The Culture of Digital Gaming Paper presented to JMU Liverpool School of Media, Critical and Creativ

1
The Culture of DigitalGaming(Paper presented
to JMU (Liverpool) School of Media, Critical and
Creative Arts, 6th March 2008)

• Garry Crawford
• University of Salford
• g.crawford_at_salford.ac.uk

2
The Culture of Digital Gaming

• Based upon
• Crawford, G (2006) The Cult of Champ Man The
  Culture and Pleasures of Championship
  Manager/Football Manager Gamers, Information,
  Communication and Society, 9 (4), 496-514.
• Plan
• A Question of Terminology
• Games Matters
• Who Plays?
• Gaming as Violent
• Gamers as mouse potatoes
• Game Studies
• Narrative
• Intertextuality
• Play
• Immersion
• Control
• Performance

3
A Question of Terminology

• video games and computer games
• electronic games, interactive games,
  entertainment software and digital games

4
Games Matters

• 1952 the Cambridge University doctoral student
  Alexander Sandy Douglas programmed as version
  of noughts and crosses
  
• 1958 William Higinbotham, produced a basic tennis
  simulation.
  
• 1962 a researchers at MIT produced a game called
  Spacewar, which became the first distributed game
  (Kirriemuir 2006).
  
• The first commercial home video games console,
  The Magnavox Odyssey, launched in 1972.
  
• Pong launched in the mid-1970s by the newly
  formed Atari company.
  
• Atari followed with the Video Computer System
  (VCS) in 1977.
  
• 1978 and 1980 release of now classic games, such
  as Space Invaders, Pac Man, Asteroids and
  Battlezone.
  
• 1980s and onwards home computers, such as the
  Sinclair Spectrum, IBM PCs and the Commodore 64.
  
• The continued popularity of gaming consoles, such
  as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and
  later Segas Master and Genesis systems.

5
Gaming Today

• Global game sales exceed 21bn (ELSPA 2005)
• In the US alone games sales were worth in excess
  of 6bn (ESA 2007)
  
• 67 percent of Americans heads of households play
  computer or video games (ESA 2007)
  
• Following the US and Japan, Britain constitutes
  the worlds third largest games market, where
  game sales are worth in excess of 2bn annually
  
• Digital game sales now exceeding cinema box
  office takings (ELSPA 2003)
  
• And, today more digital games are sold in the US
  and UK than books (Bryce and Rutter 2001)
  

6
Who Plays?

• 69 percent of US video game players are over the
  age of 18 (ESA 2006)
  
• ESA suggest that 38 percent of gamers are female
  
  
• Frommes (2003) study of over a thousand German
  school children suggests almost a third of girls
  claimed to regularly play digital games (and
  55.7 percent of boys).
• While it has been suggested that in Korea women
  make up to close on 70 percent of gamers
  (Krotoski 2004).
  
• Crawford Gosling (2005) though some studies
  suggest that the number of girls playing digital
  games may be increasing, women remain a lot less
  likely than men to continue gaming into adult
  life.

7
Toys For Boys?

• Why?
• Women more restricted in their leisure choices
  and opportunities than men
  
• Women often lack equal access to technology
• Themes and goals of digital games often do not
  reflect the interests of many women
  
• Games designed for men audiences, and most
  commonly feature male themes, such as violent
  and sport related contents.
  
• Female characters are often portrayed in
  sexualised or passive roles

8
Gaming Violence

• Many games are violent
• Media effects
• Some, such as Dill and Dill (1998) and Emes
  (1997), suggested that video games could
  potentially be more damaging due to their
  interactive nature

• But relationship between violent games is far
  from conclusive
  
• Criticized for its often inconsistent
  methodologies and small and unrepresentative
  sample group
  
• For overestimating the ability of games to
  influence attitudes and behaviour
  
• And for seeing gamers as passive and vulnerable
  to representations of violence within games etc.

9
Mouse Potatoes?

• A generation of passive mouse potatoes (Kline
  et al. 2003).
  
