Unlike the previous generations, digital games have become more social and communication-based these days, requiring either online or face-to-face interactions. Online interaction entails chatting and video conferencing while gaming as a community in a virtual space without geopolitical boundaries. Offline or face-to-face interaction requires the presence of every individual within the same tangible space as a social group.
Even in the first half of the 21st century, academic discourse on digital gaming was highly scanty, given its restricted scope, reach, and negative publicity compared to outdoor or “real” games. However, despite criticisms and restrictions, digital gaming and its expansion, implications, effects, and consequences are slowly being incorporated into academic deliberation nowadays.
Although digital games are yet to be widely celebrated across every spectrum of society, they have grown in leaps and bounds in production volumes, popularity, and acceptance- this acceptance is, however, subject to generational variations. While online gaming has become an indelible part of the millennial culture, the same can not be said for the generations earlier, owing to the different environments in which they had grown up.
This write-up discusses some academic accounts (books and articles) focusing on online gaming and digital cultures. These accounts, I believe, would be helpful in understanding the developmental patterns of online games and their subsequent emergence as a new media.
Mia, A. (2016). Game and Digital Culture: A Study on Hay Day Game. Humaniora, 7(22), DOI: 10.21512/humaniora.v7i1.3393
Digital gaming is generally perceived as a commercial enterprise with little or no social and cultural values. Through the vast consumer culture, the captivating virtual realities, and different patterns of interactive communications, the author Mia Angeline tries to comprehend the everyday routines and experiences of the gamers. Angeline argues that these gamers are not restricted to their virtual spaces anymore. Instead, online games have become more “social-based” with a distinctive “social pattern of interaction” along with the intermeshing of cultural values. Angeline picks a trendy online game called “The Hay Day” to understand these aforementioned patterns of social interaction(s) and cultural dissemination. There is now the practice of offline competitive events of digital games among the gamers where they meet and play in front of each other with certain financial rewards. These meet-ups generally lead to strong social interactions among people of different colours, creeds, religions, and gender and hence facilitate the dissipation of cultural values and norms, thereby creating a big cosmopolitan ground of sociocultural interplays.
Another exciting aspect that Angeline brings out through her study is the comparative popularity of online games. It exhibits the reasons why some online games become very successful in capturing the public imagination, while some online games fail miserably and eventually fade into oblivion. I believe this phenomenon is not very different in the case of outdoor games as well. While some games like Football have worldwide popularity, games like Cricket are still restricted within specific countries. This very popularity comes from the consumption patterns of individuals. Through both qualitative and quantitative approaches such as first-party observation, interviews with respective gamers, and an in-depth literature review, the author comes to the conclusion that similar to outdoor games, the popularity of online games is controlled and measured by the patterns of consumption – albeit different ones. These patterns of consumption, the author argues, depend on the “social media environment” of the respective players. This, in turn, leads to the increasing popularity of a specific game through virtual interactivity. Hence, the previously held idea that gamers are antisocial and disruptive elements of society has shifted to them being the social influencers based on digital gaming.
The author further argues that digital gaming culture also has tremendous potential for advancing constrictive social messages through its engaging nature like other outdoor sports. Digital games are no longer a source of bland and meaningless amusement; they also have positive social virtues, the author believes.
Fromme, J, & Unger, A. (2012). Computer Games and New Media Cultures: A Handbook of Digital Games Studies. Springer.
The virtual mediums of interaction in a post-modern society like ours are always intersectional and divergent. They can’t exist in different domains by being completely detached from one another. In a consumerist world, the digital gaming culture has gradually become an indelible entity in this overarching framework of virtual media interaction. Further, the sheer economic value that digital gaming holds also makes it one of the most sought-after enterprises. The fascination to vicariously perform certain activities through the augmented reality of digital gaming, which might be improbable in the real world, has enticed millions of young people to spend hours in front of their mobile and computer screens, moderating the settings or doctoring the characters. Nevertheless, albeit its exponential growth in recent years, the widespread acceptance of digital gaming in serious scholastic deliberation still remains a far-fetched idea.
