RESEARCH
History
Video games were developed in principle in the late 1940s, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that Nolan Bushnell and Atari made video games commercially successful within a mass marketplace. As a consequence, during the 1970s, a variety of consumer magazines, dedicated to particular video gaming console platforms (and serving as advertising for those platforms), published rudimentary descriptive analyses of video games as game reviews and play guides. Over the next decade, more detailed and rigorous analyses of video games and play were relatively rare and more often intended for—and governed by the demands of—popular than academic concerns (e.g., Sudnow, 1983).
Combined references to “video/computer/digital games” within scholarly databases from 1980 to 2010 show this initial flurry of video game research as a brief (and relatively shallow) peak in 1984, followed by a sustained period of references into the 1990s, when all such references increased dramatically and exponentially. Virtually all topics specific to video game research can traced to this initial period of interest in 1980s.
Research appearing in scholarly publications dating from the 1980s include some of the first literature reviews of the scholarly study of video games (Greenfield, 1984; Price, 1985), initial reflections on the effectiveness of video games as learning tools (Malone, 1980; Harris & Williams, 1985), one of the first doctoral theses addressing video games as “interactive fiction” (Buckles, 1985), and the beginning of the empirical study of the psychological and physiological effects of video games, particularly violent video games (Dominick, 1984; Graybill, 1985; Cooper & Mackie, 1986).
After the video game industry had weathered the economic difficulties of the mid-1980s, the next sustained surge of video game research—again, in concert with the introduction of new video game technologies and, particularly, Internet-based technologies—occurred alongside the industry’s transition from designing single-player games for in-home personal computers to designing multiplayer and social games for web-based environments. This increased emphasis on social games and social activities is marked by Blizzard’s release of World of Warcraft (2004).
Video game research remains today largely focused on market-driven designs distributed and played with the aid of social media and over social networks, including games designed for dedicated video game consoles such as Sony’s PlayStation (1994) and Microsoft’s Xbox (2001), each now associated with its own video game marketing, sales, and distribution online network.
Prior to examining more contemporary contexts for video game research, it is useful to note foundational works published prior to the rise of the video game industry that find frequent reference: Huizinga’s Homo Ludens: The Play Element in Culture [1938] (1955) and Roger Caillois’s Man, Play, and Games (1961; 1958, in French).
Huizinga, a Dutch historian, emphasized an understanding of play as necessary to an understanding of culture—still a critical assumption in much video game research—and introduced, though rather obliquely, the notion that games are isolated within a “magic circle” of play. The Huizinga text remains a source of inspiration and guidance within the youngish field of game studies by providing an authoritative link to more established research traditions; however, Huizinga’s work also has been in tension with dominant video game research in positioning play prior to (and thus somewhat apart from) cultural influence. This tension serves to indicate how firmly cultural studies and relativist assumptions pervade contemporary video game research.
Man, Play, and Games, as its English title indicates, explicitly focuses on games and therein more directly establishes its relevance and application to the study of video games. However, Caillois posits generic (and seemingly universal) categories of games, and this is an issue of contention within contemporary video game research insofar as these categories are understood to be intrinsic to game form rather than references to player choices made within social contexts of play.
In addition to these two commonly cited foundational works, many other recurring influences on video game research have originated—and largely remain—on the peripheries of game studies proper. These remain relevant to video game research insofar as they, like Homo Ludens, emphasize human play as a cross-cultural and crosstemporal phenomenon. Representative examples include Sutton-Smith’s Ambiguities of Play (1997) and Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990)—offering, respectively, sociological/cultural and psychological analyses of human play phenomena. Other theorists and theories explicating play in specific functional contexts—e.g., Piaget (1962), as regards cognition/education; Spariosu (1982), as regards communication/literature, and Fagen (1981), as regards evolution/animal play—also serve as predecessors to contemporary video game research.
Gaps
It is also interesting to note those studies and approaches that, despite direct reference to games, have been relatively ignored by video game research. These include the significant body of research associated with “game theory” in economics.
Game theory, in essence, attempts to optimize game play for all participants without regard to aesthetic or cultural consequence and therein provide a mathematical analysis of human decision-making. While game theory has developed terms and concepts applied in video game research (e.g., “zero-sum games” and “min–max solutions”) optimizing video game play in the abstract has not proven a consensually high priority for video game research, which commonly considers “optimization” of play significantly affected by commercial and cultural concerns.
For similar reasons, the ontological status of games has been of only passing and isolated concern within market-based video game research. There was, for instance, prior to the 1980s period that saw the first sustained scholarly publication of video game research, extended discussion in philosophy journals and proceedings (Kolnai, 1966; Suits, 1969) as to whether games are essentially paradoxical. This discussion proved substantiative to subsequent publications (Suits, 1978; Suber, 1982, 1990); however, this sort of formal analysis has not gained lasting traction in game studies.
Current Trends
Video game research is most often published in those journals that have newly risen to accomplish the task (e.g., Games Studies (online) 2001; Games and Culture, 2006; Eludamos 2007), but also in more long-lived journals specializing in games, play, and related topics, particularly as these are relevant to educational goals (e.g., Simulation & Gaming (originally Simulation & Games, 1970), Digital Creativity (originally Interactive Tutoring Media, 1990)). There is also a widely-attended and influential body of video game analysis published online and in industry-related venues such as Gamasutra—a trend affecting scholarly publication in general and one particularly relevant to video game research.
Given the explosion of video game research and the tenuous state of traditional academic publications, it may be less useful to categorize contemporary video game research by specific example than by recurring theme. And even this may be problematic in its representation of a currently eclectic field as one with clearly defined and exclusionary themes. Nevertheless, there are dominant video game research themes and topics worthy of acknowledging insofar as they seem to accompany and, in many instances, align with the economic growth of the video game industry.
Video game research can be understood by its focus on the video game itself, video game player(s), and/or the context in which video game play takes place—most particularly the cultural context.
Video Games
Edmond Hoyle’s sixteenth-century publications describing the rules of card games, along with related analysis of how best to play those games, are early examples of game-centric scholarship of the sort that is seldom acknowledged as such in contemporary video game research. The closest contemporary analog to Hoyle’s publications are the “how-to” guides accompanying the release of complex video games—often designated as game “supplements.” These printed guides, online walkthroughs, and other explications of video game play are then less commonly considered scholarship than are explications of video games as objects of mass production and consumption.
Scholars producing game-centric scholarship include theorists-practitioners who attempt to conceptualize video games in order to make games easier both to understand and to build. Chris Crawford (1982) was one of the earlier theorists-practitioners of this sort, but has since been succeeded by others working in a similar tradition and according to similar (broadly conceived) assumptions and goals (e.g., Mateas, 2001; Koster, 2005; Bogost, 2008).
Video game research of this game-centric sort normally considers one or more video game elements as critical to the function of games, or, alternatively, to the identity and unique function of video games. As video games are inextricably linked to digital media, this branch of video game research might also include media theorists (e.g., Kittler, 1999; Manovich, 2001), even in cases where there is no explicit concern with or reference to games.
Because of the interactive nature of video games, traditional content analysis is not comfortably adapted to game content. Nevertheless, in many cases, video game research continues to borrow and adapt methodologies and approaches from text-oriented analyses in other fields (e.g., semiotics (Myers, 2003), literature (Aarseth, 1997; Ryan, 2006), and film (Grodal, 2000)) in an attempt to isolate particular game structures and procedures (e.g., of logic and narrative) indicative of particular structures and procedures of human cognition. This emphasis on game play as a cognitive process then overlaps with research focused on video game players.
Video Game Players
Research on video game players is dominated by motivational analysis and effects-based studies, often using methodologies and assumptions from earlier and related mass media research on film and television audiences. However, due to the proprietary nature of video game play in mass market contexts (e.g., within MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games) such as World of Warcraft), research involving mass audiences/players often requires some level of cooperation and coordination with commercial game companies. This has been the case, for instance, with large-scale studies of online video game player behavior, particularly insofar as those studies correlate conventional audience demographics with game player behavior (e.g., Williams, Consalvo, Caplan, & Yee, 2009).
This category of video game research has incorporated the study of both positive (prosocial) and negative (antisocial) effects of video games, and has produced a large body of research devoted to adapting video games for educational use (Wilson et al., 2009) and, simultaneously, justifying that use (Randel, Morris, Wetzel, & Whitehill, 1992; Funk & Buchman, 1995; Gee, 2004). Both prosocial and antisocial effects studies can be quite specific in examining video game effects on players of a particular age or regarding a specific task, but effects-based research can also include consideration of long-term and, upon occasion, speculative effects of video game play (e.g., the use of video games as tools for ethical consideration and reflection (Sicart, 2009)).
Anderson (2004) and his colleagues (Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Carnagey & Anderson, 2004; Barlett, Anderson, & Swing, 2009) have published prolifically on the effects of violence in video games (Emes, 1997), producing exhaustive reviews of empirical research on this topic—most recently Anderson et al. (2010). By and large, these studies have found negative effects of violence in video games, but these findings have been disputed by empiricists (Bensley & van Eenwyk, 2001; Ferguson, 2007) and by those using more qualitative methods of observing and interpreting video game play (Jones, 2002; DeVane & Squire, 2012). These latter studies characteristically engage video game play and players directly, often as active members of video game player communities and/or as video game designers and consultants.
Video Game Contexts
The third and broadest category of video game research focuses on the context of video game play. This includes (what are generically known as) “cultural” studies (Shaw, 2010; see also Williams, 2005), as well as research focusing more specifically on one or more critical contextual variables. Because this research takes a contextual view of video game play, that play is often subsumed within a larger set of activities within “virtual worlds.”
Fine (1983) is an early and influential use of ethnographic methods to study gaming contexts. Taylor (2006), Nardi (2010), and many others have since used similar methods to describe online communities composed of video game players. And similar anthropological accounts of behavior closely associated with video game player communities can be found in Malaby (2009) and Boellstorff (2008).
Consideration of the legal implications of video games began very early in the history of video game research (Hemnes, 1982; Dobb, 1983). More recently, Lastowka (2010) and others have examined video game play—again, broadly defined to include virtual world activities—as to whether traditional and conventional legal concepts of ownership, copyright, and privacy can be usefully applied to digital objects in new media contexts.
Castronova (2005) has examined virtual world economies with the assumption that those economies operate similarly to real world economies. And, indeed, the current and pervasive economics of MMOGs—resulting from both the popularity and the profitability of these games—have proven fertile ground for video game research of all sorts. To isolate but a single example, “gold farming” in MMOGs has been examined to determine objective characteristics of cheating (Ahmad et al., 2009), as an indication of player choice and self-determination (Steinkuehler, 2006), and as a cyborgish synthesis of player and machine, work and play (Dibbell, 2006).
Ultimately, research in this category positions video games alongside other consumer products in a capitalist market economy and determines the value (positive or negative) of video games according to how those contribute to the sustenance of that economy. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter (2009) and Apperley (2010) adopt a macro-sociological perspective of this sort, whereas work by others with similar contextual assumptions may be more social-psychological, e.g., considering how video games and related play affect individual consumer behavior by promoting a “hedonist” virtual consumption (Denegri-Knott & Molesworth, 2010).
Summary
These three categories of contemporary video game research offer only a rough approximation of the variety of video game research currently published. (For other thematic categories, see Corliss, 2011, and Kline, Dyer-Witheford, & de Peuter, 2003.) Game studies remains an eclectic field, complicated by the degree to which video game consumer and marketing interests affect video game research funding and game studies programs, courses, and curricula.
Nevertheless, there is now a critical mass of video game scholarship that, since its inception during the 1980s and its proliferation during the 1990s, has produced a number of overviews, summaries, and compilations. These include introductory game studies texts (Mayra, 2008; Nielsen, Smith, & Tosca, 2008), readers (Wolf & Perron, 2003; Raessens & Goldstein, 2005), and literature reviews that serve, in bulk, to distinguish the study of video games from the study of thematically similar topics (e.g., film and literature), digital media more generally (Wartella, O’Keefe, & Scantlin, 2000; Wartella, Lee, & Caplovitz, 2002), and the networked society within which video games are now embedded.
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