• No evidence to suggest gamers have less friends
  (e.g. Colwell and Payne 2000)
  
• Interactive Software Federation of Europe (2005)
  suggests that 55 percent of gamers play with
  others
  
• Mitchell (1985 134) suggests that digital gaming
  enhances family interactions and is reminiscent
  of days of Monopoly, checkers, card games, and
  jigsaw puzzles.
• No relationship between digital games and sports
  participation rates (Fromme 2003, Crawford
  2005).
  

10
Gaming Pleasures?
Kerr et al. (2004)
11
Narrative

• Frasca (2003 221) main focus of research on
  games, slowly began to shift away from early
  do-games-induce-violent-behaviour studies
  towards an analysis of games as media texts.

• Literary theory and/or film studies (e.g. Espen
  Aareths (1997) Cybertext and Janet Murrays
  (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck)
  
• Games as a text
• Narrative discourse and a story
• Carr (2006) texts will have an implied author
  and implied reader (amongst other possible
  positions), which are not necessarily a
  flesh-and-blood individuals, but rather a
  structural entity, and organising principle
  within the text (2006 37), which appear to
  privilege one perspective over others.

12
Intertextuality (and narrative continued)

• Intertextuality (loosely) refers to the
  cross-referencing and interplay between various
  texts.
  
• Intertextuality is particularly apparent in new
  forms of media
  
• As Murray and Jenkins (n.d.) wrote
• a high proportion of the digital media on the
  market are second-order phenomenon, adaptations
  of texts that gained their popularity through
  film and television. In a horizontally integrated
  media industry, characters, plots and images move
  fluidly across various media, participation in
  what Marsha Kinder (1991) has called the
  entertainment supersystem.

13
Intertextuality

• The Matrix and Enter The Matrix
• Jenkins (2004) transmedia

14
Critiquing Narrative

• Can digital games can be understood as a text
  in the same way as older media forms (such as
  books, television, radio and cinema)?
  
• Games are not set and rigid, but can vary
  depending on how the player interacts with these.
  
  
• Frasca (2003) suggests that while traditional
  media (such as films) are representational
  digital games are based around simulation.
  
• But,Jenkins 2004) and suggest that the activities
  of gamers and audiences of other media forms are
  not as different as many game theorists would
  have us believe.
• For instance, game play is still restricted by
  the limitations of technology and the intentions
  of the game designers.
  
• Audiences of other media forms are not as passive
  as many writers in games studies would seem to
  assume (e.g. see Walter Benjamin, to Stuart Hall
  and Michel de Certeau etc.)
• Not all games tell stories. For instance, puzzle
  games like Tetris have no narrative structure
  within them.
  
• Narratives are secondary to play within games.
• Kirkpatrick (2004) suggests gaming success most
  commonly comes from the cynicism of the gamer,
  who recognises games as consisting of a series of
  tasks and seeks to complete these in a pragmatic
  way.

15
Play

• Fuller and Jenkins (1995 60) write
• once immersed in playing, we dont care whether
  we rescue Princess Toadstool or not all that
  matters is staying alive long enough to move
  between levels (cited in Newman 2004 94).
• Ludology
• Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois
• Magic Circle

16
Immersion

• Narrative
• Strategies
• Physical dexterity (even flow?)
• Murray and Jenkins (n.d. 2) write
• immersion is the pleasure of being transported to
  another place, of losing our sense of reality and
  extending ourselves into a seemingly limitless,
  enclosing, other realm
• But games are socially located

17
Control

• Kerr et al. (2004 14) feedback loop
• Transfomative play
• Marshall (2002 73) suggests
• computer-developed games are highly structured
  entities however, within those structures, the
  best games encode tricks or cheats which
  allow a myriad of transformations possible for
  any player (cited in Kerr et al. 2004 15)
• Moding Hacking

18
Control

• Numerous authors (such as Gansing 2003, Palmer
  2003) highlight the overuse of terms such as
  interactivity and user-control
  
• Palmer (2003 160) Sony VCR which promised to
  master time, memory and circumstance
  
• users control is restricted by the limitations
  of technology, and the aims of the designers and
  manufactures, and the ideologies behind these.
  
