VIDEOGAMES

In the few decades since they first blipped their way onto television screens, video-
games have become one of the most culturally, socially and economically significant
media forms. Newman’s volume considers how we might approach videogames as
media texts to be read, experiences to be played and played with, systems and simu-
lations to be decoded and interrogated, and performances to be captured, codified
and preserved.
The updated second edition examines the emergence of new platforms as well as
changing patterns of production and consumption in its analysis of Wii, Xbox 360,
PS3 and mobile gaming. The new final chapter explores recent developments in
games scholarship with particular focus falling on the study of gameplay as socially situated,
‘lived experience’, and on strategies for game history, heritage and preservation. In
drawing attention to the fragility and ephemerality of hardware, software and game-
play, this new edition encourages readers and players to consider not only how games
might be studied but also what can, will and should be left behind for the next
generation of games researchers.

James Newman is Professor of Digital Media and Director of the Media Futures
Research Centre at Bath Spa University. He is the author of numerous books on
videogames and gaming cultures including Playing with Videogames (2008) and Best Before:
Videogames, Supersession and Obsolescence (2012). James is a co-founder of the UK’s
National Videogame Archive, which is a partnership with the National Media Museum.
He sits on the board of the Computer Games special collection of the British Library’s UK
Web Archive and is a member of the GameCity international videogames festival team.
VIDEOGAMES
Second Edition

James Newman
First published 2004
by Routledge
This edition published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2004, 2013 James Newman
The right of James Newman to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Newman, James (James A.)
Videogames / James Newman. – 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Video games. 2. Video games—Social aspects. I. Title.
GV1469.3.N48 2012
794.8—dc23
2012019167

ISBN: 978-0-415-66915-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-66916-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-14342-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books
CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vi
Preface to the second edition vii

1 Videogame studies? 1

2 Definitions 8

3 Industries 27

4 Players 49

5 Structures 73

6 Narratives 89

7 Spatialities 104

8 Characters 123

9 Preservation and piracy 140

Bibliography 158
Index 179
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the years since the first edition of this book was published, countless players, journalists,
teachers and students have offered invaluable feedback and commentary. To all these
people, too numerous to name, I offer my sincerest thanks for the suggestions and ideas,
some of which have made it into this edition and some of which may have to wait
until the inevitable director’s cut, HD, 3D remaster.
From this army of helpers, it would be remiss of me not to single out a few individuals
whose help, guidance and generosity over the years have been indispensable. Lucy
(who it was remiss of me not to thank in the first edition), Iain, Russell, Neil, Simon,
Martha and Tom have all corrected misconceptions and added ideas – either directly
or by playing and explaining videogames to me.
My thanks also go to all at Routledge, especially Aileen, Eileen and Andrew.
Thanks to Adam Saltsman for the Canabalt image on the paperback cover, which you
should flick back to and look at even more carefully before downloading the game, if
you haven’t done so already.
And finally, to all the people who told me to stop wasting my time playing
videogames as a child, I dedicate this book.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The next generation

It is very nearly ten years to the day since I first sat down to write what would become
the first edition of Videogames and it seems almost unnecessary to note that much has
changed in the intervening time. New platforms have emerged, some obeying estab-
lished patterns or cycles of hardware upgrade, others apparently bursting onto the scene,
but each offering new opportunities for play by virtue of their interfaces and control
systems, their audio-visual capabilities, and their interconnectedness. When I wrote the
first edition of this book, the PS2, Xbox, Dreamcast and GameCube were in their
infancy; the GameBoy, albeit in its ‘Advanced’ guise, was the unassailable handheld
platform; and ‘mobile’ gaming meant little more than a thirty-second blast of Snake and a
futuristic promissory note. Today, the Wii U has been announced, but is not yet play-
able, and speculation mounts over the successor to PS3 and Xbox 360. Indeed, there is
much speculation as to whether there will be successors to these consoles at all. Part of
the reason for this uncertainty over the future of dedicated gaming hardware can be found
in the apparently seismic shift in the sites for modern gameplay. Every day, millions of
people, whether or not they identify themselves as ‘gamers’, play games such as Farmville
on Facebook while the iPhone, a device that has no buttons, sticks or pads for control-
ling games (in fact, no buttons at all) has a collection of games so large that it exceeds all
those from previous generations of dedicated gaming hardware combined. In fact, as I
write this, my RSS feed reader informs me that titles in Rovio’s Angry Birds series have
now been downloaded over one billion times. By the time you read this, that number
will be hopelessly out of date. Motion controls, touchscreens, online play, episodic
downloadable content, high-definition graphics, surround sound, and so on – all of these
are standard issue for today’s gamers. And where once Sega and Nintendo slugged it out,
and Sony and Microsoft were the newcomers who knew nothing of the games industry,
now Apple and Facebook have truly disrupted the marketplace – redefining who plays
games, where and how they play them, and how and whether they pay for them.
Without doubt, the landscape has changed beyond recognition in the last decade.
viii Preface to the second edition

