Trends and Issues in Digital Gaming

The ever-growing relationship between video games and other media, such as books, movies, and television, leaves no doubt that digital gaming has a permanent place in our culture. Like other media, games are a venue for advertising. A virtual billboard in a video game is usually more than just a digital prop; as in television and the movies, it’s a paid placement. And like other media, games are a subject of social concern. Violent and misogynistic content has from time to time spurred calls for more regulation of electronic games. But as games permeate more aspects of culture and become increasingly available in nonstandard formats and genres, they may also become harder to define and, therefore, regulate.

Electronic Gaming and Media Culture

LaunchPad

Video Games at the Movies

Alice, the hero of the Resident Evil film series, fights zombies in this clip.

Discussion: In what ways does this clip replicate the experience of game play? In what ways is a film inherently different from a game?

Beyond the immediate industry, electronic games have had a pronounced effect on media culture. For example, fantasy league sports have spawned a number of draft specials on ESPN as well as a regular podcast, Fantasy Focus, on ESPN Radio. Fantasy football has even inspired an adult comedy called The League on the cable channel FXX. In the case of the Web site Twitch, streaming and archived video of digital games being played is the content. In just three years, the site became so popular that Amazon bought it for almost $1 billion to add to its collection of original video programming.

Like television shows, books, and comics before them, electronic games have inspired movies, such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), the Resident Evil series (2001–present, including a sixth installment due in 2015), and Need for Speed (2014). Tron (1982), a movie inspired by video games, spurred an entire franchise of books, comic books, and arcade and console video games in the 1980s; and it was revived a generation later with an Xbox LIVE game in 2008, a movie sequel (Tron: Legacy) in 2010, and a Disney television series. For many Hollywood blockbusters today, a video game spin-off is a must-have item. Box office hits like Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), Brave (2012), The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), and Maleficent (2014) all have companion video games for consoles, portable players, or mobile devices.

Books and electronic games have also had a long history of influencing each other. Japanese manga and anime (comic books and animation) have also inspired video games, such as Akira, Astro Boy, and Naruto. Batman: Arkham Asylum, a top video game title introduced in 2009, is based closely on the Batman comic-book stories, while The Witcher, an action role-playing game for PCs, is based on Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski’s saga, The Witcher. Perhaps the most unusual link between books and electronic games is the Marvel vs. Capcom series. In this series, characters from Marvel comic books (Captain America, Hulk, Spider-Man, Wolverine) battle characters from Capcom games like Street Fighter and Resident Evil (Akuma, Chun-Li, Ryu, Albert Wesker).

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BIG-BUDGET MOVIES LIKE GODZILLA (2014) inspire an increasing number of game tie-ins. In the past, these games would often trail their movie counterparts by months; for Godzilla, a simpler mobile game was released concurrently with the movie, while a more elaborate console-based game was promised for the PlayStation 3 at a later date. © Warner Bros. Pictures/Everett Collection

Electronic Gaming and Advertising

Commercialism is as prevalent in video games as it is in most entertainment media. Advergames, like television’s infomercials or newspapers and magazines’ advertorials, are video games created for purely promotional purposes. The first notable advergame debuted in 1992, when Chester Cheetah, the official mascot for Cheetos snacks, starred in two video games for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo systems—Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool and Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest. In late 2006, Burger King sold three advergame titles for Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles for $3.99 each with value-meal purchases. One title, Sneak King, required the player to have the Burger King mascot deliver food to other characters before they faint from hunger. More recent is the innovative interactive Web commercial “Magnum Pleasure Hunt,” for gourmet Magnum chocolate ice cream bars. In this platform game, the user manipulates the constantly jogging, barefoot “Magnum Girl” up and over the game’s Internet-based environments (such as Bing travel pages, YouTube videos, and luxury hotel Web sites). A player earns points by strategically timing Magnum Girl’s jumps so that she connects with—or consumes—the game’s many chocolate bonbons, and Magnum’s specialty chocolate bar is the final reward for Magnum Girl’s (and the player’s) hard work. In-game advertisements are more subtle; ads are integrated into the game as billboards, logos, or storefronts (e.g., a Farmers Insurance airship floating by in FarmVille or Dove soap spas appearing in The Sims Social), or advertised products appear as components of the game (e.g., in the game Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, a large glowing billboard for Axe deodorant becomes an obstacle for the player to overcome).20