• Digital games tend to be constructed from the
  perspective of the male gaze (see Yates and
  Littleton 2001)
  
• Or revolve around capitalist values, such as
  economic accumulation (for instance, see Nutt and
  Railtons (2003) consideration of The Sims).
  

19
Performance

• Kerr et al. (2004 15)
• New media are seen to possess a performative
  aspect, insofar as they allow for and foster the
  users experimentation with alternative
  identities (Turkle 1995). This is true for
  computer games as well as internet chat rooms
  etc. The pleasure of leaving ones identity
  behind and taking on someone elses identity is
  regarded as a key pleasure in digital games.

20
Performance

• Rehak (2003) digital gamers are both
  participants and spectators in the games they
  play.
  
• For Kerr et al. (2004 13) a key feature of
  gaming performativity is derived from that it
  gaming is separate from everyday life, and
  furthermore to support this argument they cite
  Huizinga (1986 8) who suggests that play
  involves a stepping out of real life (ibid.).
  
• However, as suggested earlier, distinctions
  between a virtual gaming world and real life
  are problematic.

21
Performance

• Crawford and Rutter (2007) consider the social
  aspects of gaming performances
  
• Multiplayer games allow in-game performance with
  other human players
  
• Dressing and adapting characters in massively
  multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs)
  
• King and Borland (2003) group of players of
  Ultima Online set up an acting troupe to perform
  plays

22
Performance

• Wright et al. (2002 n.p.)
• The meaning of playing Counter-Strike an online
  FPS is not merely embodied in the graphics or
  even the violent game play, but in the social
  mediations that go on between players through
  their talk with each other and by their
  performance within the game. Participants, then,
  actively create the meaning of the game through
  their virtual talk and behavior borrowing heavily
  from popular and youth culture representations.
  Players learn rules of social comportment that
  reproduce codes of behavior and established
  standards of conduct, while also safely
  experimenting with the violation of these codes

23
Performance

• Mark (male, aged 23, graduate student, UK)
• It gets very emotional butvery frustrating game
  as well, its crazy. I remember I won...first
  time I won the FA Cup in the digital game
  Championship Manager round my mates at
  midnight. Dont know, I wouldnt usually do, I
  mean his parents were asleep, I woke his dad up I
  got so excited and you know, crazy. Its weird
  like that... it has this hold over you (cited in
  Crawford 2005 256-257)

24
Performance

• Shaun
• Yes I used to love trying to impress my work
  mates with my knowledge of relatively unknown
  foreigners footballers, never letting on that
  it was all gained from buying them in CM
  Championship Manager (cited in Crawford 2006
  509)

25
Current Future Research

• Crawford Gosling (British Academy)
• Gaming everyday life
• Riceour and Giddens
• Narrative Identity

26
The End
27

• References 1
• Bryce, J. and Rutter, J. (2001) In the Game In
  the Flow Presence in Public Computer Gaming,
  poster presented at Computer Games and Digital
  Textualities, IT University of Copenhagen, March,
  online available at http//www.digiplay.org.uk
• (2003) Gender Dynamics and the Social and
  Spatial Organization of Computer Gaming, Leisure
  Studies, 22, 1-15.
  
• Cassell, J. and Jenkins, H. (2000) Chess of
  Girls? Feminism and Computer Games, in J.
  Cassell and H. Jenkins (eds), From Barbie to
  Mortal Combat Gender and Computer Games, London
  MIT Press.
• Crawford, G (2006) The Cult of Champ Man The
  Culture and Pleasures of Championship
  Manager/Football Manager Gamers, Information,
  Communication and Society, 9 (4), 496-514.
• Crawford, G. (2005) Digital Gaming, Sport and
  Gender, Leisure Studies, 24 (3), 259-270.
  
