Here is part 2 of the text for a public lecture given at the Redhouse Muesum in Christchurch, Dorset. You can find part 1 here 3. Issues and discussion So what might we make of all this? I now want to consider issues that emerge from this description, issues relating to: the commercialization of play space that… [Read more…]
November 6, 2009
Here is part 1 of the text for a public lecture given at the Redhouse Muesum in Christchurch, Dorset 1. Introduction: Spacewar and the start of commercial spectacle In the past 36 years videogame technologies seem to have changed a lot, yet the controversies they have introduced are still to be fully resolved. In this lecture I… [Read more…]
September 29, 2009
A research theme that Sue Eccles has been exploring is how falling in love impacts on consumer practices. The idea is that when we fall in love we may change our normal consumer behaviour. Falling in love then becomes a location for exploring consumer transformations. Actually I think there is another way of seeing this… [Read more…]
September 17, 2009
“It was exactly like you said it would be, but I still couldn’t resist it.” David explained. We had been talking about nostalgia and videogames. I have partly transformed my office into a museum of technology (Atari 2600, ZX 81, Commodore 64, Acorn Electron, TRS 80, Spectrum, Original Gameboy, a few old laptops, a few… [Read more…]
September 11, 2009
Videogames are typically something males do right? They are written by men for men. There are stats to confirm this – science of a sort. And you only have to read game journalism to see that it is for men. More than this, when you talk to men about videogames, they often tell you about… [Read more…]
July 23, 2009
This is the summary of my DiGRA 2009 paper… I want to think about achievement in videogames as a form of individualised progress. According to Desmond’s history of consumer behaviour the Enlightenment has produced a society that emphasises increases in living standards through the accumulation of goods because it has placed a focus on rationalism… [Read more…]
March 4, 2009
Extract from a longer set of conclusions about adult videogame play… According to Turner (1992) the liminal group festivals that society may use to manage the life-plan of individuals has been replaced by liminoid events that are instead instigated by the individual. This is similar to what Bauman (2001) calls ‘bottom up’ modernism. The individual… [Read more…]
February 27, 2009
...for parents digital play is further subject to changes in playing style and management. Previously I explained that for John, a growing child was actually the ‘excuse’ to start playing games, even if John’s busy work left little time for the complexities of many games, but for adults who already have an established play routine, the arrival of children may be disruptive.
February 27, 2009
We start to see interactive games and other playful, digital media as part of the trajectory of an increasingly playful consumer culture that may produce practices through which further change may occur
October 16, 2008
The basis of my ACR paper… That the average age of players is now 33 defies the popular view of videogames as the ‘infantile’ preoccupation of teenagers, and forces us to ask what it is that adults do with videogames. In this paper I give one answer by noting the use of videogames to ‘escape’… [Read more…]
November 6, 2009
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