Or so we might think. If we look more carefully, we find a remarkable amount of

consistency. The Wii remote certainly lives up to its revolutionary billing, allowing
players to wield swords, fire arrows and adjust the altitude of aircraft, but rotate it
90º and it bears an uncanny resemblance to an NES joypad from the 1980s. This is
hardly surprising when we look at the Virtual Console and its back catalogue of
‘classic’ Nintendo, Sega, SNK and NEC games, or, for that matter, the iTunes App
Store with its remakes and re-releases of Sonic the Hedgehog titles from the 1990s, which
are also available on Xbox Live Arcade, or the PlayStation Network. That these ‘old’
games command just a fraction of their original retail price, may be stylistically
recovered as ‘retro’ curios that stand to benchmark the performance of current
gaming systems, or are apparently only saleable at all in collections where quantity
mitigates quality, are all issues I have written about in my last book, Best Before, and
we should refrain from simply thinking that the games industry unproblematically
treasures and values its ludic past. Here though, while we should be mindful that these
‘old’ and ‘new’ games sometimes co-exist, literally sitting side-by-side in the
Wii’s ‘TV channel’ interface, we should note how similar these ‘old’ and ‘new’ games
often are. Videogame genres, for instance, are remarkably stable. Platform games,
shoot-’em-ups and beat-’em-ups are as popular and prevalent today as they were when
the basic tenets of their operation were set out in the 1980s. New Super Mario Bros. 3D
certainly adds a twist but remains resolutely and unapologetically grounded in NES-era
gameplay. Iterations of driving games, fighting games and shooting games each offer a
carefully balanced mix of innovation and familiarity. To play The Legend of Zelda:
Skyward Sword is, without doubt, an excitingly new experience in some respects, but it
is also one that triggers more than a little déjà vu. Looking back over ten years, the
continuities are easier to spot. When I wrote the first edition, 3D graphics were king and
2D games like Yoshi’s Island appeared, to some at least, to be out of date, presenting
obsolete technology and gameplay modes. Today, the sheer number of 2D games
filling the App Store, often based around a simple, even single gameplay mechanic
(like Doodle Jump or Canabalt) harks back not just to Yoshi’s Island, but to the earliest
days of the Game & Watch series’ simplicity and economy of control. Without
doubt, some things haven’t changed at all.
Of course, one thing that certainly has changed is the recognition of games as
cultural objects and, in particular, as objects of scholarly study. Undergraduate and post-
graduate curricula across the world now teach game design and criticism, and surely no
modern media, screen, film or cultural studies course could claim to comprehensively
cover the contemporary media environment without considering the manifest industrial
synergies or attending to the forms, structures, textualities and aesthetics of gameplay.
Whenever I think about the emergence of game studies as a discipline or my
career as an academic researching and writing about play, I am reminded of a chain of
events that started almost 30 years ago to the day. It was not the first computer I had
used, but the Dragon 32 was the first computer I had owned. Strictly speaking, it was
a family computer but I considered it mine from the first moment I saw it. My father, a
software engineer, had purchased it in order that he might teach me to program, or, better
still, that I might teach myself. He tried. And so did I. BASIC seemed approachable
 Preface to the second edition ix