• Crawford, G. and Gosling V.K. (2005) Toys for
  Boys? Womens marginalization and participation
  as digital gamers, Sociological Review Online,
  10 (1), online available at http//www.socresonlin
  e.org.uk/10/1/crawford.html
• Crawford, G. and Rutter, J., (2007) Playing the
  Game performance in digital game audiences in
  J. Gray, C. Sandvoss, and C. L. Harrington (eds)
  Fandom Identities and Communities in a Mediated
  World, NYU, NY.
• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow The Psychology
  of Optimal Experience, New York Harper Perennial
  
  
• DiGRA (no date) Digital Games Research
  Association, online available at
  http//www.digra.org
  
• Eskelinen, M. and Tronstad, R. (2003) Video
  Games and Configurative Performances, in M.J.P
  Wolf and B. Perron (eds) The Video Game Theory
  Reader, London Routledge.
• Frasca, G. (2003) Simulation versus Narrative
  Introduction to Ludology, in M.J.P Wolf and B.
  Perron (eds) The Video Game Theory Reader,
  London Routledge.
• Gansing, K. (2003) The Myth of Interactivity?
  Interactive Films as an Imaginary Genre, paper
  presented at MelbourneDAC2003 conference, online
  available at http//hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/pape
  rs/Gansing.pdf
• Green, E. (2001) Technology, Leisure and
  Everyday Practices in E. Green and A. Adams
  (eds) Virtual Gender Technology, Consumption and
  Identity, London Routledge.
• Hall, S.(1980) Encoding and Decoding in S.
  Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe and P. Willis (eds)
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• Huizinga, J. (1986 1938) Homo Ludens Versuch
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• IDSA (2002) Essential Facts about the Computer
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  http//www.idsa.com/IDSABooklet.pdf
• Jakobsson and Taylor (2003 89) The Sopranos
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  Multiplayer Online Games, paper presented at
  MelbourneDAC2003 conference, online available at
  http//hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Jakobsson.
  pdf

28

• References 2
• Jenkins, H. (2002) Interactive Audiences?, in
  D. Harries (ed.) The New Media Book, London
  BFI.
  
• Kerr, A., Brereton, P. Kücklich, J. and Flynn, R.
  (2004) New Media New Media Pleasures?, STeM
  Working Paper Final Research Report of a Pilot
  Research Project, online available at
  www.comms.dcu.ie/kerra/source20files/text/NMP_wor
  king20paper20final.pdf
• Kerr, A., Brereton, P., and Kücklich, J. 2005,
  New Media New Pleasures?, International
  Journal of Cultural Studies, vol.8 no.3,
  pp.375-394.
• Kinder, M. (1991) Playing with Power in Movies,
  Television and Video Games From Muppet Babies to
  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Berkeley
  University of California Press.
• Kirkpatrick, Graeme (2004) Critical Technology A
  Social Theory of Personal Computing, Aldershot,
  Ashgate.
  
• Klevjer, Rune (2001) Computer Game Aesthetics
  and Media Studies, online available at
  http//uib.no/people/smkrk/docs/klevjerpaper_2001.
  htm
• Mactavish, A. (2002) Technological Pleasure The
  Performance and Narrative of Technology in
  Half-Life and other High-Tech Computer Games, in
  G. King and T. Krzywinska (eds) ScreenPlay
  cinema/videogames/interfaces, London Wallflower
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• Marshall, P.D. (2002) The New Intertextual
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• Mitchell, E. (1985) The Dynamics of Family
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  Marriage and Family Review, 8 (1-2), 121-135.
• Murray, J. and H. Jenkins (no date) Before the
  Holodeck Translating Star Trek into Digital
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  s/wwww/faculty/henry3/holodeck.html
• Newman, J. (2004) Videogames, London Routledge.
• Nutt, D and Railton, N. (2003) The Sims Real
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• Palmer, D. (2003) The Paradox of User Control,
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• Rehak, B. (2003) Playing at Being
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• Squire, K. (2002) Cultural Framing of
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• Turkle, S. (1995) Life and the Screen Identity
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• Yates, S. J. and Littleton, K. L. (2001)
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