Some in-game advertisements are static, which means the ads are permanently placed in the game. Other in-game ads are dynamic, which means the ads are digitally networked and can be altered remotely, so agencies can tailor them according to release time, geographical location, or user preferences. A movie ad, for example, can have multiple configurations to reflect the movie’s release date and screening markets. Advertisers can also record data on users who come in contact with a dynamic ad, such as how long they look at it, from what angle, and how often, and can thus determine how to alter their ad campaigns in the future. The Xbox Kinect has taken dynamic advertising one step further with its newest consoles, enabling players to engage with the in-game ads using motion and voice control to learn more about a product.

Google’s game advertising strategy, launched in 2008, is to place increasing numbers of ads in well-known social game titles, like Frogger and Dance Dance Revolution—an indication of the tremendous potential growth in social gaming. All in-game advertising is estimated to generate $1 billion in global revenue in 2014.21

Addiction and Other Concerns

Though many people view gaming as a simple leisure activity, the electronic gaming industry has sparked controversy. Parents, politicians, the medical establishment, and media scholars have expressed concern about the addictive quality of video games, especially MMORPGs, and have raised the alarm about violent and misogynistic game content—standard fare for many of the most heavily played games.

Addiction

No serious—and honest—gamer can deny the addictive qualities of electronic gaming. In fact, an infamous South Park episode from 2006 (“Make Love, Not Warcraft”) satirized the obsessive, addictive behavior of video game playing. In a 2011 study of more than three thousand third through eighth graders from Singapore, one in ten were considered pathological gamers, meaning that their gaming addiction was jeopardizing multiple areas of their lives, including school, social and family relations, and psychological well-being. Indeed, the more the children were addicted, the more prone they were to depression, social phobias, and increased anxiety, which led to poorer grades in school. Singapore’s high percentage of pathological youth gamers is in line with numbers reported in other countries, including the United States, where studies found 8.5 percent of gamers to be addicted. In China, the number is 10.3 percent, and in Germany, 11.9 percent.22

Gender is a factor in game addiction: A 2013 study found that males are much more susceptible to game addiction. This makes sense, given that the most popular games—action and shooter games—are heavily geared toward males.23 These findings are also not entirely surprising, given that many electronic games are addictive not by accident but by design. Just as habit formation is a primary goal of virtually every commercial form of electronic media, from newspapers to television to radio, cultivating compulsiveness is the aim of most game designs. From recognizing high scores to incorporating various difficulty settings (encouraging players to try easy, medium, and hard versions) and levels that gradually increase in difficulty, designers provide constant in-game incentives for obsessive play.

This is especially true of multiplayer online games—like Halo, Call of Duty, and World of Warcraft—that make money from long-term engagement by selling expansion packs or charging monthly subscription fees. These games have elaborate achievement systems with hard-to-resist rewards that include military ranks like “General” or fanciful titles like “King Slayer,” as well as special armor, weapons, and mounts (creatures your avatar can ride, including bears, wolves, or even dragons), all aimed at turning casual players into habitual ones.

This strategy of promoting habit formation may not differ from the cultivation of other media obsessions, like watching televised sporting events. Even so, real-life stories, such as that of the South Korean couple whose three-month-old daughter died of malnutrition while the negligent parents spent ten-hour overnight sessions in an Internet café raising a virtual daughter, bring up serious questions about video games and addiction.24 South Korea, one of the world’s most Internet-connected countries, is already sponsoring efforts to battle Internet addiction, along with China, the Netherlands, and Australia (see “Global Village: South Korea’s Gaming Obsession” on pages 96–97).

Meanwhile, industry executives and others cite the positive impact of digital games, such as the mental stimulation and educational benefits of games like SimCity, the health benefits of Wii Fit, and the socially rewarding benefits of playing games together as a family or with friends.

Violence and Misogyny

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the main trade association of the gaming industry, likes to point out that nearly half of game players are women, that nearly three-quarters of games sold are rated in the family- and teen-friendly categories, and that the average age of a game player is thirty. While these statements are true, they also mask a troubling aspect of some of game culture’s most popular games: their violent and sexist imagery.