This book, “Computer Games and New Media Cultures: A Handbook of Digital Games Studie”‘ by Johannes Fromme and Alexander Unger, is a fascinating account of forty-two papers that, instead of mimicking the hackneyed and stereotypically uninformed perceptions of digital gaming such as lack of social life, no practical application or accomplishment, and wastage of money, covers some other alternatives of digital gaming by looking it through a refreshing lens of social values and cultural factors.
The book argues that virtual gaming being labelled as an unsocial activity is a wrong proposition by a long shot. This perception still exists because the evolution of digital gaming and its subsequent digital-human and human-human interactions have failed to capture our attention as we conveniently decide to be ignorant of “other” perspectives of digital games. These interactions between the gamers and the games and their social implications and cultural factors as a set of virtues are both celebrated and meticulously foregrounded in this book by discarding the unidimensional view of video games as a social detriment. However, it is not to claim that digital games can not be injurious to both mental and physical health. But, this is not a feature central to video games only; these adversities take place in outdoor sports as well.
Moreover, the book subtly discusses the educational values of certain digital games. As unique as online games are, they never reside within a single spectrum. Given the inherent differences between video games, each game is ubiquitous in its own right. Thus, there are games that also serve great educational values, especially for kids, because they are created to serve the purpose of education only. The common belief that the content of digital games mostly encapsulates violence severely neglects other valuable sociocultural, economic and educational aspects in a growing new-media culture.
In light of these discussions above, it is safe to establish that the book tries to look into each aspect of video games with new and revitalising standpoints in order to dismantle the pervasive idea of danger attached to online games.
Murray, J. H. (2006) Toward a Cultural Theory of Gaming: Digital Games and the Co-Evolution of Media, Mind, and Culture, Popular Communication, 4(3), 185-202, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15405710pc0403_3
The scholarship on digital gaming is now expanding with great vigour. While it was not a particularly celebrated discipline in academic discourses as certain scholars remain sceptical of its usability and applicability, it has, nevertheless, emerged as a new cultural medium with a massive public following and an industry with an investment worth billions of dollars.
In the article, “Toward a Cultural Theory of Gaming: Digital Games and the Co-Evolution of Media, Mind, and Culture”, Murray discusses that cultural values, ideals, and their transmission are not antithetical to human comprehension. Instead, these faculties go hand in hand, interact with each other, and evolve together in the process. The development and subsequent transformation of digital gaming is not a separate phenomenon, given that digital gaming is an extension of basic human perceptions. The games did not occur of their own volition; humans have come up with them to serve their purpose in one way or another. Hence calling video games useless is just a mockery of the human invention itself.
The author provides examples of scholars like Michael Tomasello and Merlin Donald to prove that writing off digital games as useless does not serve any purpose. Instead, analysing the patterns of development for video games in congruence with the pattern of human culture(s) will help us understand that the digital gaming platform is an expressive media that symbolises the growth of digital culture and the new media itself across every nook and corner of the world. Digital games, like outdoor games, are of paramount importance for influencing, moulding, shaping, and reshaping the human culture, which is essentially a product of the human mind.
Deshbandhu, A. (2020). Gaming Culture(s) in India: Digital Play in Everyday Life. Routledge.
