The article I read for my blog post was Stephen Kline “The
New Cyber-City: The Interactive Game Industry in the New Millennium,” Digital
Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing (2003). It focused
on how the game industry has emerged and is changing, by specifically highlighting
the platform oligopolies, software churn, publishing bottleneck, military-entertainment complex, domestic invasion and digital divides,
colonizing cyberspace, and global games. The map of the interactive game industry
on p.172 was very helpful to see the complex structure of the industry
including the industrial sectors, specific industry leaders, and
publishers/developers. Although the entire chapter was very interesting, the
part that I found the most intriguing was about the domestic invasions and
digital divides. This discussed the great unevenness and deep digital divide
that aligned with class, gender, race and age. It mentioned that in 2001, 51%
of US household had computers and about 42% had Internet access (184). It is crazy to
think about what the number would be today. Although I agree there still is a
deep digital divide (definitely applied globally), I think the percentage would
be drastically different. Would a smartphone or tablet fall into this percentage?
But then what about people who have an iPhone, iPad, iPod and laptop? One could
technically play games on all of them. Also the author argues that “Video and
computer games are not as common as the radios and televisions that can be
found in nearly every North American and European household" (185). I think this
statement has differently changed since 2003. I would argue that video/computer
games, especially those related to smartphones and tablets, are almost more common than
at least radios (I can’t even think of where a radio is in my house back home!) and possibly even TVs
considering that people might have a couple Apple devices.
As I was reading this chapter, a
question that kept crossing my mind was “how has this already changed?” This
book was written more than 10 years ago and I believe a lot as changed since
then. I am curious about how the game industry has been affected since then with introduction of smartphones and tablets. I
am also curious about the effect of the apps industry on the game industry as well as technology, culture
and marketing.
There were technically
three authors of the Digital Play,
Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig de Peuter. But in our LIS
course reader, it only mentions Stephen Kline. He is a professor and director
of Media Analysis Laboratory, School of Communication at Simon Fraser
University in British Colombia, Canada. He also wrote two other books, Globesity,
Food Marketing and Family Lifestyles (January
2011) and Out of
the Garden: Toys, Tv, and Children's Culture in the Age of Marketing (December 1993). According to an author bio, his teaching and research
ranges widely through the fields of media analysis and audience research
including media education, advertising and consumerism, children’s consumerism,
toy and video game play, and most recently the role that science journalism
plays in the moral panics about children’s advertising and sedentary
lifestyles.
Here is my list of
other articles or books on the same topic by different authors who may have
reached different conclusions:
Dyer-Witheford,
N., & De, P. G. (2009). Games of empire: Global capitalism
and video games. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota
Press
Galloway,
A. R. (2006). Gaming: Essays on algorithmic culture. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is
broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world. New York:
Penguin Press.
Zackariasson, P., & Wilson, T. L. (2012). The video
game industry: Formation, present state, and future. New York: Routledge.
And here is a PBS Frontline video from
2010 that I watched in my high school english class. After reading this chapter
of this book, I immediately thought about this documentary, which is about the
digital nation.
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