enough and within an hour or so I had my name scrolling up the screen. I still didn’t
really understand what machine code was and even having it described to me it was
obvious that this whole programming lark was going to take some time to master.
But then I made a discovery so important that it would change my life. It would also
dramatically alter the way in which my father came to view his hopes of passing on
the programming baton. This computer had a cartridge slot, and there were companies
that sold cartridges that contained software programs ready to run. Sure enough, there
were home accounting programs and collections of maths problems, but these didn’t
exactly set my heart racing. Altogether more exciting, however, were the cartridges
with colourful stickers on them that looked just like the decals on the coin-op
machines I remembered from seaside arcades. The games had impossibly exotic
names like Blasteroids and Cuthbert Goes Walkabout, and each one turned the television
set into a window onto a new world of possibility, frustration, jeopardy and, above
all, fun.
Like many players of the period, I only later came to realize that I had been
playing versions of ‘classic’ arcade games like Space Panic, Amidar and Frogger as I had
encountered them in subtly and not-so-subtly copyright-avoiding disguises. Although
I wouldn’t have put it so eloquently at the time, I had worked out what Eugene
Jarvis, creator of the legendarily difficult shoot-’em-up Defender, had known for some
time: the only legitimate use for a computer is to play games. Not everybody agreed,
of course, and while they ultimately tolerated it, parents and schoolteachers would
rather my friends and I had not been creating pixel art, writing smooth-scrolling
routines and composing music and sound effects, and had instead dedicated our time
to coding programs calculating trends in global precipitation over the past 50 years.
After all, although making them might help us learn something of programming and
project planning, they knew there was no future in games.
Today, in what might seem like a curious turn of events, the UK government-
commissioned ‘Livingstone-Hope’ report (Livingstone and Hope 2011) bemoans the
lack of computer science and programming in current UK school and university IT
curricula precisely because it has led to a dearth of suitably skilled graduates ready to
enter the videogame industry. Similarly, the Raspberry Pi initiative seeks to enthuse a
new generation of children and get them coding so that they might contribute to the
nation’s cultural and economic wealth by not just playing but making videogames.
It is clear that, despite the initial protestations of parents and teachers, videogames
are not a passing fad. However, it is somewhat ironic to note that one of the most
interesting areas of contemporary games research, even if it is one whose foundational
questions seem some way from being satisfactorily answered, is games preservation. In
the space of just a few years we have moved from struggling to take seriously this
inconsequentially ephemeral, fleeting medium, to worrying about devising strategies
so that we might ensure the long-term access to vitally important but ephemeral and
fleeting hardware, software and performances of gameplay. It is the importance of these
questions about future access to games, questions that cut to the very heart of game
studies, that have led me to rewrite the final chapters of this book. Where the first edition
closed with rumination and speculation on the possible futures for videogames as
x Preface to the second edition

technology, form and medium, here the spotlight falls on the future of game studies.
This is not expressed in terms of second-guessing the possible trajectories and contours of
new areas of scholarship and enquiry, but rather in relation to considering what of the
past and present can, will and should be left behind for the next generation of
videogames researchers to study. For all the debates over how videogames might be
studied, the surprising truth is technological obsolescence, material and digital decay,
and a host of other contributory factors that arise from prevailing retail, marketing and
journalistic practice within the games industry see to it that many games have already,
disappeared and are now literally unplayable. At a time when games appear to be
more prevalent (dare we say pervasive?) than ever, it is sobering to be reminded of
their fragility. Whatever brand we wish to practise either now or in the future, and
regardless of the complex set of skills the next generation of scholars might bring to
bear, it is going to be difficult to do game studies without some games to study.

James Newman
Bath, May 2012
1
VIDEOGAME STUDIES?

