Representation Matters: Video Games in Mainstream Media

Representation Matters: Video games in mainstream media

Nave Barlev

Abstract

This study aims to explore how the medium of video games is being represented across several mainstream media forms. It will unfold some of the complexities of the medium using theories constructed by video games scholars such as Henry Jenkins and Jane

McGonigal, and place them against what most video games fans consider as misrepresentation of the medium. While video games were considered in their early commercial days as a novelty, a niche hobby or an entertaining pass-time, they are used today as an essential tool in advanced science, health care, fitness, warfare and education, and are being played or watched online by billions of people around the world.

In order to understand the dynamics between mainstream media and the medium of video games, a multi-perspectives approach has been devised that includes cultural, historical, technological, and commercial aspects, and is explored using content analysis of news reports and TV shows. The approach thus includes both quantitative content analysis based on a movies database created for the purpose of this study, and a questionnaire aimed to examine if and how media representation of video games affect the decision of players and non-players to engage with the medium

The study has found that the representation of video games in mainstream media has evolved considerably in recent years and reflects to some extent the evolution of the medium it intends to represent, yet despite such progress video games, partly due to the medium’s own faults, are still often being either misrepresented or underrepresented.

While video games have yet to receive the same attention as traditional and more established media forms, the medium is developing its own trajectories for recognition in the online sphere, where it is a dominant form that dwarfs its mainstream counterparts. Representation Matters: Video games in mainstream media Nave Barlev

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1 Part one Chapter 1: The impact of video games on global culture ...... 6 1.1 Pokemon Go ...... 7 1.2 The 2016 Rio Summer Olympics Closing Ceremony ...... 9 1.3 The case of Apple events and mobile market ...... 10 1.4 Watching games - online streams ...... 14 Chapter 2: Theory ...... 18 2.1 McGonigal’s four categories of intrinsic rewards ...... 18 2.2 The cultural status of video games ...... 24 2.3 Possible negative implications of engaging with video games ...... 27 2.4 Henry Jenkins “myths about video games” ...... 33 2.5 Theory in context ...... 38 Part two Chapter 3: Research methods ...... 39 3.1 Content analysis ...... 40 3.2 News outlets ...... 41 3.3 Television ...... 42 3.4 Movies ...... 44 3.5 Questionnaire...... 48 Chapter 4: Analysis ...... 50 4.1 News analysis ...... 50 4.2 Television shows analysis ...... 59 4.3 Movies analysis ...... 69 4.4 Questionnaire analysis ...... 83 Part three Chapter 5: Discussion ...... 94 Conclusion ...... 103 Bibliography ...... 106 Appendix 1: Apple’s Keynotes ...... 111 Appendix 2: Movies database ...... 111 Appendix 3: Questionnaire ...... 117

Introduction

Video games are a unique medium, capable of creating a sense of immersion through compelling narratives, audio-visual experiences and environmental storytelling elements unmatched by any other medium. Video games enable players not only to perform or witness preset narrative events, as do literature or cinema, but also to interact in an experimental and exciting way with the unfolding narratives and texts, thus blurring the line between reality and fiction more than any other storytelling device. In a relatively short period of time, video games have matured from niche entertainment form to a world-wide, highly profitable industry, and have evolved from pass-time activity to essential tool used in advanced science, health care, fitness, warfare and education. As of 2013, more than 1.2 billion people around the globe play games for over 3 billions hours each week (Spil Games, 2013: 4, Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. 2016). Despite the presence of video games in so many aspects of our daily lives, as well as their commercial success and variety of utilities, the medium still struggles for acceptance as a legitimate cultural form along-side films, literature and television. Representation of video games in mainstream media I argue, plays a significant, mostly hindering role in the medium’s recognition as such by the general public. This type of false, inaccurate or offensive representation of games can be found in nearly every major mainstream media form, whether traditional press and news outlets, blockbuster movies, TV shows or late night talk shows. Other traditional media forms such as literature and music often ignore video games, unless they are serving as the main theme or in the case of literature, as a device to support the plot. This leads to numerous misconceptions regarding the medium, which in turn alienate gamers towards mainstream media and the general, “non-gamers” public who often criticize them. The goal of my study is to examine the way video games are represented in mainstream media, how such representation holds against the complexity of the medium and what effect, if any, it has on gamers and non-gamers. The study addresses the following questions, among others: (1) What is the significance of video games? (2) What are some of the positive as well as negative aspects of the medium, and how are they being represented in mainstream media?

(3) How has video games representation in mainstream media evolved over time? (4) Does representation of video games vary across different media forms, and in what way? (5) Does representation of video games in mainstream media effects users attitude towards the medium? (6) What are some of the possible reasons for video games struggle for cultural legitimacy and what responsibility does the medium itself holds?

What are “video games”?: A working definition The digital interactive games industry is a highly fragmented one and comprised of arcade (coin-operated) games, home console games, handheld console games, social and online games, mobile device games and computer games, each with unique business model, marketing, development and publishing method, as well as the way in which the public perceive each segment. Defining the meaning of what is meant by “video game” is more complicated than it first appears. Different aspects, such as technology and the nature of the experience, need to be considered in defining the term. In its basic sense, it is possible to first note the two criteria present in the name of the medium: its status as “video” and as “game.” According to Wolf, the “game” aspect should provide us with elements such as conflict (against circumstances or an opponent, either human or computerized), rules (determining what can and cannot be done and when), use of some player ability (such as skill, strategy or luck) and some kind of valued outcome (such as winning vs. losing, or the attaining of the highest score or fastest time for completing a task) (Wolf 2002: 14). Those elements take place in a “video” format, which refers to the use of an analog/digital signal displayed on a monitor (television set or computer monitor, as well as mobile devices with integral screens). According to these definitions, most arcade video games and home video games using a television set, as well as games played on a personal computer, would technically qualify as video games (computer games today are most usefully seen as a subset of video games, although this was not always the case). Although there is a distinction between video games and other types of digital gaming experiences, games are often “ported” (rewritten into a different computer language or system) from one platform to another, thus broadening their markets. This practice has led to the appearance of games that were once available only in arcades and dedicated gaming

2 consoles on multiple platforms including mobile phones and tablets (i.e. Sonic the Hedgehog and the Final Fantasy series). In this essay, I will use the term “video games” to refer to forms of digital games on dedicated game consoles (home or portable) unless otherwise stated. The home console game market in particular has become the dominant force in the industry in terms of both its cultural impact and sales, and is often the segment that is being represented in the most negative way. Such distinction is important due to the different nature of representation of each segment, as will be discussed throughout the paper.

Brief literature review Many of the dominant perceptions regarding video games are the result of early academic research which focused mainly on the effects caused by playing them. While research of the medium beyond its possible physiological and mental implications receive a growing attention in academic research recently, it took a while for the medium to gain recognition in the academia as a valid research subject. Video games appeared at first as an experiment and a novelty, and did not have widespread impact on popular culture until the latter half of the 1970s (Wolf 2002: 13). Unlike the passive viewer of a film or a TV show, the interactive nature of video games raised concerns among scholars regarding the active role of the player, and so many of the early researches on video games emphasized the moral issues and psychological and cognitive impacts on inductive thinking or spatial skills (Loftus and Loftus 1983, Greenfield 1984), while others usually refer to games as a negative form of entertainment, highlighting their addictive formulas and violent content (Fisher 1994, Schutte, et al. 1988). As video games broke loose from the simplistic elements and formulas of their early days, and developers were able to use technological advancements to create games with rich content, innovative gameplay and immersive narratives, scholars began to address the cultural aspects of games and gameplay methods, as well as their influence beyond digital entertainment (Dovy & Kennedy 2006, Myers 2003). As a new medium of digital entertainment, video games were first approached and analyzed using conceptual tools developed in other media forms (mainly films and television), adding new concepts such as the game's interface, player’s choice and interactive storytelling (Wolf 2002: 3). Once video games developed their own branch of theory as a widespread and unique medium, two main academic approaches were

3 used by contemporary scholars in video games research. The first approach, promulgated by self-proclaimed “ludologists” (from “ludus,” the Latin word for “game”), suggests that the focus of game studies should be the elements and mechanics of game play, while the second approach, referred to as “narratology,” suggests that video games should be approached similarly to other storytelling media using the same established tools (Jenkins 2004: 118–131). As the relationship between games, gameplay mechanics and storytelling remain a divisive question among game fans and scholars alike, it is clear that video games today encompass elements from a vast variety of other media as well as elements which are unique to the medium, that enable scholars to consider them as “everything from the ergodic (work) to the ludic (play); as narrative, simulation, performance, remediation, and art” (Wolf and Perron 2003: 2). For this reason, and despite the fact that there is still a struggle for acceptance and academic credibility, video games studies are the primary research interest of a new generation of researchers, providing wide range of academic approaches and methodologies. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith and Tosca, propose five main perspectives for video games analysis: (1) The game, meaning exploring the games as subjects for analysis using textual analysis, inspired by theories of comparative literature and film studies. (2) The players, meaning exploration of how players use games as a type of medium or social space, with methodological tools such as observations, interviews and surveys, and using sociology, ethnography and cultural studies disciplines. (3) The culture, which move further from the games and focus on the culture that games are part of, as part of understanding how games interact with wider cultural patterns. Textual analysis and interviews as well as the use of cultural studies and sociology are applied. (4) Ontology, meaning examination of philosophical foundations of games in general, using philosophical enquiry and applying various theoretical frameworks such as philosophy, cultural history and literary criticism. And finally (5), Metrics, a data- driven design research for a quantities analysis, using statistics and can also apply, depends on the research topic, software design and behavioral psychology (Egenfeldt- Nielsen et al. 2016: 10 - 12). Those schemes are, as mentioned by Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., indicate general trends that either overlap or in contrast will not always be applicable at the same time (ibid). Indeed, in this study I will make use of several of the structures detailed above,

4 in order to try and present a comprehensive perspective on the medium as possible, which will allow us to better assess if this complexity is being presented by mainstream media or not.

Study structure In the course of this paper I examine the research questions by making use of both existing data and theories as well data collected for the purpose of this study. The paper is divided into three parts across five chapters: The first part deals with the cultural place of video games and with some of the theories about different aspects of the medium. In chapter one I will present four cases that demonstrate the cultural place video games holds in our global society, and reflect how influential and widespread the medium actually is. Chapter two provides an examination of both positive and negative aspects of video games, using Jane McGonigal’s theory on the benefits of video games in our daily lives and Henry Jenkins’s discussion about some of the most common negative elements of the medium as perceived by the general public. This chapter will provide the framework by which many of the positive and negative elements will be determined, which will be used in the second part of the study. Part two will explain my methodology followed by data analysis. Chapter three elaborates the research methods used for collecting data and for the content analysis of the materials chosen for examination. Since this study deals with several media forms, both qualitative and quantities content analysis approaches have been applied. After establishing the cases and limitations, chapter four will present analysis of samples from news and TV shows common representation of video games, leading to the analysis of a database containing references to video games in movies using the framework presented in chapter two. Finally, a quantitative questionnaire served to examine if and how the cases discussed throughout this paper effect the respondents. The third and final part presents a discussion of the findings and will complete the examination of the research questions, in order to try and provide a comprehensive overlook on video games representation in mainstream media.

Part one Chapter 1: The impact of video games on global culture

Video games have undergone significant changes since the early 1970s, when the first commercial video games emerged in arcades and on home consoles. Such changes are apparent in almost every sector of the industry, with the financial aspect being the most apparent one. Headlines about the revenue of the video games industry are abundant, and reach well beyond gaming press (e.g., CNET 2012, Forbs 2012, The Telegraph 2014, CNBC 2016, Fortune 2016). It a well known fact by now that the video games industry is one of, if not the most profitable entertainment industry in the world. According to a report by global intelligence research group Newzoo, the global games market value is $99.6 billion across all gaming platforms and services, and estimated to grow beyond $118 billion by 2019 (Newzoo 2016: 10 - 13). I will not get into the heated debate of “if the gaming market makes more money than movies and music industries,” as the definition of what each one of those media forms include in revenue reports is well beyond the scope of this paper. On other parameters however, it is possible to make some compressions to demonstrate how games hold up within entertainment properties sphere. The budget of AAA1 video games for example, is usually on par with blockbuster movies’ budget. Most AAA games’ budget exceed the $100 million, with some reach beyond the $200 million budget. 2013 Grand Theft Auto V (GTAV) is the most expensive video game ever produced, with over $265 million budget (including marketing). While falling short in compression with the most expensive movie ever produced, 2011 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides with over $400 million (Forbs: 2014) , GTAV budget is still among the highest. While exact numbers are hard to come by, according to list generated by Wikipedia which is based on officially acknowledged figures, GTAV budget surpassed movies such as 2009 Avatar, 2009 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the most expensive Harry Potter movie in the series, and 2016 Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War, falling short only behind 4 blockbuster movies (Wikipedia).

