DIGITAL MEDIA AND CONVERGENCE

Because they have been inherently digital for much of their history, electronic games have not always felt the full force of the digital turn—at least compared to more traditional media. While the Internet turned much of the media world upside down and gave rise to powerful companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, the digital gaming industry was already well equipped to chart its own path. It’s almost as if the Super Mario Bros. (created by Nintendo in 1985) just kept chugging along in their mission on a console monitor or Game Boy screen, oblivious to the changing media world around them.

But eventually digital games became more fully absorbed into the new digital conglomerates. Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, entered the video game console business in 2001 with the Xbox. At the time, the New York Times called the Xbox “a Trojan horse of sorts, part of the company’s ambitious effort to extend its reach from the personal computer to the television.”1 Today, that characterization remains true: Microsoft itself calls the console’s latest version, the Xbox One, an “all-in-one entertainment system” in which games, movies, music, sports, and live television are equal offerings. Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook have begun to notice digital games, too, especially those on mobile phone, tablet, and social media platforms, giving rise to tens of thousands of gaming apps. But often gaming has been a way to expand the business or add to the bottom line, rather than a central component of these companies’ operations.

Which is why Facebook’s purchase of a small virtual reality company in 2014 is—depending on one’s viewpoint—either the craziest or the most brilliant move yet to integrate gaming into a digital corporation. Oculus VR invented the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset developed with funds from Kickstarter, and had only demonstrated experimental versions of the device. The company was headed by a twenty-one-year-old inventor named Palmer Luckey and had never made any money or sold consumer versions of Oculus Rift when Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion. Responses to Facebook’s purchase varied widely. A columnist for the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch said Facebook’s decision was “bold” and “smart,” while a Forbes magazine columnist wrote, “[Facebook founder and CEO] Mark Zuckerberg is nuts.”2

Zuckerberg’s purchase means that Facebook, like Microsoft, wants gaming to be part of its business. (Up until this point, Facebook’s foray into games consisted of hosting social media games like Words with Friends and FarmVille.) But Zuckerberg’s bigger bet is that virtual reality will be the next generation of gaming style and that virtual reality will then be the leading interface for everything else in the media business. On the announcement of the purchase, Zuckerberg described his vision:

This is just the start. After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face—just by putting on goggles in your home.

This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.3

While Microsoft used digital games as a way to enter into our living rooms, Facebook envisions digital games as a way to enter into every part of our lives. After all, why would we want to “share” our experiences via two-dimensional posts on Facebook when we can be there—virtually—on the Facebook of the future?

ELECTRONIC GAMES OFFER PLAY, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SOCIAL INTERACTION. Like the Internet, they combine text, audio, and moving images. But they go even further than the Internet by enabling players to interact with aspects of the medium in the context of the game—from deciding when an onscreen character jumps or punches to controlling the direction of the “story.” This interactive quality creates an experience so compelling that vibrant communities of fans have cropped up around the globe. And the games have powerfully shaped the everyday lives of millions of people. Indeed, for players around the world, digital gaming has become a social medium as compelling and distracting as other social media. The U.S. Supreme Court has even granted digital gaming First Amendment freedom of speech rights, ensuring its place as a mass medium.

In this chapter, we will take a look at the evolving mass medium of digital gaming and: