Helen Thornton, (2009). Claiming a stake in the videogame: what grown-ups say to rationalise and normalise gaming. Convergence 15 (2), 135-139.
This reading investigates adult gamers within an ethnographic study into over 100 respondents in the UK and presents the thesis that there is a political and social necessity to include gamers, and there discourse into the research on gaming in order to properly understand its significance in our political and social lives. By doing this Thornham proposes that we will be able to identify certain social structure and thus better understand society and culture as a whole.
In the UK the average age of gamers is 28 with over 51% of gamers in the age bracket of 35-50. To me this lends credence to the tactic discussed last week of Pokémon targeting children with a cultural product which they then continue to consume in later life as presumably these adults played computer /console games in their youth and continued into their adult lives.
There is a paradox present in this reading where games are seen by the industry as part on escapism, fantasy and play, whilst gamers see them as serious rational and logical pastimes. Adult gamers appear to rationalize their game play due to an uneasy relationship between play and adulthood.
In the normalization of gaming by adults there seems to be a stereo type being constructed for the kinds of people or groups who play games. This may relate to Becker’s labeling theory where deviants from societal norms are negatively labeled and then as society solves the issues surrounding this deviances they are indoctrinated back into society and commodified. Once it is commodified it can then converge with many different forms of pop culture to maximize its economic returns.
The quote by Newman is interesting where it is posited that games are culturally complex media artifacts that only function truly within a network of social complexity and thus cannot always be easily manipulated by economic or industry concerns, which I think relates to when strong communities form around games they develop particular sub-cultures which cannot be easily manipulated by business to maximize profit as the participants will rebel against it.
The article focuses on three key points:
1. How gamers initially rationalize the possession of a console
2. The way in which they humanize the technology
3. The way the socialize the technology
RATIONALIZATION:
· Gaming begins at earlier ages and then develops over a lifetime and thus players have sense of nostalgia
· There is peer pressure to play within social groups
· Adults play to fill in blocks of empty time caused by social change etc (move to new city, work)
· Gaming devices are now converged technological devices capable of allowing access too many different medias (DVD, music, photos, game, internet, TV, film). So frequently a console is rationalized as it is financially better a single console then multiple media devices.
· Social status – being seen to have the latest new technology. This indicated that gaming is embedded in youth culture as a method of social categorization.
· The pleasure of gaming seems to be within defined social parameters as only in a social context can you enjoy the pleasure of gaming via the interactions present in social environments.
· Gamers want to be seen as rational, authoritarian and knowledgeable about gaming media in order to distance themselves from the pleasure and play aspects of gaming and present a more critical reflective viewpoint.
· Different values are placed on different media – High complexity PC games Vs. less complex Console games
· Attitudes towards gaming can be shaped by the social frameworks in which a person acts out their role. These frameworks can affect discourses of power and performance as proposed by Goffman.
HUMANIZE:
· In order for adults to justify gaming users needs to talk about the pleasures in a rational way at a human level by creating a relationship between themselves and the machine and how they interact
· The power relationships that differ with the game progression and variety keep gamers involved.
· The game is seen as the more powerful part of the relationship. It is the master which you are trying to learn more about so you can form engagement strategies to progress within the game.
· The relationship is based on a perceived mutual desire of the gamer and machine to keep on playing. I think this is how games are intentionally designed to ensure that the media holds the consumers attention though engaging game design.
· By figuring gaming as a relationship the pleasures gained become non-threatening and thus socially normal an equated with pleasure present within any other relationship.
· Pleasure is vital for the completion of the game even if adult gamers try to rationalize this pleasure away
SOCIALIZING:
· Social gaming does not only refer to gaming technology as a social support, but attempts to draw a distinct line between ‘normal’ (social) and ‘geek’ (solo) gamers.
· Modes of play – solo or social determines this difference as the mode of plays seems significant as the pleasure derived from the play itself.
· Social gaming is seen as normal as it is inclusive of more than just the game itself, and that any immersion into a solo play fantasy world, to replace the ties in social gaming, is seen as abnormal and a trait of geek gamers who are deviants from rigid socio-cultural codes around gaming and negatively labeled as such.
· Games like other media are able to be remediated across different cultures as previously seen with TV and film but perhaps have more flexibility in cross cultural mediations due to their educational and learning structures. Games can thus simulate other cultures for users from outside to investigate and evaluate and thus enrich our own culture via a gaming pop cosmopolitanism.
· By rationalizing and humanizing gaming users are positioning gaming as a social norm.
· Normal gamers take pleasure out of the real world affects of social gaming (social ties),in contrast to the fantasy realm of the ‘geeks’ who get pleasure the fantasy whilst neglecting the real world
· Gaming can take a role in social identity through the two roles of the “normal” and “geek”. One is a social insider and one is an outsider.
· In adult life a person’s working day to day life has to have meaning or purpose. Gaming play however calls into questions these basic structures of adulthood and thus could be a reason why there is a need to justify game play. As an adult they feel they should be doing something that is perceived as meaningful.
The justification of gaming as an adult I can’t really understand within a culture which is largely a pop culture filled with disposable media for participant’s largley from a bourgeois middle class.
I see gaming as a media preference that usually takes place as part of a an interaction with other media types such as film and TV as it already has pre-existing cultural value from the source media. I myself am not a large game player although I do play games related to other media I enjoy such as sports simulations, games related to film narratives, and the like. Perhaps I do this to reinforce my own identity against the original source media to justify my game play. I understand the social aspects of gaming but I think this is where, as Stewart Woods raided in the lecture, that play moves from playing for no real reason or goal, to playing for reasons which are both social and competitive as a way of framing our own identity.
This reading investigates adult gamers within an ethnographic study into over 100 respondents in the UK and presents the thesis that there is a political and social necessity to include gamers, and there discourse into the research on gaming in order to properly understand its significance in our political and social lives. By doing this Thornham proposes that we will be able to identify certain social structure and thus better understand society and culture as a whole.
In the UK the average age of gamers is 28 with over 51% of gamers in the age bracket of 35-50. To me this lends credence to the tactic discussed last week of Pokémon targeting children with a cultural product which they then continue to consume in later life as presumably these adults played computer /console games in their youth and continued into their adult lives.
There is a paradox present in this reading where games are seen by the industry as part on escapism, fantasy and play, whilst gamers see them as serious rational and logical pastimes. Adult gamers appear to rationalize their game play due to an uneasy relationship between play and adulthood.
In the normalization of gaming by adults there seems to be a stereo type being constructed for the kinds of people or groups who play games. This may relate to Becker’s labeling theory where deviants from societal norms are negatively labeled and then as society solves the issues surrounding this deviances they are indoctrinated back into society and commodified. Once it is commodified it can then converge with many different forms of pop culture to maximize its economic returns.
The quote by Newman is interesting where it is posited that games are culturally complex media artifacts that only function truly within a network of social complexity and thus cannot always be easily manipulated by economic or industry concerns, which I think relates to when strong communities form around games they develop particular sub-cultures which cannot be easily manipulated by business to maximize profit as the participants will rebel against it.
The article focuses on three key points:
1. How gamers initially rationalize the possession of a console
2. The way in which they humanize the technology
3. The way the socialize the technology
RATIONALIZATION:
· Gaming begins at earlier ages and then develops over a lifetime and thus players have sense of nostalgia
· There is peer pressure to play within social groups
· Adults play to fill in blocks of empty time caused by social change etc (move to new city, work)
· Gaming devices are now converged technological devices capable of allowing access too many different medias (DVD, music, photos, game, internet, TV, film). So frequently a console is rationalized as it is financially better a single console then multiple media devices.
· Social status – being seen to have the latest new technology. This indicated that gaming is embedded in youth culture as a method of social categorization.
· The pleasure of gaming seems to be within defined social parameters as only in a social context can you enjoy the pleasure of gaming via the interactions present in social environments.
· Gamers want to be seen as rational, authoritarian and knowledgeable about gaming media in order to distance themselves from the pleasure and play aspects of gaming and present a more critical reflective viewpoint.
· Different values are placed on different media – High complexity PC games Vs. less complex Console games
· Attitudes towards gaming can be shaped by the social frameworks in which a person acts out their role. These frameworks can affect discourses of power and performance as proposed by Goffman.
HUMANIZE:
· In order for adults to justify gaming users needs to talk about the pleasures in a rational way at a human level by creating a relationship between themselves and the machine and how they interact
· The power relationships that differ with the game progression and variety keep gamers involved.
· The game is seen as the more powerful part of the relationship. It is the master which you are trying to learn more about so you can form engagement strategies to progress within the game.
· The relationship is based on a perceived mutual desire of the gamer and machine to keep on playing. I think this is how games are intentionally designed to ensure that the media holds the consumers attention though engaging game design.
· By figuring gaming as a relationship the pleasures gained become non-threatening and thus socially normal an equated with pleasure present within any other relationship.
· Pleasure is vital for the completion of the game even if adult gamers try to rationalize this pleasure away
SOCIALIZING:
· Social gaming does not only refer to gaming technology as a social support, but attempts to draw a distinct line between ‘normal’ (social) and ‘geek’ (solo) gamers.
· Modes of play – solo or social determines this difference as the mode of plays seems significant as the pleasure derived from the play itself.
· Social gaming is seen as normal as it is inclusive of more than just the game itself, and that any immersion into a solo play fantasy world, to replace the ties in social gaming, is seen as abnormal and a trait of geek gamers who are deviants from rigid socio-cultural codes around gaming and negatively labeled as such.
· Games like other media are able to be remediated across different cultures as previously seen with TV and film but perhaps have more flexibility in cross cultural mediations due to their educational and learning structures. Games can thus simulate other cultures for users from outside to investigate and evaluate and thus enrich our own culture via a gaming pop cosmopolitanism.
· By rationalizing and humanizing gaming users are positioning gaming as a social norm.
· Normal gamers take pleasure out of the real world affects of social gaming (social ties),in contrast to the fantasy realm of the ‘geeks’ who get pleasure the fantasy whilst neglecting the real world
· Gaming can take a role in social identity through the two roles of the “normal” and “geek”. One is a social insider and one is an outsider.
· In adult life a person’s working day to day life has to have meaning or purpose. Gaming play however calls into questions these basic structures of adulthood and thus could be a reason why there is a need to justify game play. As an adult they feel they should be doing something that is perceived as meaningful.
The justification of gaming as an adult I can’t really understand within a culture which is largely a pop culture filled with disposable media for participant’s largley from a bourgeois middle class.
I see gaming as a media preference that usually takes place as part of a an interaction with other media types such as film and TV as it already has pre-existing cultural value from the source media. I myself am not a large game player although I do play games related to other media I enjoy such as sports simulations, games related to film narratives, and the like. Perhaps I do this to reinforce my own identity against the original source media to justify my game play. I understand the social aspects of gaming but I think this is where, as Stewart Woods raided in the lecture, that play moves from playing for no real reason or goal, to playing for reasons which are both social and competitive as a way of framing our own identity.