1 AAA is a term used in the video game industry to classify games with high development and promotion budgets. AAA games are usually the production of major publishers and require development teams of hundreds of people. AAA games usually stand in contrast to independent games, known as indie games, which are developed by small teams or even a single person on a minimal budget.

GTAV does, however, holds two records that no other blockbuster movie, or any other entertainment property for that matter, was able to achieve. According to Guinness World Records, with its launch, GTAV broke 6 sales world records, four of those related directly to video games sales, with the other two range across all media forms. GTAV is the fastest entertainment property to gross $1 billion, reaching this number in sales after just three days on September 20 2013, as well as the record for the highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours, with 11.21 million units sold in its first 24 hours and revenue of $815.7 million (Guinness World Records: 2013). I find the comment made by Craig Glenday, The Guinness World Records Editor-in-Chief upon the record announcement, as a call for video games recognition:

“GTA totally deserves to be recognized as an icon of modern British culture2 and we’re thrilled to be able to feature the game in the record books. Gaming is no longer a niche hobby, as GTAV has proved, and how exciting that it’s taken on the might of Hollywood and won!” (Glenday in ibid).

While development cost, revenues and world sales records are good indicators for the growth and volume of the games industry, I would like to discuss cases beyond those numbers which demonstrate how integrated video games are in our daily lives today, by presenting several cases with different perspectives beyond financial aspect: Pokemon Go, 2016 Rio Summer Olympics Closing Ceremony, the case of Apple’s keynote events and the online streaming of video games, are few example from the past year alone that reflect just how influential, widespread and important video games are, and will serve as an outlet for a broader discussion about the place games hold in the global society.

1.1 Pokemon Go Probably the most obvious one, or at least the one that generated the most headlines, is the unprecedented success of the mobile augmented reality game Pokemon Go developed by Niantic, which was released on July 6 2016. Despite the game’s limited

2 GTAV was developed by Rockstar North, a British video game developer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. 7 initial launch in New-Zealand, Australia and the United-states, it soon became a global phenomenon, to a point where only five days into its release TIME magazine published an article titled “How ‘Pokemon Go’ Took Over the World.” (TIME 2016). Pokemon Go was downloaded more than any other app ever (not only in games category) in its first week in Apple’s App store (TechCrunch 2016), was downloaded more than 500 million times worldwide and reached $600 million in revenue in just 90 days, faster than any mobile game in history (Gamespot 2016). Despite the game’s recent decline in both popularity and revenue, Pokemon Go is the biggest mobile game in U.S. history by active users (SurveyMonkey 2016) and still adds around 700,000 new players each day, with revenue of $2 million per day (Gamespot 2016). It is also important to note that the basic game is free-to-play (with optional in-game purchases) and has not been released yet in all markets, including major ones such as South-Korea and China, which makes its achievements even more remarkable. The game’s success was well beyond its phenomenal numbers, and ranged from social media craze to the U.S. presidential campaign. It was reported the during the July 2016, the month when the game was launched, 231 million people engaged in 1.1 billion interactions that mentioned Pokemon Go on Facebook (Adweek 2016). Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump addressed the game during their presidential campaign, with Clinton joking on how to get the creators of the game to “have Pokemon go, to the polls,” and the Trump campaign presenting an edited version of the game mocking his political rival (CNN 2016). Israeli president Reuven Rivlin joined in the Pokemon craze posting on his official Facebook account a picture of a Pokemon screenshot in the presidential residence in Jerusalem, with the with the caption “Somebody call security” (Mako 2016). The game was not without its controversies, with reports of players trespassing in search of rare Pokemon, accidents caused by people who played the game while driving and the existence of Poke-stops, a feature of the game which is based on real locations, in sensitive places such as ground-zero in New York, the Holocaust Museum in D.C. or the Hiroshima Memorial Site. Despite those controversies, Pokemon Go offered an innovative experience with positive aspects of bringing people together in search of virtual creatures, and became one of the most significant events in the digital scene and beyond in 2016.

1.2 The 2016 Rio Summer Olympics Closing Ceremony The second example is from the closing ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics, held on August 21 2016, at the Maracana Stadium, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As Rio handed over the Olympic flag to the 2020 host city Tokyo, Japan had a short time to showcase its vision and plans for the next games. The two minutes promotional video clip on the stadium’s big screens showed athletes in several landmarks across Tokyo, as well as Japanese pop culture characters such as Hello Kitty and Doraemon, and the video game character Pac-Man. The clip then cuts to Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe as he travelling by car away from the National Diet Building, announcing that “I will not make it to Rio in time!”. He suddenly transforms into Mario, the main character of the Super Mario video game franchise, and run to Shibuya crossing where Doraemon places a green pipeline, one of the game’s iconic symbols. Mario/Abe then jumps into the pipe, and an animation shows it drilling through the earth (another one of Mario’s power-ups in one of the games) all the way to the Maracana stadium on the other side of the planet. Back at the stadium, a green pipe appears at its center, and Abe, dressed up as Mario, emerged from the pipe waving to the enchanted crowd with a red Mario hat. In his appearance as Mario, Abe who usually holds a serious, sober image, generated a lot of attention in social media, to a point where The Washington Post published an article titled “Twitter just made Shinzo Abe the new prime minister of cool” (The Washington Post 2016). Major publications (e.g. The Japan Times 2016, The Telegraph 2016, The New York Times 2016, TIME 2016a) also covered the event, noting that Abe received mostly favorable commentary on his impersonation of the game character, adding that “Abe’s appearance as Mario was a crowd-pleasing reminder of how much the game helped spur the global video game revolution” (The Japan Times 2016). The fact that a leader of Abe’s caliber appeared as a video game character in such an important global event, aired live to millions of viewers around the world is a testament of just how influential and widespread is the medium of video games is, as well as the characters which drive it. Just as fascinating as Abe’s act, is the fact that the idea for the Super Mario appearance came from former Japanese Prime Minister, 79 years old Yoshiro Mori who is now the president of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics organizing committee (ibid).

1.3 The case of Apple events and mobile market The next example occurred during Apple Inc. Special Event held on September 7, 2016. Apple Special Events (also known as Apple’s keynotes) are press conferences held few times a year, where Apple unveil its latest products, software updates, collaborations and events, and attract millions of online viewers worldwide. The Special Events, alongside its yearly Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC Keynote Address), became the company’s signature with its unique look and style. The keynotes include slide presentation with updates and statistics, live demos of new products and services from Apple executives and industry leaders, and the company’s familiar white background promotional videos explaining its vision and design philosophy. In recent years the September Special Event is Apple’s most important event of the year, as since 2012 during this event Apple unveil the new iteration of its most successful product, the iPhone. Apple CEO Tim Cook opened the September 2016 event with updates regarding several of the company services, applications, events and revenue data. Less than five minutes into the event, Cook addressed games on Apple’s mobile devices, stating that the iPhone and the iPad are the most popular gaming devices in the world, and that gaming is the biggest and most popular category on the App Store, with over 500,000 games (in Apple September Event 2016: 04:57). Despite the plethora of games, Cook mentioned that there is still “someone missing” (ibid: 05:15), referring to Super Mario who then appeared on the main screen, as Cook announced a time exclusive, new Mario game on the App Store. He then invited to the stage Shigeru Miyamoto, the legendary game designer who created the Mario franchise, to introduce the game Super Mario Run and play it live on the stage. Super Mario Run was not the only game to receive considerable stage time at the event. Pokemon Go was also announced for the new Apple Watch, with new features that provide wearers visual feedback of Pokemon in the area, which make them easier to spot and catch. In his presentation of the new watch, Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer announced the new Pokemon Go app for the Apple Watch as “the one special app” (ibid: 25:20) for the new device, as he invited to the stage John Hanke, founder and CEO of Niantic, the company behind the successful game (in collaboration with The Pokemon Company). Like Miyamoto before him, Hanke demonstrated the new app’s capabilities and main features live on the stage.

The Pokemon Go app for the new Apple Watch was actually introduced before the reveal of the watch itself. After the reveal of the iPhone 7, which was the main purpose of the special event, Apple chose to demonstrate the new processor and graphic capabilities of the new device by first presenting a screenshot of an upcoming Codemasters game titled F1 2016 as well as by a live demo of another game. Heather Price, Co-Founder of ThisGameStudio, took the stage for a demo of their new game Oz: Broken Kingdom, which was again played live at the event on the iPhone 7. It is not uncommon for Apple to discuss games and games related content during its live events. Apple’s executives present statistics on the company’s game service, game downloads and gaming apps in the App Store, and games are often used to showcase new devices’ performance and innovative features, since games are the most demanding apps when it comes to hardware requirements. For the purpose of this study, I have carefully reviewed 25 of Apple’s press conferences (appendix 1), in order to find out how much time is dedicated to showcase games in the company’s events and how early into the events games were being discussed. I included every game and game related content appearing on stage at the event, either dedicated game services such as Game Center or new games reveals and demos, with the following exceptions: cases in which games were used to showcase other functions and could have been replaced by any other application for achieving the same purpose were regarded as games related content and were not included. An example for such case can be found at Apple’s Special Event from April 2010; late Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs discussed the new features from the upcoming iOS update unveiled at the event. He demonstrated several of the updates’ functions including the ability to create folders and multitasking. For the purpose of creating a folder, Jobs used game apps and gathered them together into a new folder. For the purpose of showcasing the multitasking feature, Jobs switched between game app and mail app. In both cases games were acknowledged, but they were not essential part of the presentation and the same function could have been achieved by using any other application.

In my review I included all Apple keynotes, both Special Events (including special announcements) and WWDC since January 2010 3 , when the iPad was announced. While Apple’s Macintosh computers were capable of running games since 1984, and the App Store opened on July 2008 following the iPhone release on June 2007, my data does not include keynotes prior to 2010 for the following reasons: 1. Since the early 2000s with the advancement of bandwidth capabilities, digital distribution of video games (meaning no use of physical media) became the primary source of digital games on PCs. According to a 2014 market research report by DFC Intelligence, digital downloads represent 92 percent of all PC game sales worldwide (PCR 2014). On 2013, Valve Corporation captured 75 percent of the global market for digital games on PCs through its digital distribution platform named Steam (Bloomberg 2013), a service with over 125 million users worldwide (Gamespot 2015) and more than 11,500 games listed on its library (Steam store). Steam was released on September 2003 exclusively for Microsoft Windows platforms, and became the world’s largest online retailer of games downloaded to PCs. Mac computers were not supported by Steam service until May 2010, which put Apple in a significant disadvantage when it comes to games on its platforms before the availability of the service. 2. Apple started to aggressively promote games on its mobile platforms, the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, since April 2010, when the company announced its social network for multiplayer gaming called Game Center, providing multiplayer functionality, matchmaking options, achievements, friends’ scores review and leaderboard results. The service was suppose to provide Apple with its own dedicated social gaming app to compete with similar services by Microsoft, Sony and Valve. Gaming became a major focus of the App Store since 2010, due to success of blockbuster titles such as Words With Friends (2009) Angry Birds (2009) and Fruit Ninja (2010). As successful as those games were, all of the top ten games on Apple’s App Store which generated the most revenue worldwide were released from 2011 onwards, according to a 2015 report by mobile app intelligence platform App Annie (App Annie 2015). Hence, Apple’s focus on games since 2010 was also reflected in the company’s keynotes.

3 This list does not include Apple Education Event from January 2012, which was a special keynote dedicated to present iBooks textbook features.

As the data shows (appendix 1), games and games related content were presented in 18 out of 25 press conferences the company held since January 2010. despite the attention games receive during Apple’s keynotes, the medium usually appear as an afterthought in all of the company’s products. Games and games related content appear on stage for only 4.72 percent of total keynote time in the 18 events when they are discussed, and only 3.4 percent in the past 25 events. What makes the September 2016 Special Event unique is not only the amount of time dedicated to discuss games and games related content, but also the point of time during the keynote that games were shown. The four games that were discussed at the event, Super Mario Run, Pokemon Go, F1 2016 and Oz: Broken Kingdom, as well as Cook’s update about the current state of games on Apple’s platforms, resulted in nearly 16 minutes (12.93 percent) of stage time out of two hours event. The percentage of stage time dedicated to games and games related content during the September 2016 event is the highest dedicated to the medium in Apple’s keynotes, followed by 8.53 percent of March 2012 Special Event (figure 1). In addition to the stage time games received at the September 2016 keynote, Cook’s gaming app statistics presentation, followed by Super Mario Run reveal and live demo, started 4 minutes and 45 seconds into the event, making it the fastest appearance of a game at Apple’s keynotes.

Games and games related content in Apple's keynotes 160.00 140.00

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Total Time Games and games related content time

Figure 1: Time dedicated to games or games related content in Apple’s keynotes

The attention games received during the September 2016 event is even more significant considering the main purpose of the event. As mentioned earlier, the event had two major announcements regarding the release of new hardware, as both the iPhone 7 and the new Apple Watch were announced, which made it Apple’s most important event of 2016. The fact that games were given such a significant stage time at the event reflects the medium’s importance in the eyes of both the public as well as Apple’s policy makers. In addition, it is important to address Super Mario Run in particular, and explain why the announcement was so important and received so much attention from Apple. While Mario is most recognizable face of the video games industry, his popularity reaches far beyond the medium of video games, and as shown during the Rio Olympics closing ceremony, he is one of the most iconic fictional characters in the world. As Gamesradar put it, “Describing Mario is about as simple as giving a biography on Mickey Mouse, Superman, or James Bond” (2012). It is a well known trivia fact that according to an early 90s survey, Mario was a better-known character among American children than Mickey Mouse (Iwabuchi 2002: 30). It might come as a surprise then, that Mario’s appearance on Apple’s iPhone is the character’s first appearance ever on a non-Nintendo platform, which means that since the first Mario Bros. game in 1983, it was never possible to play a Mario game on any other platform. The details of the deal between Apple and Nintendo were not disclosed, but based on past exclusive content deals4, it is safe to assume that Apple invested a large amount of money for the timed exclusivity of Super Mario Run on its platforms.

1.4 Watching games - online streams Another case which demonstrates the impact of video games as a leading entertainment medium, is their popularity well beyond the act of actually playing them. On September 29, 2016, YouTube’s live show titled ‘Live with YouTube Gaming’ was premiered on YouTube. Produce and host by leading game media personality Geoff Keighley, ‘Live with YouTube Gaming’ is YouTube’s first ever live series. The show includes exclusive video games trailers, reveals and gameplay

4 In 2007 for example, Microsoft paid Rockstar, the developer and publisher of the Grand Theft Auto franchise $50 million for downloadable content of the game GTA IV exclusive for Microsoft Xbox 360 platform (Gamesradar, 2013).

14 sessions, as well as interviews with developers and industry insiders, as what was described by WIRED Magazine as “a live video game talk show” (WIRED Magazine 2016). The fact that YouTube and its parent organization Google chose to produce exclusive video game related content should come as no surprise considering the company’s strategy in recent years, as it is a direct continuation of Google’s increasing investment in video games dedicated content. Despite being first and foremost a service provider, the fact that YouTube’s first ever in-house live series production is focused solely on video games is another step by Google in that direction. It is important to address the unique position of video games in today’s online broadcasting scene. Naturally, video games are an active media form which requires an active participation from the user/player in order to operate, and some might argue to enjoy, the game. Traditionally, watching another person play video games meant waiting in line on game centers, trying to get a glimpse of the action behind the player, or watching a friend playing on a home console while waiting for his turn to end. It might come as a surprise then, that today video games are enjoyed by far more people than those who play them, and at least on the online sphere, they are as popular form of passive entertainment as movies and TV shows. According to different reports by intelligence research groups Superdata and Newzoo, nearly 500 million people watch gaming content online on a regular basis (Quartz 2015, Newzoo 2016a), across platforms such as YouTube, DingIt, Azubu and Twitch.tv, with the latter being the leading channel in this category. What started as a spinoff live streaming video channel on June 2011, Twitch has become the world’s leading service for video games live streams, walkthroughs, speed-runs and electronic sports (e-sports), and has a monthly audience of over 100 million views (The Guardian 2015) and an average of 1.7 million broadcasters streaming every month (Twitch.tv 2015). Collectively, Twitch viewers watched the channel’s streams on 2015 for 241,441,823,059 minutes, which is 459,366 years of video games content (ibid). Due to Twitch’s major success, several global media juggernauts such as Microsoft, Sony and Amazon competed for its acquisition on 2014, with Google being the primary candidate to close the deal. According to several sources (Forbs 2014a, The Verge, 2014, VenturaBeat 2014), Google offered over $1 billion for the acquisition in order to develop its gaming live stream services. While YouTube is the largest platform for online videos with over 1 billion users worldwide (YouTube statistics 2016), Twitch was the dominant live

15 stream gaming platform and a desirable addition for Google’s online services. For undisclosed reasons, the acquisition of Twitch by Google did not come to terms, and Amazon was able to complete the purchase on August 2014 for $970 million in cash (Forbs 2014), further enhancing the company’s investment in video games, alongside its own game studio and games’ ports to Amazon Fire TV platform. Video games streams were a major part of YouTube even before Google’s attempt to acquire Twitch, including a gaming channel which was automatically generated, but as mentioned earlier, the majority of the content was preloaded and scattered around countless games, genres and streamers, which allowed gaming focused Twitch to become the dominate force in live streaming and broadcasting of video games. As a response to the failed acquisition and in order to challenge Twitch, Google launched YouTube Gaming on August 2015, a service described by the company as “A YouTube built for gamers” (YouTube Official Blog 2015) and features not only mobile app and dedicated pages for over 25,000 games, but also more accessible live streaming and broadcasting options, making the process much easier for the growing number of streamers on the platform. With the launch of YouTube Gaming, video games became the third entertainment category to receive its own portal on YouTube, following YouTube Music and YouTube Kids (The Guardian 2015a). According to YouTube’s head of gaming Ryan Wyatt, “Gaming is so big now. We’re doing billions of hours of watch-time a month, with hundreds of millions of users. It’s astonishing” (ibid).

Top 5 YouTube Channels by Subscribers 120 96

100

78 76 80 60 50 45

(Millions) Subscribers Subscribers 20 0 Music Gaming Sports PewDiePie Movies Channel

Figure 2: Top five YouTube channels by numbers of subscriptions

As clearly seen in figure 2, gaming on the world’s largest video platform is indeed “big”. As of October 2016, among YouTube’s auto generated channels, gaming is the second largest with nearly 78 million subscribers, behind only Music channel with over 95 million, and ahead of Sports, Movies and News channels (Socialblade 2016). YouTube’s most popular and watched individual is 27 years old Felix Kjellberg from Sweden, known as PewDiePie, which has over 50 million subscribers (YouTube PewDiePie page 2016). Kjellberg gained his popularity from 2010, when he started recording himself playing video games and upload them to his YouTube channel. Today, Kjellberg holds the most viewed YouTube channel of all time record with over 13.5 billion views (ibid), and he has more subscribers as an individual than the entire Movies and News channels subscribers, and a higher number of subscribers than those of pop-stars Justin Bieber and Rihanna combined. On April 2016, Kjellberg, who play video games and post his gameplay sessions online, was selected for the pioneer category on TIME Magazine 100 most influential people (TIME Magazine 2016b).

Chapter 2: Theory

As demonstrated by the cases presented above, it is clear that video games range across multiple media forms, platforms and events and impact millions around the world. As noted by Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., “It was inevitable that academics would eventually notice” (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. 2016: 2). Indeed, this impact results in a growing number of scholars and theorists who are laying out ways in which the medium can be looked at to emphasize its strengths and to show that games and games culture has the potential to not only entertain, but to build communities and foster creativity in new and unique ways (among them are Henry Jenkins, Tom Bissel, Jesper Juul and Mia Consalvo). In this chapter, I will examine multiple aspects of the medium of video games, in order to establish some sort of framework to base my database in the second part of this study. I will first address Jane McGonigal’s innovative approaches in regard to video game study as a benchmark for positive elements of the medium, followed by a discussion on the possible negative aspects and risks, and conclude with Jenkins’s exploration of the image of video games in the eyes of the general public, which will be used as a benchmark for the negative aspects. The main purpose of such multiple perspective discussion on the characteristics the medium, is to set the ground for the construction of the database and the analysis which will follow at the second part of this paper.

2.1 McGonigal’s four categories of intrinsic rewards One of the strongest voices calling for reevaluating the place video games hold in our lives is Jane McGonigal. A scholar and a game designer, McGonigal argues in her seminal work ‘Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World,’ that not only video games in today’s society are fulfilling genuine human needs that the real world is currently unable to satisfy, but they can also allow us to tackle real life problems and eventually, to fix what’s wrong with our reality using solutions acquired in virtual game worlds (McGonigal 2011). According to McGonigal, games are the quintessential autotelic activity (ibid: 50), a self-motivated, self-rewarding activity which generates intrinsic rewards such as positive emotions, personal strength and social connections (ibid: 45). Those are essential to our happiness, and as argued by McGonigal, there are four major categories of such intrinsic rewards (ibid: 49). Video games are able to provide those rewards since we

18 only ever play them because we want to, meaning they don’t fuel our need for extrinsic reward in things such as payment, advancing our careers etc., and instead they enrich us with (1) satisfying work, (2) the experience or the hope of being successful, (3) social connection and (4) the meaning of being a part of something greater than ourselves (ibid). By satisfying work, McGonigal refers to games which give us clear goals and actionable next steps towards achieving this goal (Ibid: 55), using, among others, the highly popular 2004 massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft as an example. As in many games in the genre, the work in World of Warcraft is self-improvement, meaning to make the player’s avatar better in every possible way the game allows. To achieve this, the game provides a clear path to such improvement with a leveling up system which unlocks better gear and in turn, harder challenges and quests, in what McGonigal refer to as “a virtuous circle of productivity” (ibid: 53). Such satisfying work flow is designed in a way that there is always something to do and ways to get better at the game, hence ways to do a better job. The result, as argued by virtual world leading researcher Edward Castronova, is that “there is zero unemployment in World of Warcraft” (in ibid). Hope of being successful, according to McGonigal, is that video games “eliminate our fear of failure and improve our chances for success” (ibid: 68). Failing is an inherent part of video games, much as it is part of any other aspect of our lives. The point presented by McGonigal, is the way gamers utilize and embrace failure and try to improve through failing, to a point where “gamers can spend 80 percent of the time failing” (ibid: 64). The reason is that failure is a crucial element in game design which enables growth, tension and progress, and is providing what McGonigal calls “positive failure feedback” (ibid: 67). This can be achieved by an animation sequence of the character’s ultimate failure, death, a hint of how to advance through the challenge or most importantly, the notion that the failure was caused by the player’s mistake, meaning it was a “fair” failure which can perhaps be avoided the next time the game is played. Such “justifiable optimism” is a crucial part of the medium, since every game’s challenge is meant to be passable with enough time and motivation (ibid). Echoing the importance of failure to games is a recent article by Jake Muncy in WIRED Magazine, which discusses the lack of real sense of failure in many of the current games. Titled “It’s Time for Video Games to Embrace the Power of Failure

Again,” the article demonstrates why failure is integral part of many games’ narratives, and why a story without failure is perhaps “no story at all” (in WIRED Magazine, 2016a). While McGonigal discusses failure from a feedback perspective, Muncy expends on that idea and while he recognize the role of a failure as a feedback tool to alert the player of his/her mistake, a simple “Game Over” doesn’t affect the stakes of the game’s story, and thus it loses its true impact on the payer. When a failure is handled properly though, namely has a significant implication on the game’s narrative, it can “increase the tension of a given encounter by gating it behind a personal challenge,” (ibid) Muncy argues. When handled poorly however, he adds, “death offers an unsatisfying and shallow form of failure, slowing you down but not much else” (ibid). By “handled poorly,” Muncy means that there is a discrepancy between narrative buildup for a challenge and the game design which fail to offer real challenge to the players, meaning there are hardly any repercussions for the narrative, which inevitably effect the immersion and agency of the player. While coming from a different perspective, Muncy, much like McGonigal, argue that

“games can and should embrace failure—the type of failure that crosses into both storytelling and play—as an essential part of creating an involving interactive experience. Failure offers texture, complexity, and a chance for growth on the part of player and character alike. [...] Games need situations in them that include fights you can’t win, or engagements that you’re forced to retreat from, or moments where you as the player character experience loss.” (ibid).

It is interesting to note then, that there are games in which failure is not an option, games which provide minimal interactivity and very basic gameplay mechanics (the discussion if such creations can be regarded as “games” or not is beyond the scope of this paper5, and is a fundamental issue which game scholars themselves do not agree on). Such games are meant to be experiences in which the player take part of, rather than shape. An interesting example is a 2008 game titled

5 For extensive discussion on this topic, please refer to chapter 3, ‘What is a Game?,’ in Egenfeldt- Nielsen, S., et al,. (2016) Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction

The Graveyard, by Belgian indie developer studio TALE OF TALES. The premise of the game is very simple: The player control the character of an old lady at the gates of a graveyard, walks her through the path to a bench near a chapel, where she sits down and a scene accompanied with a melancholy song about death and dying takes place. After the song the player lead her out of the graveyard, and the game ends. There are no other paths, and no other interactions other than the bench. The only control the player has is walking the character. The game offer no way to fail. As there is no clear objective, there is no right or wrong way to play the game, and since there are no enemies or hazards, the character cannot die, which is traditionally the way to fail in a video game. The game, however, offer an interesting twist to that simple formula. While The Graveyard is a free game, the developers added a paid version, what they refer to the full experience. The paid version is identical to the basic game in every way, but it adds one feature: Death. While playing the full game, the woman might die while sitting on the bench, but the death is not guaranteed. It might take several playthroughs in order for her to die. It’s a random event which the player cannot control. The only control of the player is to lead the old lady to the bench and “hope” that she will die. The death in this case, is almost like a win, a relief for the old lady. It is the one element the player pay for, meaning that lack of it, might be regarded as a failure. Such example takes the positive failure feedback McGonigal discussed and interpret it a whole different way, while keeping the same meaning and outcome. Prominent games scholar Chris Kohler, describes his fascinating experience playing through The Graveyard, stating that “The value here isn’t the gameplay, it’s the carefully crafted aesthetic experience and its (successful, in my case) attempt to draw an emotional response from the player” (in WIRED Magazine, 2008). The developers’ vision for the game, it seems, was aiming for such response from their players, as stated in the game’s press release: “[The designers] Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn are determined to explore the potential of interactive media. They believe that for the medium to grow (up), designers need to have the courage to abandon the game format and dare to explore other types of interaction, other types of emotions, stories, etc” (in ibid). Such vision, as well as its execution, shows the complexity and depth of the medium and the different ways it can approach seemingly simple experiences such as failure. Next is the social connection, which is another aspect that require a careful examination, especially since it is an element that stand in contradiction to the

21 common image of gaming as a solitary activity. With the emergence of high-speed Internet connectivity and its integration in video games, a new virtual public sphere emerged as games became more than cultural objects examined mainly by their unique ability to explore unfolding single player interactive narratives. They became a stage for social interactivity, cooperative\competitive experiences and shared creativity. This process enables the social connection described by McGonigal as a strong social bonds which games are able to build and lead to more active social networks, and can be achieved either by playing games together at the same physical space or online (McGonigal 2011: 82). Naturally, face-to-face interactions can be more rewarding, and while not suggesting that playing games online is a good substitution for real interactions, McGonigal argues that when lacking such real world interactions, playing online games can be a stepping stone to a positive emotional state and a more positive social experience (ibid: 92 - 93). Interestingly enough, despite the popularity of online multiplayer games and the connectivity between players that might be implied, according to a study of more than 150,000 World of Warcraft players, 70 percent of those players’ time is spent pursuing individual missions in the game, barely interacting with other players (ibid: 89). This data raised the question, why bother paying a monthly subscription fee for playing an online multiplayer game if the social aspect is mostly ignored. The researchers found that what draws players was the sense of sharing the virtual environment, even if there was little to no interaction between them (ibid). McGonigal refer to this kind of interaction as an “ambient sociability,” a casual form of social interaction that might not create direct bonds but does satisfy our craving to feel connected to others (ibid: 90). Another aspect of connectivity is video games fan culture, which deconstruct the stereotypical representation of gamers and the very act of playing video games as a mindless pursuit with little benefit, by promoting creativity and sharing video game related content. Media scholar Henry Jenkins refers to this as ‘Participatory Culture,’ one which is first and foremost a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement. According to Jenkins, participatory culture provide strong support for creating and sharing creations with others, as well as some type of informal mentorship where knowledge is passed along from experienced members to novices. Members within the participatory culture believe that their contributions matter and feel some degree of social connection with other members (Jenkins 2009:

5 – 6). Jenkins argues that participatory culture today is anything but fringe or underground, a claim that is supported by a 2005 study concluding that more than one-half of all teens have created media content, and roughly one-third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced, with many of such creations are video games related content such as modified characters skins and costumed levels (Ibid: 3). According to Jenkins, fan’s creations can be accessed in astonishing quantities and diversities (Jenkins: 2006: 2), a process which can either benefit game companies or challenge them. On the one hand, game companies give the public access to their design tools, support and publicize the best creations and hire the top amateur programmers (Ibid), while on the other hand fans are finding ways to access games’ codes and create their own unique game modifications which they can sell via alternative online distribution channels for their own profit. This philosophy of games, Ridyard argues, “lies in stark contrast to the popular representation of gamer culture, which is one of passive consumption, without an acknowledgement of the creativity and participatory elements inherent to the medium” (Ridyard 2015: 4). Participatory culture is also related to the final point presented by McGonigal, what she refer to as finding a meaning in our actions, or “becoming a part of something bigger than ourselves” (McGonigal 2011: 95). Online connectivity enabled players to collaborate in missions and challenges set by game developers, challenges that are not possible achieving by a single player. Such challenges might have little to no value outside the game, but this does not take away from the meaning the players find in their actions. McGonigal presents an event from the game Halo 3 as an example of such challenge. In April 2009, more than 15 million players of the game celebrated a collective milestone of 10 billion kills against the Covenant, the game’s virtual enemy. The achievement was a concerted effort by the game’s community, with its players aiming to achieve something bigger than any other game community had ever achieved. The game’s forums and online boards filled up with tips, strategies and invitations for any registered players to take part in the group effort (ibid: 95 - 96). McGonigal herself addresses the obvious, necessary question: So? “What’s the point? The Covenant isn’t real. It’s just a game” (ibid: 96). On the one hand she argues, the answer is nothing, there is no value in killing a virtual enemy whether 10 or 100 billion. There is no real importance and no real lives being saved. On the other hand, the fact that there is no value, does not mean there is no meaning for those who participated in the event (ibid: 96 - 97). The question of value vs. meaning can be

23 applied for many aspects of our lives, and many activities which might have no actual value but have tremendous meaning for those who engage in them. The meaning in this case, McGonigal argues, comes from the feeling of “being part of something bigger than ourselves. The belief that our actions matter beyond our own individual lives” (ibid: 97). The massive goal which millions of players pursued together, dedicated themselves to a cause and made significant contribution to it created a real meaning for those who took part in the activity(ibid). Two years earlier, in The Telegraph’s review for Halo 3, Sam Leith addressed the social element of the game and the fan community:

“A big shift has taken place, in recent years, in the way video games are played. What was once generally a solitary activity is now , in the vast multiplayer realms of Second Life or World of Warcraft, just as with Halo – overwhelmingly a communal one” (The Telegraph 2007)6.

The Halo 3 case also echoes Muncy argument about failure, as an essential part of creating and involving meaningful experiences. Hence, a game like Halo 3 encompasses all four elements discussed by McGonigal, from working together to achieve a common goal, dealing with multiple failures on the way to the overcome the challenge, to the social community aspects and sense of meaning by being part of something greater than ourselves.

2.2 The cultural status of video games In this section I will discuss video games cultural status and public perception, as well as few of the possibilities games offer for social change. Video games, like any other cultural form does not exist in isolation and is integrated within a complex system of meanings shaped by society and institutions (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2016: 158). Referring to Marshall McLuhan, Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. acknowledge the fact that the history of cultural media “shows an almost instinctive skepticism leveled at new media” (ibid). Much like radio, movies, television, comic books and even certain

6 Although Leith’s comment also appear in McGonigal’s text, I chose to quote the original and full source directly.

24 types of music which had to gain recognition in their early days, video games as the youngest medium among those are or their battle for cultural acceptance. This battle factor many issues that video games, as an interactive media form had to deal with alongside others, and so when television for example had to struggle against the perception that its role was to entertain rather than enlighten (ibid), video games have to, in addition, bear the weight of interactivity and its possible implications. Despite theoretical and scientific developments in the somewhat archaic distinctions between some forms of expression being more dignified and worthy of careful attention than others, such developments were only able to blur, but not erase the distinction between high culture and pop culture (ibid: 158 - 159). Games, Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. argue, are still categorized “within the latter - and still lower - sphere” (ibid: 159), partly due to arbitrary distinctions between art and non-art, a recognition games have yet to gain. Games’ perception in the eyes of the public is also limited due to their objective to entertain, preventing them from being considered as means for creative expression, simulators for social change or educational tool. Yet like other media, alongside their role as entertainment medium games can, and in-fact have different functions and expressive intentions (ibid). Another setback of games due to their classifications as entertainment, as argued by Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., is that there aren’t many cultural critics who deal with games in their own terms, “as procedural forms capable of generating new kinds of expressions” (ibid: 163). While entertainment plays a crucial role in contemporary life, it also often considered synonymous with escapism and its very strong negative connotations associated with flight from reality through dangerous means such as drugs (ibid). Escapism in regard to games can carry a wider notion, as argued by psychologist Andrew Evans, who consider games to be an active form of escapism (like for example gardening), and as such does not consider them as a negative activity, or unhealthy escapism, since it is not the activity itself that determine the quality of the escapism, but the context and way it is performed. In that sense, any kind of escapism can become an addiction regardless to the activity (ibid). Games have been, and still are the subject of a heated debate regarding their possible addictive form, a topic which will be discussed later on. While entertainment was the main and perhaps the sole purpose of games in their early days, a growing number of game developers in recent years design games for personal and social change, positive impact games or social reality games.

Initiatives such as “Games for Change” movements which are dedicated to using digital games for social change are growing in popularity, to a point where a category of “Games for Impact” is part of the industry annual game award, given for a thought provoking game with a profound pro-social meaning or message. When discussing the cultural position of video games, such elements must be taken into account. McGonigal for example, developed games to get people to think differently about the world's oil supply, household chores and entrepreneurship in the developing world Other examples include Cart Life (2011), a game where the player controls a street vendor and attempts to run the small shop whilst looking after the character health, interests, family and relationship, SuperBetter (2012), a game that helps players tackle real-life health challenges such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury, Papers Please (2013), which focuses on the emotional toll of working as an immigration officer, deciding whom to let in and whom to exclude from entering a fictional dystopian country or 1979 Revolution: Black Friday (2016), an adventure interactive drama placed in Tehran, Iran, with the player taking the role of a young photojournalist who return to Iran after studying abroad to find his people in a bloodied uprising. I would like to shortly discuss two notable examples, as a way to try and encapsulate the variety of issues designers are able to tackle using video games. The first is a 2006 online browser free game titled Darfur is Dying, developed by Susana Ruiz with a goal to put people in the shoes of a Darfurian refugee, in order to raise awareness to the human crisis in Sudan. The game is set in a refugee camp, and the player has to perform a seemingly simple task of bringing water to the camp. Going out from the camp to the barren wasteland holds many risks and challenges, as the player has to avoid militia trucks in fear of being kidnapped and killed in the case of a male avatar, rape and abuse in the case of a female character. While the game was criticized for oversimplifying the conflict, it gained exposure in mainstream media publications such as The Washington Post, Time Magazine and BBC News, and was played by over one million people. Stephen Friedman, general manager at mtvU's who supported the project referred to the impact of the game, saying that “the first part of activism is getting something under your skin, and having a personal identification with it, and the immediacy of playing a [video] game can often do that” (in BBC, 2006).