Taking games seriously

1962 was an auspicious year. Lt Col. John Glenn, Jr became the first American to
orbit the Earth, Telstar became the first communications satellite intended for regular
service relaying television signals between North America and Europe, Marilyn
Monroe died from a suspected overdose of sleeping pills, President John F. Kennedy
found himself at the centre of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and videogames were born.
When Steve Russell created Spacewar in the computer labs of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, he started a chain of events that would change not only com-
puting, but also entertainment and popular culture – not immediately, and certainly not
knowingly, but decisively and permanently.
Two things might already surprise even videogame aficionados. The first is that
videogames are over 50 years old. In fact, the exact birth date of the medium is
debated and, while Spacewar is the most oft-cited ‘modern’ computer game, there
remains no absolute consensus, with some commentators pointing to the 1958 Tennis
for Two as the true original. This uncertainty, as we shall see, is revealing, as the
argument as to what constitutes ‘a videogame’ remains difficult to resolve. Indeed,
much of what we might find interesting about videogames as an object of study is
precisely their instability and mutability. The second surprise is the suggestion that
something as apparently trivial as videogames should be taken so seriously. While
there can be few who would suggest that they are as significant as manned spaceflight
or possible world war, a growing number of scholars and cultural critics recognize the
social, cultural and economic importance of this form of entertainment. At the turn
of the millennium, Henry Jenkins (2000) proclaimed videogames ‘an art form for the
digital age’. Taking inspiration from Gilbert Seldes, who, in the 1920s, championed
Hollywood movies, jazz, comic strips and Broadway musicals, Jenkins suggests that
videogames must be considered to be one of the most important artforms to emerge
2 Videogames

in the twentieth century. Raph Koster has similarly implored us to consider computer
games as art:

notice how much scorn gets heaped on games that are perceived as mere clones or
knockoffs. The public already discusses and treats games as an art form, and uses
the same standards of judgment for them as they do for films or novels or any
other artistic medium. They just aren’t used to considering them to be art.
(Koster 1999)

In the immediate aftermath of the PlayStation’s global launch, Shuker (1995) was
even more enthusiastic: ‘Video games are now a major cultural form, and may well
soon replace cinema, cable and broadcast television as the dominant popular
medium’. We might still be some way from seeing Shuker’s prediction come true,
but even if, as Juul (2000) has more pragmatically suggested, we have not seen the
first videogame Shakespeare or Bach, the speed with which videogames have developed
aesthetically, formally and functionally is remarkable. Most obviously, the level of
audio-visual and interactive sophistication of today’s PlayStation 3, PS Vita, Xbox
360, Nintendo 3DS, Wii and PC games seems light years away from 1970s offerings
like Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Asteroids, though, as we will learn throughout this
book, there remain considerable areas of constancy and clearly identifiable lineages.
However, notwithstanding the developments in the aesthetic capabilities of video-
game systems, the ever more sophisticated interface technologies employed or the
emergence of new, pervasive platforms such as online social networks or Apple iOS-
based iPhone and iPad, is it really appropriate to suggest that videogames are that
important? Surely, compared with television or film, videogames are mere trivia.
Worse still, to non-gamers at least, many games appear impenetrably complex or
monotonous. As Jessen (1998) has pointed out, it seems almost inconceivable that
players could have spent so long absorbed by games as repetitive and simplistic as
Pac-Man, though we should note their resurgence as mobile games. To the untrained
eye, videogames are as incomprehensible as abstract art or experimental music. Jessen
encourages us to consider Stanley Fish’s concept of ‘interpretive communities’ in
appreciating the pleasures of videogames. Not only can the game not be understood
without playing it, but also the game is only part of the experience. Meaning is not
embedded within the game, but rather is revealed through use.
Consequently, the context in which the game is used or played affects and shapes
its value:

You have to play the game before it will reveal its nature, and this is something
that far from happens to everyone. Some fall for it, others find it monotonous,
boring and pointless, but whatever attitude one has to the game, the interest
rarely lasts long. If one plays it individually, Pac-Man may be exciting at first,
but rather boring in the long run. The game only takes on a content in a social
context.
(Jessen 1998: 38)
 Videogame studies? 3

The importance of sensitivity to the experiences of play and the uses of videogames
by players are among the most serious challenges faced by scholars of game studies
and are subjects to which this book turns its attentions frequently.

