitors to the Angkor Wat Hindu-Buddhist temple complex in Cambodia choose to re/present the site in their personal tourism narratives.

Feminist Media HistoriesVol. 11(3)
Decent work and economic growth
Openalex Percentile: Top 49%
Digital Games and Media
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