The second is 2016 game called That Dragon, Cancer, created by husband and wife Ryan and Amy Green as a tribute to their son Joel who was diagnosed with terminal cancer at twelve months old, and passed away shortly after celebrating his fifth birthday. The game is a raw autobiographical experience from the parents perspective, as the player go through the emotional crisis of the Greens as they struggle with the most heartbreaking of human tragedies. Despite its limited gameplay elements, simple mechanics and presentation, the game was able to convey in the most genuine way the feelings of Ryan and Amy Green, during particular moments of the family’s struggle against Joel’s cancer. The game was praised for its explicit level of autobiography which is, according to Emad Ahmed from NewStatesman, “rarely found in books or films, let alone a computer game (in NewStatesman 2016). Rich Stanton from The Guardian, noted that That Dragon, Cancer shows how video games can create empathy, “both through the simple method of allowing the player to experience unfamiliar situations – and by twisting what is real and not-real within them (in The Guardian 2016). Keith Stuart, also from The Guardian referred to the unique value of games as a medium as well, arguing that they offer agency to the audience and allow us to utterly subvert authorial intentions as well as teach us about control and the loss of control (The Guardian 2016a). Stuart article describing his experience while playing the game is fascinating and thought provoking, as he shares his own privet loss of his father to cancer, and how relatable and successful That Dragon, Cancer was in dealing with such complex, harrowing issues. Despite the recognition games such as Darfur is Dying and That Dragon, Cancer received by major publications, and the fact that more and more creators, mainly indie developers, consider games as tools for raising awareness on variety of issues, such creations are still the minority in the mainstream, mostly action-driven, violent (and best-selling) genres in the industry. Such games are often held responsible for some of the negative images of the medium, as discussed in the following part.

2.3 Possible negative implications of engaging with video games Despite many of the positive aspects of the medium presented, it is important address some of the possible negative implications of engaging with video games. Any argument “for” or “against” video games can be supported by countless studies and articles, and is a frequent debate among both game scholars and popular publications.

Egentfeld-Nielsen et al. dedicated an entire chapter of their book discussing video games and risks, where they thoroughly examine the potential harmful effects of video game play through various studies on the subject (2016). As the authors put it, the issue of the risks involved with playing video games is one that “everyone in the industry, and just as many people who have nothing to do with video games - seems to have an opinion about” (ibid: 273). In popular press, The Telegraph for example discussed the issue on June 2016 and presented notable reports and studies on the topic. Arguments for the medium in the article include studies which claim that prolonged exposure to video games has positive effect on the brains of young adults as several areas of grey matter expands, contribute to self awareness and happiness, improve eyesight and can fix attention problems, while arguments against the medium suggested that video games can cause violent behavior, the most common argument against the medium, as well as making players less empathetic (The Telegraph 2016a). Aggression caused by playing video games is perhaps the most common argument against the medium, but discussing the violent elements in video games and the question of “if violent video games make violent people” in an academic research appear to be almost mundane at this stage. Egentfeld-Nielsen et al. note that until the late 1990s most of the funded game research involved a risk perspective, with over 200 studies in the past 35 years dedicated to try and understand the relationship between video games and risk. Such studies are divided into two perspectives: The first is the active media perspective that believes that media actively influence a mostly passive recipient, namely the player. It is based on medical and psychological traditions, as the researchers usually approach the question by creating staged experiments in a laboratory rather than everyday situation. The subjects are then exposed to different types of games under controlled, but not necessarily realistic conditions. According to some researches under this perspective, playing video games can cause harm to players and make them more aggressive, while others say there might be such connection but are uncertain as to the extent (Egentfeld-Nielsen et al. 2016, chapter 9). The second is the active user perspective, that stresses the active interpretation and filtering players show when playing video games. This approach derives inspiration from ethnography and culturally oriented media studies, with the emphasis in those kind of studies is on the meaning that the user construct from each piece of media, and the process is always dependent on the context. In contrast to the active

28 media perspective, the active user paradigm argue that it is not possible to study the potentially averse effect of violent video games in artificial settings and without understanding the player’s own perspective. Most researchers operating under this perspective argue either that video games do not seem to cause harm in any direct sense, or more likely, that the question itself is simply too general to answer (ibid). Both approaches have been criticized for what many contemporary researchers see as an unfair treatment to video games as a medium. The topic of risk has become somewhat of an orphan in game research for over a decade, as several researchers refuse to take part of risk related studies, arguing that the discussion of aggression and games is essentially “an attempt to turn games into a scapegoat for more complex social issues” (ibid: 274). This is not to say that media and game scholars are not interested in the question of aggression itself, but they do see the criticism of games as unfair and fear that link to aggression is a precursor to censorship not leveled at other media, a relevant concern considering the attempts to pass laws to curb video games in the U.S., or ban violent games in Australia. The medium of video games deserve a wider discussion on both its positive as well as negative aspects, and I believe that arguments beyond that of aggression are more suitable to represent its variety and current state. McGonigal’s argument in favor of connectivity in games for example is another controversial topic among scholars, with some argue that such social connectivity is isolating us from each other much more than it is connecting. Sherry Turkle for example, wrote in 1984, long before online games were popularized, that “Video games are a window onto a new kind of intimacy with machines that is characteristic of the nascent computer culture. The special relationship that players form with video games has elements that are common to interactions with other kinds of computers” (Turkle 1984: 66). Nearly 20 years later, in her 2011 book “Alone Together,” Turkle explored how new tools enabled by technological advancements dramatically alter our social lives. In regards to video games, Turkle draw similarities between a gambler and video game player, as both she argues, “share a life of contradiction: you are overwhelmed, and so you disappear into the game. But then the game so occupies you that you don't have room for anything else” (Turkle 2011: 227). When it comes to online connectivity, Turkle argues that “when online life becomes your game, there are new complications. If lonely, you can find continual connection. But this may leave you more isolated, without real people around you” (ibid).

There is no definitive answer to the question of online social connectivity, but there are evidences that playing online with a real person, either a friend or a stranger, create better emotional response than playing against a computer. According to a 2006 research by Ravaja, Saari, Turpeinen, Laarni, Salminen and Kivikangas, when compared with playing against a computer, playing against another human “elicited higher Spatial Presence, engagement, anticipated threat, post-game challenge appraisals, and physiological arousal, as well as more positively valenced emotional responses” (Ravaja et al. 2006: 381). In addition, the research shown that playing against a friend elicited greater spatial presence, engagement, and arousal when compared to playing against a stranger (ibid: 392). The current state of the gaming market is one where most people who play games do so online. According to a 2013 “State of Online Gaming Report” based on data collected from several research groups and published by Spil Games, out of 1.2 billion people who play games, 700 million play online (Spil Games 2013), meaning the social connectivity, even if on a virtual sphere that offer only limited interaction, has its value among people who play games, a sort of “ambient sociability” as presented by McGonigal. Another important topic requires discussion is the argument of addiction to video games, which is almost as common as the discussion about aggression and has been a topic for research since the early 1980s7. When considering elements such as the endless World of Warcraft job as discussed earlier, such arguments’ relevance is clear. It is however a problematic topic due to the unclear definition of addiction in regards to active media studies, and despite the fact that large number of healthcare associations, including the American Psychiatric Association (APA) have made strong statements against video games, a satisfactory description has yet to be found and there is still disagreement on the topic. In 2007 the APA refused to include video games addiction in their diagnostic system due to limited and inconclusive research, leading the organization announcement that it does not consider ‘video game addiction’ to be a mental disorder at the time. On the 2013 diagnostic system however, “Internet Gaming Disorder” was included on APA’s watch list, warranting additional research. (Egentfeld-Nielsen et al. 2016: 287).

7 For a chronological examination of video games addiction research, see Grifiths, Kuss and King “Video Game Addiction: Past, Present and Future” (2012)

The issue of addiction is not something that the gaming industry ignore nor deny. McGonigal in-fact, addresses this issue stating that “Game addiction is a subject the industry takes seriously - it’s a frequent topic at industry conferences and on game developers forums: what causes gamer addiction, and how can you help your players avoid it?” (McGonigal 2011: 43). Yet despite those claims, and as if the topic is not controversial enough, there are cases where developers actively used elements to hook players to their games. Bungie for example, the developer behind the Halo series and most recently Destiny (2013), openly discussed how the studio applied behavioral game design, the study of linking behavioral psychology to in-game tasks and rewards system, in order to observe how people react and behave when facing with certain rewards and in which frequency (IGN 2015). Mobile games on Google’s Play Store for example, use the keyword “addictive” in their users reviews as an appealing selling point for games. At the moment, the methods for measuring the condition for video games addiction remain elusive, as clearly shown by a 2013 meta-study, which found large inconsistencies across 63 different studies (Egentfeld-Nielsen et al. 2016: 299). The definition, as mentioned, is probably the biggest issue in addressing the problem and relating it to video games, as different definitions of addiction result in different number of addicted players, meaning some studies and researchers acknowledge video game addiction, yet disagree in the criteria to measure it among players (ibid: 300). Gender issues such as objectification of female characters in games and the negative attitude towards female game developers, or lack of representation of LGBT community in games are other points of criticism towards both the industry and gamers communities. Paul Tassi discusses in great length what he refers to as “the escalation battle over sexism and homophobia in gaming” (Tassi 2014: Kindle location 420 - 421). Cases of homophobia expressed by gamers are not rare, with notable example are anti-gay comments against developers at Bioware for including optional gay relationship in their Mass-Effect or Dragon-Age series. Cases of misogyny and harassment towards women escalated even further, with notable example are gamers’ harassing Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist critic and blogger who in 2012 started a crowd-funding campaign to raise money for a video web series discussing the image of women in games (ibid: 467-468), and game developer Zoe Quinn who was accused of having sexual relationship with game journalists to get

31 publicity for her games. Those cases of harassment is what is now referred to as Gamergate, a harassment campaign disguised as an online movement ostensibly concerned with game journalism ethics aiming to protect the “gamer” identity, which escalated to death threats against several women in the industry and gained public attention in 2014. One of the most severe cases occurred in October 2014, when Brianna Wu, an indie video game developer faced rape and death threats that were so severe she and her husband had to leave their home under police protection, after Wu posted Tweets mocking the Gamergate “movement.” Caitlin Dewey from The Washington Post, published a fascinating article discussing the Gamergate fiasco, referring to it as an Internet culture war:

“On one side are independent game-makers and critics, many of them women, who advocate for greater inclusion in gaming. On the other side of the equation are a motley alliance of vitriolic naysayers: misogynists, anti-feminists, trolls, people convinced they’re being manipulated by a left-leaning and/or corrupt press, and traditionalists who just don’t want their games to change” (in The Washington Post, 2014).

The demographic divide is central in the controversy, as Dewey argues, since it is the difference between what she refers to as “the historical, stereotypical gamer — young, nerdy white guy who likes guns and boobs,” and the “much broader, more diverse range of people who play now” (ibid). Anger of gamers toward game companies and developers that cross the line of a legitimate criticism, is another concerning aspect of gaming communities. Through social media, fans can now address companies and individual developers directly. This can and have resulted in fans sending insults and death threats to developers for making changes to their favorite game’s characters, equipment or mechanics (Tassi 2014: Kindle Locations 699-700). Several incidents escalated to a point where developers decided to cancel projects and quit their profession due to gamers’ harassments and violent, often death threats responses, (e.g. Fez creator Phil Fish, Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen). It is no wonder that while academic research has been conducted on many elements of video games, as argued by Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., “the study of dangers

32 in connection with games remains a key research avenue, as it continues to receive massive media attention and is still an arena for great controversies” (Egenfeldt- Nielsen et al.2016: 274). Issues regarding gamers’ communities however, such as in the cases of Gamergate and harassments towards developers are relatively new and will most likely be the focus of studies among media scholars in the near future. In order to clarify, while the author consider himself to be a fan and active user of the medium (or simply put, a gamer), this research has no intention to purport if games are “good” or “bad”, as the debate itself is far from being that simplistic, let alone definitive. The goal is to try and present a wide picture as possible of the medium, considering both its merits and flaws in order to determine if such complexity is indeed represented in its mainstream media depiction, and to which accuracy.