Can digital or online gaming be called a “new cultural artefact”? Does it yet have the potential or value to be considered a new genre within the existing media? Can it ever be taken with due seriousness within academic discourse? Aditya Deshbandhu, an independent researcher, in his magnum opus, “Gaming Culture(s) in India: Digital Play in Everyday Life”, mulls over these intriguing questions. Through his extensive interviews and ethnographic intervention, he attempts to find answers to these questions by understanding virtual interaction between the gamers and the games and among gamers themselves within their virtually created space that they call a community. Games are generally regarded as leisure activities to escape life’s gruelling realities. Digital gaming is no exception to this general rule. However, like the competitive outdoor sports in a profit-making capitalist structure, digital gaming has likewise been transitioned into a global business endeavour where players, as an intrinsic element of each online game, represent a separate community. These communities can either be virtual or real. In most cases, the virtual communities are formed earlier and based on the level and intensity of interactions, real-life communities are established. This community varies from culture to culture, society to society, and country to country. Notwithstanding the difference in the superstructure based on geopolitical differences, the base-level gamer-game interaction within a particular community remains the same. There might be different communities for a particular digital game in different countries. The same goes for other communities for other games as well. However, the player-to-player interactions in these communities are always enthralling, provided that the spaces they capture are always homogeneous, inclusive, and welcoming. To the author, these communities are safe spaces for gamers where they feel secure without the apprehension of being judged regardless of their performance, contrary to outdoor games. This eases off the tension among the communities and, in the process, provides scopes for positive social interactions and transactions of ideas and values among people hailing from different cultures.
Moreover, the author tries to understand various terminologies like “gamer” by contextualising them into different cultural perspectives in a diverse and heterogeneous Indian society. Through his interviews with the gamers, the author sheds light on their gaming habits, rituals, and practices. He further evaluates whether or not the professionalisation of the digital gaming platform as a new and emerging media and industry helps change the popular notions about the gamers: their identities, and expressions, in a stringent Indian society where changes are not welcomed wholeheartedly.
Schreier, J. (2017). Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made. Harpercollins.
Written by Jason Schreier and published in 2017, “Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made” tracks a fascinating journey of the development of digital gaming through the accounts of ten different video games. Like any other industry, the consumers of video games are always provided with end products. However, as rosy, lively, and realistic as the gameplay comes across, the hurdles unfolding in the series of events while making the video games still remain an unknown territory. The hazardous and at times precarious journey of game development by various studios amid an unstable and often unmerciful market renders a sordid tale of what the game developers go through on a regular basis.
Video games, these days, have no longer just remained a technology. Rather, they bestride the boundary of art. One of the fascinating aspects of video games is that each game is distinct in its own rights, as each of them had/has been choreographed, engineered, and manufactured in separate and non-identical ways. While the earliest video games were all about solving puzzles, the video games of our day and time are challenging the concept of reality itself.
Schreier, in his book, not only postulates the enormous difficulties in making video games but also advances the possible reasons for such difficulties. One of the major problems with game development is that the trajectory of a specific game does not flow in a one-dimensional and unilateral way. Instead, Video games are interactive on different levels based on the gamers themselves. Another problem is that video game technologies undergo everyday transitions on a regular basis. Hence, being adaptive to the changing paradigms is an arduous job in itself. Other difficulties involve the impossibility of scheduling given the ubiquity of video games, the transmogrification of developers, and the uncertain market- whether a particular video game can be successful or not can not be pre-judged unless the game is released in the market.
Despite these challenges, the game developers are incessant in their attempts to develop video games at a regular interval. The author argues that the satisfaction of constantly dealing with state-of-the-art technologies to create something new and exciting for a plethora of people to enjoy is one of the driving forces behind the creation of video games. Another motivation is to establish digital gaming as a legitimate form of new media, not as an extension of the existing media. The incessant human efforts to engineer a new category of public entertainment with additional sociocultural, economic, and educational incentives indicate that it is high time for people to stop repudiating digital gaming as impractical and purposeless.
REFERENCES:
Deshbandhu, A. (2020). Gaming Culture(s) in India: Digital Play in Everyday Life. Routledge.
Fromme, J, & Unger, A. (2012). Computer Games and New Media Cultures: A Handbook of Digital Games Studies. Springer.
Mia, A. (2016). Game and Digital Culture: A Study on Hay Day Game. Humaniora, 7(22), DOI: 10.21512/humaniora.v7i1.3393
Murray, J. H. (2006). Toward a Cultural Theory of Gaming: Digital Games and the Co-Evolution of Media, Mind, and Culture, Popular Communication, 4(3), 185-202, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15405710pc0403_3
Schreier, J. (2017). Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made. Harpercollins.
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