Studying videogames?
While scholars identify a range of social, cultural, economic, political and technological
factors that suggest the need for a (re)consideration of videogames by students of media,
culture and technology, here, it is useful to briefly examine just three reasons why
videogames demand to be treated seriously: the size of the videogames marketplace; the
popularity of videogames; and videogames as an example of human–computer interaction.
Without doubt, the global videogames marketplace is enormous. The National
Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts’ skills audit proudly boasts that, ‘At
over £2 billion in global sales, the UK’s video games sector is bigger than either its
film or music industries’ (Livingstone and Hope 2011: 4), while games development
is proclaimed as ‘one of our most important creative industries’ (Woodward 2006).
Projections from Pricewaterhouse Coopers suggest that the future is equally rosy: ‘the
sector will grow at an average annual rate of 10.6 percent between 2010 and 2014 –
faster than film, music and TV’ (Livingstone and Hope 2011: 20). In the US, the
ESA (Entertainment Software Association) is not shy in noting the size of the games
sector’s contribution: ‘In 2009, the entertainment software industry’s value added to
the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was $4.9 billion’, or the rate and sustain-
ability of its growth against the prevailing economic trends: ‘From 2005 to 2009, the
entertainment software industry’s annual growth rate exceeded 10 percent. Over the
same period, the entire US economy grew at a rate of less than two percent’ (ESA
2011a; see also Siwek 2007, 2010).
The sales of specific platforms are equally impressive. In 2009, Nintendo president
Satoru Iwata announced that over 50 million Wii and 100 million DS consoles had
been sold worldwide while, according to the Entertainment Software Association,
‘On average, nine games were sold every second of every day of 2007’ (Iwata 2009).
And while Nintendo is a comparative stalwart of the games industry, it is equally
notable that new platforms have come to prominence in recent years. Where mobile
phone gaming was practically non-existent even five years ago, Apple’s iPhone, App
Store and latterly iPad have opened up new markets and opportunities for play. In
early 2011, Doodle Jump recorded its ten millionth download from the iTunes App
Store while downloads of Rovio’s Angry Birds currently exceed half a billion across all
platforms, with new versions planned for consoles, handhelds and mobile devices.
Recently, the Angry Birds Rio tie-in posted ten million downloads in its first ten days
of release (Crossley 2011); while Rovio announced in March 2012 that Angry Birds
Space had been downloaded 50 million times in the 35 days since its release.
Considering these sales figures, it might seem unnecessary to claim that videogames
are popular. However, the degree of popularity and their relation to other media is
surprising. Over a decade ago, Sherry et al. (2001: 1) noted that, ‘In 2000, 35 percent
of Americans identified video games as the most fun entertainment activity (second
4 Videogames

was television at 18 percent)’. In 2011, the ESA (2011b) claims that ‘33 percent of
[US] gamers say that playing computer or video games is their favorite entertainment
activity.’ Videogame play continues to compete with other media usage and, for
many, it has overtaken prime time television as the key entertainment activity (see
McMillan and Raczka 2009, though note the greater complexity of media con-
sumption that arises from games consoles acting as set-top boxes that give access to
streaming television and film content via services such as BBC iPlayer and Netflix). In
addition to consuming enormous amounts of money, videogame play also consumes
enormous amounts of time. Not only do players play frequently – often many times a
week and perhaps every day – but individual play sessions might be extremely long.
Uninterrupted sessions of play may last many hours. It is notable also, and indicative
of the high levels of engagement and involvement with videogames, that play sessions
are almost always longer than players intend or even realize (see Luthman et al. 2009;
Wood et al. 2007). Because videogames can be absorbing, and because designers
deliberately build in ‘hooks’ to encourage players to replay and revisit their games,
and because this is demanded by players who privilege longevity and replayability in
videogames (see Juul 1999), some detractors have gone as far as to label videogames
‘addictive’ (Grüsser et al. 2007), even comparing them to drugs (Grossman 2001, for
example) or labelling them as ‘junk culture’ (see Boris Johnson 2006).
If videogames are bad for players, as Grossman and others suggest, then the large
amounts of time spent engaging with them must be a cause for concern. However, it
is worth considering that videogames may have some positive benefits. As we will
learn in Chapter 6, videogames are quite possibly the most sophisticated and certainly
most pervasive example of high-level human–computer interaction presently avail-
able and, as such, provide a useful environment to learn about, and become proficient
with, technology. Consider, for example, the amount of time it takes to learn how to
use an average office productivity tool such as a word processor e-mail package – not to
become an expert, just to get a feel for the program and acquire a basic competence.
Then compare this with the amount of time it takes to get up and running with the
average videogame. Watch a player encountering a brand new game and, after an
initial, quite inevitable, but surprisingly short, period of acclimatization, you will
doubtless find a player performing complex series of immensely precise and intricate
interactions with little apparent effort and certainly minimal, if any, contemplation
of the joypad or other physical interface devices. Perhaps the player is not conquering
the game straight away. Perhaps they are not even making as much progress as they
think they should be. Perhaps the controller has been thrown across the room in
disgust a few times. After all, as Jones (1997) notes, failure is an essential feature of
both games and learning. However, what is almost certain is that (once it has been
picked up again), that controller will soon look like an extension of the player’s hand.
Consider also that this player may well be a preschooler and the significance of
videogaming as a mechanism through which a comfort and familiarity with compu-
ters can be engendered becomes clear. Not only can players learn from videogames,
but designers and developers of ‘serious’ computing applications could surely benefit
from an examination of the interfaces of games like Super Mario Galaxy, which see
 Videogame studies? 5

