The Once (Not Really) and Future Active Audience

Organization of the Dissertation

As with any complete social history of a technology, this study includes discussions of the industry, the consumers, politicians and pundits. It is also vital to have an understanding of the sociopolitical climate that games have emerged into, and so considerable attention is paid to demographic trends, political movements and social pressures. All of these interacted to create a climate that sometimes celebrated games as fun, but more often used them as a means of advancing an unrelated conservative political agenda. And, of course, controversies about video games have diverted Americans from focusing on more pressing and deep-seated problems.

Chapter 2 lays the groundwork by outlining the history of the game industry. This section demarcates specific eras and explains how demographic trends and corporate decisions shaped the industry. The history begins with the initial game boom, from its early hobbyist roots to its first heyday in the early 1980s, and proceeds through the spectacular failure of Atari, an event that nearly sank the entire industry. Next comes the modern game era, beginning with the resuscitation of the game industry by the upstart Nintendo Corporation. Last is the arrival of the newest generation of gaming machines and corporate struggles, and the rise of the networked era, a time dominated by large conglomerates in which games became a major media force. The colorful history of the industry is highlighted by enigmatic and iconoclastic figures like Nolan Bushnell, Trip Hawkins and Minoru Arakawa, captains of industry who helped shape the new medium by virtue of their own tastes, backgrounds and choices.

Besides providing a basic chronology, this history is an important backdrop for two reasons. The first is that it demonstrates how male-oriented games have been. Invented by men, adapted by men, and programmed by men for men, games have been one part of a larger pattern involving the gendering of technology. A history of their production shows how this came to pass. The second important foregrounding lies in the changing role of the consumer. Interactive consumers lie at the heart of video games’ success, and with new networked titles spearheading the expansion of the industry, these consumers will continue to drive the industry. The history of Atari serves as a cautionary tale for elites of every stripe, including researchers: these consumers have levels of agency unheard of in media.

Chapters 3 and 4 take this corporate and demographic history as a backdrop to delve into important social issues. Using Glassner as a reference point, the chapters explore the tensions and issues have underpinned the public rhetoric over games. The River City approach suggests that conservative fears about new technologies will dominate public discourse. The theories of Wartella and Reeves suggest how this actually happens: fears fall inevitably into a predictable three-wave pattern. Combined with the timeline provided by Chapter 2, the content analysis in Chapter 3 supports the Wartella and Reeves hypothesis. Since they fit the pattern, games are considered as the latest example in a long string of similar new media reactions. An important secondary effect of these frames was to influence the research agenda. Driven by worried parents and policy makers, game researchers were strongly influenced by their concerns. This influenced which issues merited testing and which didn’t. What was ignored by most social science researchers was how the games might have varied depending on their social context and who was actually playing. Social context and sampling became gaps in the literature.

What were the driving forces behind these River City concerns? In prior reactions to new media, the actual sources of tension were not always the medium itself, but were instead underlying social issues like racial or class tensions. Chapter 3 shows how the tensions driving the game fears came from the intersection of gender, power and technology, an area involving hotly disputed ideals about the American family and the role of women. The analysis involves both an exploration of social issues and of the media’s language. These two are intimately connected as tensions play out in coverage and are subsequently reinforced by it.¹

Moving back and forth between actual practices and media coverage exposes several key power issues and social constructions. These constructed frames helped reinforce who was supposed to play video games and who was not, and advanced a conservative agenda at the expense of certain groups. Chapter 4 provides three case examples of this through gender, age and place. In each case, the framing of games made it socially impermissible for a particular group to play, thereby exercising some social control over that group. Women and adults were shamed out of playing. The chapter concludes by tying the River City model to public Internet use, which in turn is shown to be the latest successor to the long tradition of ambivalent and fearful reactions.

The early mainstream history of video games did not involve the use of public computer networks for game play. Yet by the mid 1990s, it had become evident that game play, like much of daily life, would move online (Horrigan & Rainee, 2002). With one set of social issues already in place, gaming would add another layer of baggage by including all of the hopes, fears and social issues embodied by the rapid spread of the public Internet. What issues would online gaming raise?