2.4 Henry Jenkins “myths about video games” In 2004 Henry Jenkins published an essay in conjunction with a PBS Documentary about “the video game revolution,” where he discussed what he argued was the large gap between the public’s perception of video games and what the research actually shows, or in other words, myths about video games. Jenkins addresses eight assumptions (which many of them were addressed earlier in this paper) and provides data to refute the arguments. As shown in the previous section, both media scholars as well as the industry insiders acknowledge some of the flaws or potential risk of engaging with the medium, but cannot agree on definitions or scope. Jenkins however, tackle the subject from what he refers to as the public’s popular perspective which in most cases is not entirely aware of the discourse behind the scenes and is mostly informed via mainstream media outlets. Since the short essay only covers some of the most “popular” arguments against video games in the public’s view, and is directed to the general public, it might seem like a simplification of the issue. It does however provide us with a solid framework to explore popular images of the medium, which is the main goal of the second part of this study, where I will discuss how those “myths” which shape the public’s opinion about video games are presented by mainstream media. I will address both the original essay by Jenkins, as well as his follow-up discussion on the topic from 2008, and will provide updated data using the 2016 Entertainment Software Association (ESA) industry ‘Essential Facts’ report when

33 available. In addition to those eight points, the risk of addiction which was discussed earlier will also be addressed, since it is an element that is commonly present in relation to video games usage. While Jenkins did not include that element in the PBS article, he does cover the topic on numerous occasions (see for example Henry Jenkins official blog 2007, Jenkins 2009 PBS interview). The common assumptions about the medium of video games according to Jenkins are:

1. “The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence” Jenkins acknowledge the fact that some of the young offenders who have committed school shootings in the U.S. have also been playing video games. This link between games and mass shootings have been raised by major news networks for nearly two decades, a topic that will be discussed further on chapter four. Jenkins’s argument is that since 97 percent of teens ages 12-17 play digital games on regular basis, if a mass shooting happens by a teenager he or she will most likely be playing games, making the connection meaningless. Jenkins adds that according to a 2001 report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings are centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure. The psychological evaluation of a troubled teen goes well beyond the question of exposure to violent games or any other type of violent media, which is usually a discussion that is only secondary to the immediate connection made by news networks in such cases. This moral panic over violent video games, Jenkins argues, is doubly harmful, as not only that is has led adult authorities to be more suspicious and hostile to kids who already feel cut off from the system, but it also misdirects energy away from eliminating the actual causes of youth violence (Jenkins 2004a, 2008).

2. “Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression” This argument by Jenkins is connected to the discussion presented earlier about linking aggression with playing video games. Claims about such links, Jenkins argues, are based on “media effects” researches, from the active media perspective presented earlier. Jenkins refers to 300 studies of media violence with inconclusive results, and criticize them on methodological grounds such as lack of narrative context, unfamiliarity of the subjects with the content as well as the laboratory environmental context. Most of the studies found a correlation, not a causal relationship, which

34 according to Jenkins mean that such researches could simply show that “aggressive people like aggressive entertainment,” but not to indicate that video games are a primary factor for aggression or anti-social behavior (ibid: 2004a)

3. “Children are the primary market for video games” Under this assumption, Jenkins discusses how the center of the video game market has shifted older as the first generation of gamers continues to play into adulthood (ibid). According to the ESA 2016 report, the average game player age is 35 (ESA 2016: 3). The game industry caters to adult tastes, which raised concerns among parents who either ignored games ratings because they assumed games are for kids or were simply unaware of such system. Video games were criticized for promoting violence as early as 1976, when a controversial black and white game titled Death Race (which looked like a slightly more advanced version of Pong) allowed players to run over people for extra scores. Negative attention for mature and violent games raised in the early 1990s, partly due to more realistic graphics in games such as 1992 Night Trap and mainly 1992 Mortal Kombat and Doom (1993). Although games were criticized even in their early arcade days which could only present primitive graphics, as in the case of Death Race, the realistic violence in games in the 1990s became the topic of a U.S. congress debate in 1994, resulting in the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) by the ESA (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al.2016: 165). The ESRB rating system divides games into six categories: eC for early childhood, E for everyone, E10+ for everyone above the age of 10, T for teen, M for mature and Ao for adults only games. The M rating, which is relevant to our discussion, include content that is “generally suitable for ages 17 and up. May contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language (ESRB rating guide). Similar systems exist in other regions, such as Europe’s 2003 Pan European Games Information (PEGI) or Japan’s 2002 Computer Entertainment Rating Organization (CERO). As shown from the ESA report, parents today are much more aware of the maturity of the medium (as many parents today grew up playing video games) as well as the possibilities to limit mature content from their children: 86 percent of parents are aware of the ESRB rating system and 97 percent believe it is accurate. In addition, 93 percent of parents believe that the parental controls available in all new video game consoles are useful (ESA 2016: 8).

4. “Almost no girls play computer games” The issue of gender has been an ongoing common misconception about the medium. The historic imbalance in the game market and among people working in the game industry resulted in the presence of sexist stereotypes in games which were a considerable detrimental factor for female players. In recent years though, game developers (at least in the West) are much more aware of gender representation in games, and many women hold key positions in the industry’s creative sections. Hence, while the video game market has been historically predominantly male, the percentage of women playing games has steadily increased to the point where their number is almost the same as that of male players (Jenkins 2004a, 2008). The ESA report affirms that argument, showing that 41 percent of people who play games are females (2016: 3). When it comes to online play, Spil Games 2013 State of Online Gaming report shows similar data, with 46 percent female players (2013: 7).

5. “Because games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them” The claim that games can train to kill is yet another controversial argument against the medium. Supporters of such argument base their claims on games such as America’s Army, a 2002 free multilayer first-person shooter developed and published by the U.S. army specifically as a recruiting and communication tool (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. 2016: 161). According to Jenkins, former military psychologist and moral reformer David Grossman argues that because the military uses games in training, young people who play those games are “similarly being brutalized and conditioned to be aggressive in their everyday social interactions” (Jenkins 2004a). Jenkins criticize Grossman’s model, which he claims can only work under very specific conditions which simply do not exist outside the military training setting. Jenkins acknowledges that games can enhance learning, but he refers to a fundamentally different model of how and what players learn from games (ibid).

6. “Video games are not a meaningful form of expression” Jenkins refers here to the image of games as carried over from their early days. While the first games where far from being sophisticated and were little more than shooting galleries with the sole purpose of entertainment, current games are designed to be ethical testing grounds (ibid). Adding to the variety of games and the possibilities they

36 offer as previously discussed, Jenkins talks about games which “allow players to navigate an expansive and open-ended world, make their own choices and witness their consequences” (ibid). An important element in modern game design is to confront the player with moral dilemmas and choices (e.g. Telltale’s 2012 The Walking Dead series, 2014 Divinity: Original Sin, 2015 Until Dawn). As argued by The Sims creator Will Wright, “games are perhaps the only medium that allows us to experience guilt over the actions of fictional characters.” (in ibid). When playing a game, Jenkins argues, we choose what happens to the characters and are responsible for their fate, and in the right circumstances, our behavior in the virtual space allow and encourage us to examine our own values (ibid).

7. “Video game play is socially isolating” To the discussion presented earlier on the issue of connectivity, Jenkins adds that playing with or against another person is in-fact two games taking place simultaneously, one is the explicit conflict and combat on the screen, while the other is the implicit cooperation between the players. In this sense he argues that “two players may be fighting to death on screen and growing closer as friends off screen. Social expectations are reaffirmed through the social contract governing play, even as they are symbolically cast aside within the transgressive fantasies represented onscreen” (ibid). I discussed earlier how the majority of players today play online as well as the implications of social connectivity. Looking at the best selling games from 2015 as published by the NPD group further support this argument, with nine out of the top ten best-selling games of the year had multiplayer component for either cooperative or competitive play in the same space or via online connection (in VentureBeat 2016).

8. “Video game play is desensitizing” Much like the case of games and aggression, numerous active media studies on media violence suggested that consumption of violent media can desensitize individuals to real-life violence, and there are more pronounced effects when it comes to violent games in compared with violent TV programs or films. Jenkins refers to game designer and play theorist Eric Zimmerman who describes the ways we understand play as distinctive from reality, and how play “allows kids to express feelings and impulses that have to be carefully held in check

37 in their real-world interactions” (Jenkins 2004). Jenkins criticize the arguments that playing violent video games can cause a lack of empathy for real-world victims, arguing that if a player respond to the violence in a video game the same way he respond to a real-world tragedy it can show symptoms emotional disturbance (ibid).

2.5 Theory in context My purpose in this study is to examine the representation of video games in mainstream media. Jenkins’s myths about video games are used as a benchmark to link those assumptions with different forms of mainstream media and will be used primarily to define the negative category of my films database, as will be elaborated in the following section. Since I argue that representation of video games in mainstream media plays a significant role of the medium’s perception by the general public, Jenkins’s assumptions, which he claims reflect the “public’s perception of video games” are a useful and accessible tool for such task. Other characteristics of the medium will be factored as well, and will be discussed in relation to my research findings. In the following part I will address my research methods leading up to my analysis of the relevant data.

Part two Chapter 3: Research methods

My study includes several methods of data collection and analysis. In order to examine the representation of video games in mainstream media, I need to first establish what I refer to by mainstream media as well as to decide which forms will be analysed and with what methods. Chomsky for example, breaks down mainstream media, or at least news into “classes,” and each class has multiple channels for either “serious” or “non-serious” content consumption, but the main point is media that reach extensive crowd and play major role in shaping public’s opinion, or even public’s perception of everyday life (Chomsky 1997). In this study I will make use of the term mainstream media in that sense, meaning forms of media that are both directed at and consumed by the general public. In the same sense, I can also refer to the term mass media, which Macnamara describes as media “that have significant impact and effects on public awareness, perceptions and sometimes behavior such as buying decisions and voting” (Macnamara 2005: 18). Mass media encapsulates mainstream media within its meaning, but also includes alternative media forms which will not be addressed, hence the use of the term mainstream media in this paper. My initial goal was to find, analyze and categorize references to video games in numerous forms of mainstream/popular media, including news, films, TV programs and shows, printed press, literature and music. However, after establishing the categories which my analysis is based upon, it was soon clear that such task, if not impossible, requires both labour and resources far beyond the scope of this paper. Hence, this study includes content analysis of samples from the following media: News reports from main news outlets (in either text or video format) and TV shows and series including variety-show broadcasted on television and available online. The main focus in this analysis however, is a quantitative content analysis based on comprehensive database of movies that include any kind of reference to video games in feature films (referred to simply as “films” or “movies” from now on). Lastly, a quantitative questionnaire will be used to provide an overview of the attitudes of the respondents towards the subject and to examine if and how their answers correlates to my framework and analysis, as well as using respondents answers as a possible source for additional references for my movies database.

Originally, I planned to include qualitative interviews in this paper, yet due to the volume of data I had to analyze as well as time constrains I decided not to include in-depth interviews, and instead make use of open ended questions from the questionnaires which provided me with results that answered the purpose of this study. I will make use of Macnamara’s essay about the uses, benefits and best practice methodology for media content analysis where he presents and discusses multiple perspectives from leading scholars, and provided me with highly flexibility and accessible methods to perform the analysis required for this study (2005).

3.1 Content analysis Content analysis can be performed in several ways and serve multiple purposes. According to Macnamara, “Content analysis is used to study a broad range of ‘texts’ from transcripts of interviews and discussions in clinical and social research to the narrative and form of films, TV programs and the editorial and advertising content of newspapers and magazines” (2005: 1). The first part of my analysis includes news reports and TV programs, and is loosely base on qualitative message analysis, a method applicable to analysis of media content which includes text analysis, narrative analysis, rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis, interpretative analysis and semiotic analysis (ibid: 15). Kort-Butler reminds us that content analysis is “more than watching TV or movies, or reading newspapers or comics, and then reporting what is presented in the medium” (Kort-Butler 2016: 2). The way that the story is told and how characters are portrayed, she argues, are often more telling than are specific plot points. There is a constant need to systematically watch or read the content discussed with an analytical and critical eye and look for deeper meanings and messages to which media consumers are exposed (ibid). This component is especially important when analyzing news, where the message is usually clear by the use of headlines or terminology used in reports, which requires asking why did a publication choose to present a topic in a certain way. Despite lack of specific guidelines for qualitative message analysis, Macnamara refers to two main strands particularly relevant to qualitative content analysis: “The first, narratology, focuses on the narrative or story-telling within a text with emphasis on meaning that may be produced by its structure and choice of words. The second draws on semiotics and focuses attention on signs and sign systems in

41 texts and how readers might interpret (decode) those signs” (Macnamara 2005: 15). Both approaches will be used for content analysis and discussion of the following media forms.