Most games involving combat, guns, and other weapons are intentionally violent, with representations of violence becoming all the more graphic as game visuals reach cinematic hyperrealism. The most violent video games, rated M for “Mature,” often belong to the first-person shooter, dark fantasy, or survival horror genres (or a combination of all three) and cast players in a variety of sinister roles—serial killers, mortal combat soldiers, chain-gun-wielding assassins, nut jobs going “postal,” father-hating sons, mutated guys out for revenge, not-quite-executed death-row inmates, and underworld criminals (to name a few)—in which they earn points by killing and maiming their foes (sometimes monsters but often “ordinary people”) through the most horrendous means possible. In this genre of games, violence is a celebration, as is clear from one Top 10 list featuring the most “delightfully violent video games of all time.”25

That some games can be violent and misogynistic is not a point of dispute. But the possible effects of such games have been debated for years, and video games have been accused of being a factor in violent episodes, such as the Columbine High School shootings in 1999. Earlier research linked playing violent video games to aggressive thoughts or hostility, but those effects don’t necessarily transfer to real-world environments. Instead, more recent studies suggest that the personality traits of certain types of players should be of greater concern than the violence of video games. For example, a study in the Review of General Psychology noted that individuals with a combination of “high neuroticism (e.g., easily upset, angry, depressed, emotional, etc.), low agreeableness (e.g., little concern for others, indifferent to others’ feelings, cold, etc.), and low conscientiousness (e.g., break rules, don’t keep promises, act without thinking, etc.)” are more susceptible to the negative outcomes measured in studies of violent video games.26 For the vast majority of players, the study concluded, violent video games have no adverse effects.

There is less research on misogyny (hatred of women) in video games. One of the most extreme game narratives is from Grand Theft Auto 3, in which male characters can pick up female prostitutes, pay money for sex, get an increase in player “health,” and then beat up or kill the hooker to get their money back. Although women are close to half of the digital game audience in the United States, it’s likely that many aren’t engaged by this story. The source of the problem may be the male insularity of the game development industry—for reasons that are unclear, few women are on the career path to be involved in game development. According to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, “Women hold 56% of all professional occupations in the U.S. workforce, but only 25% of IT occupations.” And even as the digital game industry gets bigger, the impact of women gets smaller. “In 2009, just 18% of undergraduate Computing and Information Sciences degrees were awarded to women; in 1985, women earned 37% of these degrees.”27 (See “Media Literacy and the Critical Process: First-Person Shooter Games: Misogyny as Entertainment?” on page 98 for more on violence and misogyny in video games.)

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GAMES IN THE GRAND THEFT AUTO series typically receive a rating of “Mature,” indicating they should not be sold to players under seventeen. However, the ratings do not distinguish between overall game violence and misogynistic attitudes. David J. Green–Lifestyle/Alamy

GLOBAL VILLAGE

South Korea’s Gaming Obsession

In 1997–98, a deep economic crisis hit the formerly booming economies of East Asia. Banks and corporations failed, exports fell, and unemployment soared. South Korea’s new president responded to the crisis with a unique recovery plan for his country: Make South Korea the world’s leader in Internet connectivity. By 2004, South Korea had achieved this goal and then some, with more than 70 percent of the nation connected to the fiber-optic broadband network. Today, that number is 95 percent.1 Perhaps the most interesting phenomenon arising from this degree of broadband penetration is the advent of Internet cafés known as PC bangs—literally “PC rooms”—in South Korea.

By 2004, more than thirty thousand PC bangs dotted the country, and they became the main hangout for teenagers and young adults. “In America they have lots of fields and grass and outdoor space. They have lots of room to play soccer and baseball and other sports,” explained one PC bang operator. “We don’t have that here. Here, there are very few places for young people to go and very little for them to do, so they found PC games, and it’s their way to spend time together and relax.”2 Some PC bangs, like Intercool in Seoul’s Shinlim district, cover two floors, one for smoking patrons and the other for nonsmoking. In a country where most young adults live with their parents until they are married, PC bangs have become a necessary outlet for socializing.