players effortlessly negotiating movement in three dimensions while viewing the

action upside down and with inverted gravity (see Livingstone 2002; Kafai 2001;
Kasvi 2000; Amory et al. 1998; Jones 1997; Seay 1997; Leyland 1996).

Academics and videogames

Given the clear impact of videogames and videogame play in everyday life, it is sur-
prising to note how long academics, particularly scholars of media and cultural studies,
neglected them. Many of the earliest scholarly studies emanated from the research
laboratories of psychology departments and were typically concerned with the possible
effects of games on young players. As Jonas Smith (2001a) has noted, videogames
spent many years as an essentially forgotten medium. There are a number of possible
reasons. Here, we will concentrate on two key misconceptions. First, videogames are
(still) very often seen as being a children’s medium. This means that they are easily and
readily denigrated as trivial – something that will be ‘grown out of ’ – and demanding
no investigation. Second, videogames have been considered mere trifles – low art –
carrying none of the weight, gravitas or credibility of more traditional media. As a
consequence, they have been unfavourably and unfairly compared to respectable media
like film. Compounding the problem, even parts of the videogame industry seem
embarrassed by their business (see Sheff 1993: 1; and below on the ‘Edinburgh Games
Festival’).
Simply dismissing the Super Mario Bros. series as childish because of its representa-
tional style (bold, primary colours) or even the apparent nature of the content
(jumping on enemies’ heads) reveals a superficiality that is present in many investi-
gations of videogames. Even a cursory survey of fan comments and reviews reveals that
games such as Super Mario Kart are revered by players young and old because of their
impeccable balance and feel (see player reviews on fansites such as www.gamefaqs.com
for example). In fact, many players rate Super Mario Kart among their favourite games
despite the representational style (Newman 2001). In this way, a concentration solely
on the appearances or surfaces of the game may reveal a lack of appreciation of
the experience of play and the preferences and motivations of videogame players (see
Rollings and Morris 2000).
The relegation of the ‘childish’ is immensely naive in its own right, though it is
perhaps unsurprising given the pervasive Western tradition of denigrating the
anthropomorphism that features so heavily in videogames such as Super Mario Bros.
and Sonic the Hedgehog, by associating it with immature, childish thinking (see Piaget
1929, for example). However, it is particularly ironic to note that the relegation of
videogames to childish plaything reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the con-
temporary marketplace and audience demographic. The effect of aggressive marketing
campaigns employed by Sony to promote the PlayStation platform, Nintendo’s more
recent DS and Wii-centred ‘Touch Generations’ series concentrating on, for instance,
non-traditional games and gamers through Brain Training and Nintendogs, as well as
the embedding of gameplay in pervasive social networks through applications such as
Farmville, has been a shift in videogame market demographics with the average age of
6 Videogames