3.2 News outlets When discussing any media, and news publications in particular, 1948 Lasswell’s statement about content analysis proves itself to be highly useful. According to Lasswell, when conducting media analysis, we have to consider who says what, through which channel, to whom and with what effect (in ibid: 2). In this study I review several major news publications in the English language which are considered as “national online news brands,” from the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada, in order to examine if and how they present video games in connection to negative or positive events. Naturally, each publication has its own ideology and agenda targeted at different audiences, and can generally be categorized as either left/liberal, or right/conservative, echoing Lasswell “who says what and to whom” reference. For the purpose of examining if a certain political affiliation (and not a single publication) constantly portrays video games in a certain way, I will make use of Pew Research Center’s 2014 study about ideological placement of news publication’s audience, which can roughly define the source as liberal or conservative. Figure 3 shows the chart comprized by Pew Research Center, which presents avarage ideological placement on a 10 point scale of each source’s audience.

Figure 3: Ideological placement of major publication. (Pew Research Center 2014).

Out of the publications which do not appear in this chart and will be addressed, The Telegraph is considered moderate conservative according to a 2010 study (Independent 2015), and The Sydney Morning Herald, while historically considered conservative, is currently regarded as a centrism publication after changing endorsement of parties or avoiding endorsement at all. The Canadian National Post was created explicitly as a conservative newspaper, and while it has gone through some editorial changes, it is still considered a moderate conservative publication (Winnipeg Free Press 2012). Since the focus is on the nature of the report and not necessarily on the publications, I will not have a coding system for the medium’s coverage. The attention to publications’ political affiliation is presented simply in order to try and understand if there is a specific trend in mainstream media discourse regarding video games.

3.3 Television The representation of video games on television will be discussed by analyzing number of TV shows across several decades. As in the case of news coverage of video games, there are countless references to video games in TV shows, which makes the creation of a database containing them all a nearly impossible task for a study in this scope. Instead, I will discuss samples that were brought to my attention by people answering the questionnaire (on which I will elaborate later), as well as from an online chat discussion during a group stream on EasyAllies.com from September 2016. I eventually picked three examples for my discussion, which cover both some of the most common stereotypes towards the medium and the players, and range from the early 1980s to the late 2000s. The limitation for choosing the shows to analyze were that only general televisions shows (regardless of the genre or channel) would be considered. That means that series that are either based on a video game franchise (e.g. 1991 Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, 1998 Mortal Kombat: Konquest), or are about video games (e.g. 2002 Ace Lightning) were not included, since each episode is part of a grand narrative about the medium which stands at the center of the entire show, and therefore it is impossible to refer to a single episode without reviewing the series as a whole. Such shows also target mostly fans of the medium, using transmedia storytelling elements with narrative that crosses between the game and the show. In the case of shows where video games serve as the main theme,

42 elements from popular video games which are easily recognizable by video games players are incorporated, and in some cases the production pay royalty to video games publishers for the right to use their characters (see for example 1989 Captain N: The Game Master, which was not based on any game but featured characters from popular games available on Nintendo consoles). Such creations which cater specifically to fans of the medium, do provide interesting perspective on cross media video games adaptations, but at the same time present relatively limited outlook on the way mainstream media addresses the issue of video games representation. Hence, the three examples presented (Saturday Night Live, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose and Life) are shows and series across different genres in which games are not their main theme. Instead, video games (real or fictional) appear in stand-alone episodes (or sketch in the case of Saturday Night Live) as a significant part of the plot, but with no effect or connection to the rest of the series and the following episodes. Such conditions should provide us with more reliable and varied representation since, as far as I was able to research, those shows are not funded, produced or supported by any game companies which will most likely result in a bias representation, nor do they relate to advocates against the medium that might influence their agenda. Having said that, single episodes which feature video games as product placement (which most likely include transactions on some level) are included, since it is nearly impossible to avoid such instances without ignoring important cases of representation to review. In addition, it is clear that each creator carries his own ideas and values, effected by the public’s discourse on the topic and holds his/her own opinion about video games which most likely will be reflected in the production. In the same sense, it is important to remember that qualitative content analysis, as noted by Macnamara, is open to multiple different meanings to different users and “relies heavily on researcher ‘readings’ and interpretation of media texts” (Macnamara 2005: 5). Such conditions encourage us to pay attention to factors other than simply the text, and so despite the fact that this study’s qualitative content analysis on TV shows involves small samples of media content, it is none the less helpful in understanding the deeper meanings and likely interpretations by audiences of the depiction of the medium in those samples, as well as to determine if and how Jenkins’s points appear in those examples.

3.4 Movies While the volume of references to video games in news and TV shows did not allow me to create a database in order to map and categorize them, such mission is more tangible when it comes to movies. I was able to comprise a list of 116 movies, ranging from 1973 to 2015 which include any kind of reference to video games, by either visual appearance or comment by a spoken character and with no limitation to the time they appear or their significance. Since every scene matters in cinematography, a single shot of an Atari 2600 on an old TV set can capture the spirit of an entire generation, and so my database includes any appearance of video games in movies that I am aware of. My main goal for creating this database is to be able to empirically examine how elements discussed throughout this paper are represented in movies. The list include only movies originally in English, under the following conditions: Movies based on video games franchises were not included, as such creations focus on depicting the world and plot created in the game but do not provide us references the medium in-which they were initially created (e.g. 1993 Super Mario Bros., 2001 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, 2007 Hitman, 2016 Warcraft). In addition, despite publishes’ ambition to use movies adaptation of games as a tool to reach wider audiences, much like in the case of TV shows such movies cater mostly to fans of the medium by the use of games related characters and icons which are instantly recognizable by gamers, but are unfamiliar to those who do not engage with video games in any way. Unlike TV shows however, movies in which games are the main theme were included, since they present a complete plotline within the frame of a single movie (or limited number of movies in case of sequels), and are not part of a greater narrative across numerous episodes and seasons. In that sense, such movies operate much like stand alone TV shows episodes which use games to promote the plot in a confined frame. In addition, such movies, with few exceptions, cater to the general public and not necessarily to fans of the medium, and so while Tron (1982) was inspired by video games and is considered a movie about video games, it appeals to a much larger audience than only gamers. I compiled the list of movies to review by using multiple online sources, most notably Ken Polson’s “Video Game References in Pop Culture” website and Complex.com “The 25 Best Video Game References in Movies.” Additional indications to video games references in movies were brought to my attention during

44 online chat discussion at a group stream on EasyAllies.com from September 2016. While I have no way of evaluate how many movies are missing from my list (it is unreasonable to assume that this list contain every reference to video games ever made in films), after cross checking multiple sources I feel confident that the list is comprehensive enough to base this research upon. In order to establish the categories into which each movie is placed under, I used mainly variables discussed by Jenkins and McGonigal. Content analysis, Macanmara argues, should involve examination of multiple variables and not be a simplistic rating of a single variable which is “univariate and tells us little about the likely meaning and effects of a text” (Nacanmara 2005: 9). Hence, the coding list should establish all the messages (both positive and negative) that are relevant which for I chose the following categories of representation: Positive, Neutral/Environmental, Negative, Parody, Homage/Cameo, and Multiple elements. The categories were defined by the inclusion of one or more of the following elements: Positive representation

1. Satisfying work 2. The experience or the hope of being successful 3. Social connection 4. A sense of meaning by being part of something greater than oneself 5. Games as educational tools or as tools for positive social change 6. Health benefits

Neutral/Environmental representation

1. Product placement 2. Promotional tie-ins 3. Used solely for entertainment purpose with no further use or development 4. “Hang out” area, referring mostly to scenes taking place in arcade centers. While they do count as social activity, note that scenes taking place in arcades are not automatically considered as “social connection” under positive representation unless mentioned otherwise.

Negative representation

1. Jenkins’s eight myths about video games:  Violence  Aggression  Children’s medium  Gender misrepresentation  Games as killing training simulators  Specifically condemning the medium as a meaningless form of expression (presenting games as entertainment does not fall under that category)  Socially isolating activity  Desensitizing effect 2. Addiction 3. Stereotypical teenage male geek gamer 4. Use of video games for illegal activity

Parody

1. Using games for parody purpose, which according to Oxford English Dictionary means: “A literary composition modelled on and imitating another work, esp. a composition in which the characteristic style and themes of a particular author or genre are satirized by being applied to inappropriate or unlikely subjects, or are otherwise exaggerated for comic effect. In later use extended to similar imitations in other artistic fields, as music, painting, film, etc”.

Homage/Cameo

1. Paying homage to a specific game or game console. Oxford English Dictionary defines homage as a “work of art or entertainment which incorporates elements of style or content characteristic of another work, artist, or genre, as a means of paying affectionate tribute. Also: an instance of such tribute within a work of art or entertainment”. 2. Games or games characters appearing as cameos, defined by Oxford English Dictionary as a “short literary sketch or portrait; a small character part that stands out from the other minor parts”.

Multiple elements

1. Movies which represent games using elements from two or more of the previous categories.

The database also includes age group demographics (child, teen or adult), gender (male, female and non-humane) and rather the interaction with the game is done alone or socially (note that merely playing alone is not considered the same as the negative “socially isolating activity” described earlier). The degree of attention that a game or game related content receive as well as its significance and relevance to the plot is coded from 1 to 4 and is defined by the following criteria:

1. Game or console is not shown played and not related to the plot in any way. An example would be game console appear on the shelf or on top of the TV with no reference or interaction by any character. 2. Game or game related content does not support nor ignoring the plot. Meaning the game is acknowledged by either title/pseudo title or gameplay image, but does not appear in credits and not acknowledged/ referenced by a speaking character. Most scenes taking place inside an arcade center where multiple characters are interacting with games in the background would fall under that criteria. 3. Game or game related content support but not move the plot, as well as providing significant context. Game shown by title/pseudo title and/or acknowledged/referenced by a speaking character (not necessarily by title). An example would be a gameplay session by two characters that discuss the game while they are playing, or a way in which the activity of playing together represent the characters’ relationship with each other either positively or negatively. 4. Games are a significant element in the movie and are connected with main characters/narrative, or/and support and move the plot in a meaningful way. Most movies about video games will fall under this criteria.

In conducting this analysis I had to address the issue of Objectivity/intersubjectivity. As emphasized by Macnamara, “a major goal of any scientific investigation must be

47 to provide a description or explanation of a phenomenon in a way that avoids or minimizes the biases of the investigator and, while true objectivity may not be possible, it should strive for consistency and what scholars term intersubjectivity (in Macnamara 2005: 8). While doing my best to examine each reference using the variables described (which were also chosen by me, complicating the issue of objectivity even further), the categorizing was eventually based on my own subjective interpretation and should be addressed accordingly.

3.5 Questionnaire The final part of my data collection is a quantitative questionnaire. The structure is inspired by Valderhaug (2013) and was designed for two main purposes. The first was to expend my movies database thanks to references provided by respondents, as well as to gain additional references to TV shows and news reports. Since I aimed to create a wide database of movies across five decades, respondents from different backgrounds and demographics could expose me to additional movies that otherwise I might not been aware of, beyond the ones I have listed. Second, I hoped to obtain an outline of the respondents’ perspective on the issue of video games representation in mainstream media, and to examine if such representation effects their decision to interact with the medium or not and to what extent. In order to try and reach a large and varied pool of responses, the questionnaire was distributed digitally to two main groups: First year undergraduate students, all part of “Introduction to Popular Culture” class at School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University, and various gaming forums and message boards. Overall, 176 respondents answered the questionnaire, with the majority being the undergraduate students group. As acknowledged by Valderhaug, the use of anonymous self-completion questionnaire is not without its difficulties, since if it is to be too long respondents might be discouraged from filling it (Valderhaug 2013: 31). Another concern is that respondents will rush through the questions to get it done as quickly as possible, harming the quality and validity of the total data collected. To try and avoid such problems, I limited the questionnaire to a total of ten, mostly multiple-choice questions.

The main answer I was hoping to obtain from the questionnaire (aside from movies references) is if respondents are exposed to positive or negative representation of video games in mainstream media and how such representation effects their decision to engage with the medium. The questions were broken down into several groups, with the first being demographics and nationality, followed by a question aimed to answer if the respondent play any type of digital games. Note that I used the term digital/video games for this part of the questionnaire in order to avoid confusion among respondents. Since I specifically addressed any type of digital interactive game, there was a possibility that the term ‘video games’ might limit the respondents answers. Depending on the answer, the following group of questions asked to understand the [positive] respondents’ motivation to play games as well as their gaming habits, and in the case of [negative] respondents the reason for not engaging with the medium. The final group of questions was addressed to all respondents and aimed to understand their cultural and social perception of video games. In addition, it also examined if the respondents were exposed to any positive or negative presentation of video games in mainstream media. For that purpose, some of the questions in this section asked the respondents specify and provide examples, which proved to be a valuable source of information. The final question asked the respondents to self identify themselves as gamers (casual or hardcore) or not, in order to observe if the term carries any positive or negative connotations in relation to its image in mainstream media.