By far the biggest draw of PC bangs, with their rows of late-model computers and ultrafast Internet connections, are online video games like StarCraft and Lineage. Because of long-standing resentment against Japan for its years as an imperial ruler over Korea, Koreans shunned Japanese-made video game consoles, such as Sony PlayStations and those made by Nintendo and Sega, and instead preferred to play video games on PCs, a pastime that now feeds the popularity of the broadband network. The PC game StarCraft is so popular in South Korea that two-hour battles among the nation’s best StarCraft players are featured on prime-time television, and an entire sports channel (OnGameNet) is devoted to StarCraft competitions and interviews with the biggest StarCraft celebrities. One player, Lim Yo-hwan (also known by his StarCraft identity, “BoxeR”), began playing in PC bangs as a boy because he couldn’t afford his own computer.3 Lim became the first professional Korean gamer to be signed to a salaried corporate sponsorship contract: South Korea’s largest cell phone company hired him to captain its now-legendary gaming team, SK Telecom T1, which went on to win four hundred televised matches.

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Kim Jae-Hwan/AFP/Getty Images/Newscom

Today, e-gaming is a legitimate career in South Korea, where league champions can earn as much as $500,000 a year.4 Gamers who reach the competitive circuit are followed like “characters” in any televised drama, can draw millions of members to their fan clubs, and can become such huge celebrities that they need disguises to walk outside their houses. “When you look at gaming around the world, Korea is the leader in many ways. It just occupies a different place in the culture there than anywhere else,” said Rich Wickham, the global head of Microsoft’s PC game business.5

With more than half of Korea’s fifty million people playing video games, and a culture that celebrates gaming as a sport, it’s no surprise that some Koreans spend large amounts of time in front of their PCs.6 Generally, Koreans view gaming as a good stress reliever, especially given the enormous pressure put on Korean youth to succeed academically. A typical Korean student plays about twenty-three hours a week.7 But studies have also confirmed that 4 percent of adolescent players in Korea are seriously addicted to gaming. Dramatic stories of addicted users playing fifty to eighty-five hours nonstop, getting fired from their jobs, failing school, and even dying in the midst of a gaming binge because they’re neglecting grave medical symptoms point to the dark underbelly of Korean gaming culture.8

The Korean government has responded with numerous approaches to combat addiction, including public awareness campaigns, offers of free software to limit the time people spend on the Web, government-sponsored counseling clinics and treatment programs for gaming addicts, and Internet “rest camps.” Most recently, the government has opted for industry regulation: It has banned all teenagers under the age of sixteen from access to highly addictive (MMORPG and first-person shooter) games between midnight and 6 A.M. (a ban that some have found can be bypassed with an alternative ID).

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Jean Chung/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Media Literacy and the Critical Process

First-Person Shooter Games: Misogyny as Entertainment?

Historical first-person shooter games are a significant subgenre of action games, the biggest-selling genre of the digital game industry. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (set in a fictional WWIII) made $775 million in its first five days. And with thirteen million units sold by 2012, Rockstar Games’ critically acclaimed Red Dead Redemption (RDR, set in the Wild West) was applauded for its realism and called a “tour de force” by the New York Times.1 But as these games proliferate through our culture, what are we learning as we are launched back and forth in time and into the worlds of these games?

1 DESCRIPTION. Red Dead Redemption features John Madsen, a white outlaw turned federal agent, who journeys to the “uncivilized” West to capture or kill his old gang members. Within this game, gamers encounter breathtaking vistas and ghost towns with saloons, prostitutes, and gunslingers; large herds of cattle; and scenes of the Mexican Rebellion. Shootouts are common in towns and on the plains, and gamers earn points for killing animals and people. The New York Times review notes that “Red Dead Redemption is perhaps most distinguished by the brilliant voice acting and pungent, pitch-perfect writing we have come to expect from Rockstar.”2

2 ANALYSIS. RDR may have “pitch-perfect writing,” but a certain tune emerges. For example, African Americans and Native Americans are absent from the story line (although they were clearly present in the West of 1911). The roles of women are limited: They are portrayed as untrustworthy and chronically nagging wives, prostitutes, or nuns—and they can be blithely killed in front of sheriffs and husbands without ramifications. One special mission is to hogtie a nun or prostitute and drop her onto tracks in front of an oncoming train. One gamer in his popular how-to demo on YouTube calls this mission “the coolest achievement I’ve ever seen in a game.”3