Chapter 5 considers fears and issues revolving around the Internet and what theoretical approaches we might use to measure them. With the exceptions of new headline-worthy bogeymen like “cyberstalkers,” and “cyberpredators,” the most fear-provoking issues involving the Internet have revolved around social effects. These consist of two main hypotheses. The first is that electronic media are breaking down the social institutions that hold our communities together, a hypothesis most associated with the political scientist Robert Putnam (2000). Putnam has argued that electronic media are displacing vital community activities such as neighborhood conversations, bowling leagues and the like. These activities, and the connections they create, are loosely known as “social capital,” and are said to be declining as Internet use increases. The second hypotheses is that the Internet is driving us apart by not only displacing our time with each other, but by atomizing our interests into ever-more isolated activities in which we cease to meet others who might hail from different cultures, ethnicities, religions and political viewpoints. Such a separation is said to be harmful to both a robust civic society and an informed democratic electorate. This hypothesis is most associated with the legal scholar Cass Sunstein (2001).

Online gaming is an extension of the Internet. Chapter 6 takes a close look at this particular Internet use by explaining who plays these games, how and why. What meanings do the players make, and do they form any kind of community through the games? The varied social issues surrounding online gaming are presented in contrast to the traditional approach to studying video games. Consistent with the River City model, this approach stresses negative displacement, health problems and antisocial levels of aggression. As a result, this dissertation can extend the literature by considering issues that have been left out. The first way is by accounting for the social context of play and considering it as a moderating variable. Likewise, a contribution can be made by sampling from a wider range of users than only children. Indeed, now that many games are only played by adults, broader samples are essential. And in keeping with Paik and Comstock’s concerns, a basic typology of game content is provided to guide the generalizability of game research.

The combination of these two media—games and the Internet—can therefore be seen as a source of both River City-type effects relating to displacement, health and antisocial behavior, and of socially harmful Internet effects. The problem is that while there are direct ways to test for the first kind of effects, there are no valid measures for the study of online social capital. Chapter 7 is therefore devoted to creating, testing and validating such a series of measures. In so doing, it also allows for cross-sectional testing of Putnam and Sunstein’s theories. These tests shows that while the Internet as a general phenomenon is not a powerful source of strong social support, it has no negative impact either. Moreover, it shows that the Internet is superior to offline life for reaching across social boundaries.

Chapter 7 also sets the stage for a comprehensive study of an online game. It provides the methodology for the main panel design study and gives the hypotheses. And, to avoid the problems associated with not understanding a game before studying it, Chapter 7 provides the results of an in-depth participant observation study of the game Asheron’s Call 2. The game is shown to be socially lackluster and graphically violent. With this in place, the hypotheses are direct: There is a list of fears and suspicions about game use, which, however influenced by extraneous factors, are of great concern to parents, policy makers and pundits. Are the concerns valid?

Chapter 8 provides the results, focusing on both the River City fears and tests of social capital and community. The results show that while the game did indeed have significant effects, they were generally not the ones prompted by the typical fears. On the one hand, the game, while graphically violent, is shown to have no aggression effects. The fears and concerns found in the news media and prior research, spurred largely by underlying social issues, are found to be baseless. On the other hand, a series of cultivation-like effects suggest the potential for virtual environments to impact our perceptions of the real world around us. For social capital and community, games can indeed have negative effects, but they are not consistent and likely not permanent. They can also have some surprising positive social effects.

“Games” are not simply good or bad, despite the convenience of these positions. There are too many different kinds, and too many different uses for such generalizations to be of any use. Understanding their effects requires new perspectives and a fresh methodological approach. And as with any empirical study of the media, issues of generalizability and validity remain paramount. This level of rigor is especially arduous for game research, but for social scientists, it is necessary if we wish to inform public debate. The findings here are the most comprehensive to date, but are still only part of the picture. There are other genres, play settings and players to test, and a host of new possibilities uncovered by this project. Depending on one’s viewpoint, this work will either leave the impression that we are at the start of a very long road to full understanding, or are on the verge of fascinating new vistas of research. Or both.