players continuing to rise year on year. With their first foray into the games console
marketplace Sony marketed the PlayStation family at late teens/early twenties and the
success of the strategies has contributed to a shifting demographic that must force a
reconsideration of the videogame as merely a child’s toy. In their 2011 industry over-
view report, the ESA (2011b) claim that the current average age of US videogame
players is 37. In the UK, trade organization UKIE cites ISFE and OFCOM data in
claiming that ‘Half of UK households contain at least one videogames console’, and
‘1 in 3 people describe themselves as gamers’ (UKIE 2011).
The more general denigration of ‘mere entertainment’ is partly responsible for the
historical lack of seriousness in the treatment of videogames: ‘One of the commonest
points I hear about why video games are not an art form is that they are just for fun.
They are just entertainment’ (Koster 1999). The deprecation of ‘popular’ and parti-
cularly ‘youth’ culture has been well documented, for example, in the work of the
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Youth culture and its associated genres
and communicative forms have frequently been presented as potentially dangerous,
with studies focusing on deviance and resistance (cf. Skelton and Valentine 1998;
McRobbie and Thornton 1995; Skirrow 1990; S. Cohen 1972; A.K. Cohen 1956).
Much early gaming research similarly centred on the potentially damaging and antisocial
effects of play, and the idea of games as problematic sites continues to exercise many
critics and commentators (see Griffiths 2009; Anderson et al. 2006; Anderson 2003;
Gunter 1998), with studies sensitive to the experiences and complexity of gameplay
emerging comparatively late in the medium’s history. A lack of scholarly engagement,
or at least the lag between mainstream gaming and concerted study of its cultures and
contours, should surprise us little, and videogames can by no means be considered
unique in this regard. As Roger Sabin (1998) has noted, the history of comic books
saw them similarly overlooked as a form worthy of serious study for many years.
More unexpected, perhaps even more significant, is that it seems possible to identify
a similar unease, almost embarrassment, about videogames within certain quarters of
the industry itself even at this point in its history. Most notably, it is not even universally
referred to as the ‘videogame’ industry with various euphemisms and neologisms passing
into common parlance. Thus, we find certain companies preferring to consider
themselves contributing to a world of ‘interactive entertainment’, ‘interactive fiction’
or even ‘interactive movies’ (see Juul 1999). Charitably, we might argue that the
mutability and dynamism of gaming makes singular definitions problematic and we
should flag the ideological value of ‘interactivity’ as a point worthy of further con-
sideration. The diversity of mobile, social network, console and PC games challenges
our definitions about what a ‘videogame’ might be now and in the future. However,
it is useful to pause and consider whether some of what motivates the avoidance of
terms like ‘game’, ‘play’ and perhaps even ‘computer’ is born of a desire to add a
veneer of respectability, distancing the products and experiences from childish pursuits
and downplaying the technology connection with its unwanted resonances of nerds
in bedrooms hunched over ZX Spectrums and Commodore 64s and the amateurism
of hobbyist production (see Davies 2001 on changing development methodologies).
By way of example, the UK trade organization that represents the interests of
 Videogame studies? 7

videogame developers and publishers recently rebranded itself, changing its name from
the European Leisure Software Producers Association (ELSPA) to the equally non-
committal United Kingdom Interaction Entertainment Association (UKIE), while
in the US, the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA) became the Entertain-
ment Software Association (ESA). Similarly, although Edge magazine is one of the
UK’s (and the global industry’s) most respected videogaming publications, its strapline
reads ‘The Future of Interactive Entertainment’, and what was the ‘Edinburgh Inter-
national Games Festival’ (EIGF) changed its name in 2006 to become ‘Edinburgh
Interactive’.
Never before have videogames been so integrated a part of mainstream popular
culture. Never have there been so many opportunities to play videogames via the
most diverse range of platforms. Yet, for all this, we continue to see a preponderance
of euphemisms in the industries that create and comment on them arising from an
apparent embarrassment or, at least, confusion over the definitions of those most
foundational of terms ‘game’ and ‘play’.
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