3 INTERPRETATION. RDR may give us a technologically rich immersion into the Wild West of 1911, but it relies on clichés to do so (macho white gunslinger as leading man, weak or contemptible women, vigilante justice). If the macho/misogynistic narrative possibilities and value system of RDR seem familiar, it’s because the game is based on Rockstar’s other video game hit, Grand Theft Auto (GTA), which lets players have sex with and then graphically kill hookers. GTA was heavily criticized for creating an “X-Rated wonderland” and was dubbed “Grand Theft Misogyny.”4 Indeed, Rockstar simply took the GTA engine and interface and overlaid new scenes, narratives, and characters, moving from the urban streets of Liberty City to the American frontier towns.5

4 EVALUATION. The problem with Red Dead Redemption is its limited view of history, lack of imagination, and reliance on misogyny as entertainment. Since its gameplay is so similar to that of GTA, the specifics of time and place are beside the point—all that’s left is killing and hating women. Video games are fun, but what effect do they have on men’s attitudes toward women?

5 ENGAGEMENT. Talk to friends about games like GTA, RDR, and Rockstar’s latest, L.A. Noire (set in 1940s Los Angeles, it also contains scenes with nudity and graphic violence against women). Comment on blog sites about the ways some games can provide a mask for misogyny, and write to Rockstar itself (www.rockstargames.com), demanding less demeaning narratives regarding women and ethnic minorities.

Regulating Gaming

For decades, concern about violence in video games has led to calls for regulation. Back in 1976, an arcade game called Death Race prompted the first public outcry over the violence of electronic gaming. The primitive graphics of the game depicted a blocky car running down stick-figure Gremlins that, if struck, turned into grave markers. Described as “sick and morbid” by the National Safety Council, Death Race inspired a 60 Minutes report on the potential psychological damage of playing video games. Over the next thirty-five years, violent video games would prompt citizen groups and politicians to call for government regulation of electronic games’ content.

In 1993, after the violence of Mortal Kombat and Night Trap attracted the attention of religious and educational organizations, Senator Joe Lieberman conducted a hearing that proposed federal regulation of the gaming industry. Following a pattern established in the movie and music industries, the gaming industry implemented a self-regulation system enforced by an industry panel. The industry founded the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in 1994 to institute a labeling system designed to inform parents of sexual and violent content that might not be suitable for younger players. Publishers aren’t required to submit their games to the ESRB for a rating, but many retailers will only sell rated games, so gamemakers usually consent to the process. To get a rating, the game companies submit scripts that include any dialogue and music lyrics, and also fill out a questionnaire to describe the story and identify possibly offensive content.28 Currently the ESRB sorts games into six categories: EC (Early Childhood), E (Everyone), E 10+, T (Teens), M (17+), and AO (Adults Only 18+).

In the most recent effort to regulate video games, California passed a law in 2005 to fine stores $1,000 for selling video games rated M or AO to minors. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law in a 7–2 decision, setting a difficult precedent for the establishment of other laws regulating electronic games.

The Future of Gaming and Interactive Environments

Gaming technology of the future promises a more immersive and portable experience that will touch even more aspects of our lives. The Wii has been successful in harnessing more interactive technology to attract nongamers with its motion-controlled games. Nintendo’s latest Wii U system goes a step further—in one game, the controller serves as a shield to block virtual arrows shot by pirates on the TV screen. Microsoft’s motion-sensing Xbox Kinect has been a hit since its introduction in late 2010, and with Avatar Kinect, users can control their avatar’s motions as the Kinect senses even small physical gestures. In 2012, Sony released its SOEmote facial-tracking and voice-font software with its popular Everquest II game, enabling players to give their facial expressions and voices to their avatars. The anticipated release of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset could further deepen the immersive play of games.

Video games in the future will also continue to move beyond just entertainment. The term gamification describes how interactive game experiences are being embedded to bring competition and rewards to everyday activities.29 Games are already used in workforce training, for social causes, in classrooms, and as part of multimedia journalism. For example, to accompany a news report about texting while driving, the New York Times developed an interactive game, Gauging Your Distraction, to demonstrate the consequences of distractions (such as cell phones) on driving ability. All these developments continue to make games a larger part of our media experiences.