Chapter 4: Analysis

Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. argue that despite the fact that games have to be evaluated in their own terms as “procedural forms capable of generating new kinds of expression (2016: 163), for most critics and, certainly for the mass media in general, “video games are still consistently considered unsophisticated in their form, problematic in their content, the cause of health problems from obesity to addiction, and implicated in amorphous cultural fears - for example, the seemingly ever-present scourge of antisocial, aggressive teenagers” (ibid: 164). Many attributes and characteristics of video games have been discussed in this paper so far, and in this section I aim to place those texts, using Jenkins’s “eight myths about video games” framework, within the mainstream media context. I will start with content analysis of news and TV shows, before moving to my database analysis.

4.1 News analysis There are countless reports connecting video games to negative incidents, with most offer incomplete information and one-sided arguments, or are simply inaccurate and in most cases misleading. At the same time, in conjunction with the growing scientific research about the benefits of video games, news outlets started to report on such possible benefits. I will first refer to news reports or discussions that connected different incidents, directly or indirectly, to video games. From suggestive sexual content8 to use of game consoles by terrorist groups9, news reports covered numerous incidents allegedly connected with video games, with the most common one is the violence and aggression argument. The first major incident connecting extreme violence with video games was the Columbine high school massacre. On April 20, 1999 Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan

8 See for example Fox News January 2008 “SE”XBOX controversial false report about a “new video game features full digital character nudity” (in exophase 2008). 9 See for example The Telegraph November 2015 headline: “Paris attacks: Terrorists could have used PlayStation4 to plot.”

Klebold, 17, went on a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Colorado, killing 13 people and wounding over 20 before committing suicide. Although Columbine wasn’t the first school shooting linked to video games, it was the worst high school shooting in U.S. history at the time, and it galvanized several bodies, from politicians, to mainstream media against video games. Alongside video games, speculations for Harris and Klebold motives ranged from social isolation to bullying and fascination by Goth culture. Video games were not the only medium to take the blame, as influence by music was also named as a possible reason. While none of the theories were ever proven, video games were at the center of the public debate, to a point where the families of the victims were seeking damages from a total of 25 video and computer games companies. The lawsuit claimed that investigations into the tragedy revealed the influence violent games had on the two teenagers who carried out the shootings, and aiming for changing the marketing and distribution of violent video games that, according to the families’ lawyer John DeCamp, turn children into “monster killers” (BBC 2001). The case reignited the heated debate about the negative effects caused by video games, and became a benchmark for moral panic regarding video games in future incidents. I will shortly discuss two incidents to demonstrate how major publications address the issue of violent video games in connection to violent incidents:

The Manhunt case On February 14, 2004, in Leicester England, 17-year-old Warren Leblanc who was allegedly obsessed with a violent game titled Manhunt, murdered his 14-year-old friend Stefan Pakeerah in a manner similar to the sadistic killing methods in the game. Reports soon cemented the link between the kill and the murder as shown by headlines from the following sources. BBC News - “Game blamed for hammer murder” (2004) CNN - “Video game ‘sparked hammer murder’” (2004) The Telegraph - “Manhunt computer game is blamed for brutal killing” (2004) The Guardian - “Killing ‘incited by video game’” (2004) On its report, BBC News had 28 paragraphs (including quotes), 12 of them (43.8 percent) connecting the game to the murder or calling for its ban, and 4 paragraphs (14.29 percent) at the end of the article presented the Entertainment and Leisure

Software Publishers’ Association (ELSPA) representative response defending the game. The CNN report had 34 paragraphs (including quotes), 19 of them (55.8 percent) connecting the game to the murder, calling for its ban or discussing the risks involved with video games, and 6 paragraphs (17.6 percent), again at the end of the article presented the ELSPA’s representative response. The Telegraph had 13 paragraphs (including quotes), 7 of them (53.8 percent) connecting the game to the case and presenting the risks of playing games, and no comments by the game’s publisher or ELSPA’s representative were provided. Finally, The Guardian report had 18 paragraphs (including quotes), and 13 (72 percent) connecting the murder with the game or discussing the risks of the medium, as well as referring to the Columbine massacre and the shooters habit of playing Doom, “a game licensed by the US military to train soldiers to kill” (2004). the 3 last paragraphs of the article (16.6 percent) were dedicated to the game’s publisher response. Several months after the case, detectives investigating the case rejected any link between the game and the murder, confirming that a copy of the game was indeed found, but in the victim’s room and not with the killer, and that the motive for the incident was robbery. Out of the four publications, BBC News was the only publication to post an article with a title that reflects the new findings: “Police reject game link to murder” (2004a). The coverage of this case corresponds with four of Jenkins’s points: (1) Epidemic of youth violence due to games, (2) linking violent game play with youth aggression, (3) games train to kill and (4), video game play is desensitizing. The affiliation of publications as liberal or conservative did not seem to have effect on the nature of the report and the way video games were presented, but the liberal BBC was the only publication with a clear follow-up article clarifying the details regarding the case.

The case of Anders Breivik In 2011, 32 years old Norwegian Anders Breivik killed 77 people two events, a car- bomb attack near a government building in Oslo and a shooting spree at a youth camp run by Norway’s Labor Party. As more details of the horrendous attack came to light, major media outlets picked up on the fact that Breivik, aside from being a xenophobe and fundamentalist Christian with extreme right-wing ideology, was also an avid

52 gamer, who claimed to use first-person shooting game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) as training simulator to practice his combat skills, and World of Warcraft to relax and as a cover story for his long hours of planning the attack. Breivik’s case is intriguing, as he himself made a direct connection between the incident and playing video games, so it was likely that news outlets will mention it in their coverage. The following publications chose to refer to Breivik’s use of video games in their headlines: The Telegraph - “Norway : Anders Behring Breivik used online war games as ‘training’” (2011) The Sydney Morning Herald - “Norway killer sharpened aim with video games” (2012) The Guardian - “Anders Breivik ‘trained’ for shooting attacks by playing Call of Duty” (2012) The Telegraph covered the story in 18 paragraphs (including quotes), 7 of those (38.9 percent) presented content related to the games Breivik claimed to play. The Sydney Morning Herald article had 35 paragraphs (including quotes), but despite its suggestive headline, only one paragraph, the third (2.8 percent), discussed Breivik’s connection to video games, with the following fourth and fifth paragraphs dedicated to the testimony of an expert saying there is no link between violent video games and violent behavior and discussing Breivik’s case from a scientific perspective. The Guardian article had 20 paragraphs (including quotes), 13 (65 percent) describing Breivik’s gameplay habits, mostly by Breivik himself. Interestingly enough, major U.S. news networks didn’t use headlines which connect the incident with video games, perhaps because the event happened overseas and did not receive the media attention of domestic events. Instead, several publications used the incident to promote a wider discussion on the issue of violent video games. CNN for example, has 86 articles connected to Breivik, with only one presenting headline related to video games, which was in-fact a more serious debate about the place of video games than on the Breivik incident. Titled “Norway mass- shooting trial reopens debate on violent video games” (2012), the article presented multiple pointes and arguments for and against violent games. TIME Magazine published an opinion article, with a title mocking the moral panic of news outlets: “Norway Killer Played World of Warcraft, Which Probably Means Nothing At All” (2012). The article describes how video games are simply another link in the moral

53 panic chain aimed towards new media forms. The Guardian, which as mentioned presented an article with the highest exposure to connection between video games and the incident, published an opinion column 3 days after the previously mentioned article, with the headline “Don't blame video games for Anders Behring Breivik’s massacre,” describing that despite their narrow focus and violent themes, the backlash against games is misplaced and the medium cannot be held responsible for a troubled mind (The Guardian 2012a). Breivik’s case coverage corresponds directly with Jenkins’s point that games train to kill, but it also gave room for a deeper discussion than what was presented in earlier cases. While Breivik claims that he played alone, sometimes 16 hours per day, might seem fitting to the isolation point that Jenkins raises. However, while Breivik actually was alone when he played, most of his game time was spent online (his online gaming friends in-fact, mentioned after the case that his image was of one whom “never being able to harm a fly” Kotaku, 2011). Hence, it will not be accurate to categorizing Breivik’s case as isolation, something that the media coverage didn’t focus on as well. Out of the tree initial reports, The Sydney Morning Herald presented the most balanced report, while both The Telegraph (conservative) and The Guardian (liberal) reports were similar in their nature. The Guardian however, did post an opinion article presenting different perspective than shown in the initial report. There are many other incidents which reports connected to violent video games that require a dedicated study. I will mention however the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14, 2012, in Connecticut, where 20-year- old Adam Lanza murdered 27 people and committed suicide, as it presents an issue on a wider scale than just media reports. In this case, most media outlets could not resist to make the connection to violent video games, simply because the summery of the investigation released by the authorities included pictures of games found in Lanza’s bedroom. While news outlets are expected to deliver the news, in this case information provided by the investigators, supporters of the medium criticism is that in many cases news outlets do not provide an in-depth discussion on the case. In the Adam Lanza case for example, Fox news legal analyst Peter Johnson, commented after the case that “the medium is the message, and the media’s [video games] message is death and violence” (Fox News 2012: 2:00), with no other professional present to offer another perspective. Fox News in fact, published less than a year later a four part special series “exploring the connection between video games and

54 violence,” each part focusing on another aspect such as “'Training simulation:' Mass killers often share obsession with violent video games” or “'Frag him:' With today's ultraviolent video games, how real is too real?”, a discussion which was once again one sided (Fox News 2013). While the articles discussed here are far from being enough to establish a concrete conclusion about video games coverage in news, they none the less provide up with insightful perspective about important cases that are connected to video games and the way such connections are made by highlighting negative elements discussed by Jenkins. Dmitri Williams’s 2003 comprehensive analysis of video games representation in major U.S. news magazines establish the negative approach taken towards the medium discussed here. As summarized by Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., Williams results show that media discourse on video games is “plagued with misconceptions and frequently vilifies the games themselves” (2016: 167). In addition, Williams argues, the attacks on video games have little to do with the games themselves, but rather they reflect basic conservative fears about new media, as video games are not the first medium that have been framed in the media. Williams continues, stating that such frames and fears “have even appeared in a predictable series of waves. This places reactions to games firmly alongside reactions to prior media. First were fears about negative displacement, then health, and then antisocial behaviors like aggression and violence. While these patterns show how games are one part of a larger phenomenon, their particular manifestations also give us a window into unrelated social issues” (Williams 2003: 249 - 250). In recent years however, there is growing attention by the scientific community of the possible benefits of video games in several areas, and as a result acknowledgment of such positive aspects by news outlets. I mentioned earlier an article from The Telegraph discussing both the negative and positive attributes of the medium, as well the publication’s positive review about the futuristic first-person shooter Halo 3. I also discussed articles from the BBC and The Guardian regarding games for social change. There are numerous articles addressing the possible positive impact of games on issues such as learning and as a brain training tools, which demonstrate a gradual shift in the attitude towards the medium by both the scientific community and the press, as well as an effort among game designers to develop games for multiple purposes. As in the case of negative reports, presenting news outlets simply reporting the news is not sufficient. Hence, reports about new scientific

55 research, whether positive or negative, hold some interesting elements relevant to this topic, as the following example demonstrate. In 2013, the National Post posted an article by Mark D. Griffiths titled:

“Video games are good for your brain, study claims, even first- person shooters” (2013).

Griffiths, a chartered psychologist which was mentioned earlier in relation to game addiction, opens the article by addressing the cultural position of video games:

“Whether playing video games has negative effects is something that has been debated for 30 years, in much the same way that rock and roll, television and even the novel faced similar criticisms in their time” (ibid).

He then continues to discuss the common negative claims towards the medium and the attention they receive in comparison to positive aspects:

“Purported negative effects such as addiction, increased aggression and various health consequences such as obesity and repetitive strain injuries tend to get far more media coverage than the positives. I know from my own research examining both sides that my papers on video game addiction receive far more publicity than my research into the social benefits of, for example, playing online role-playing games” (ibid).

Griffiths, as an expert in the field of behavioural addictions10, challenges the common perception towards the medium with a somewhat provocative headline, as he redirects the discussion on the industry’s most notorious genre, first-person shooters, to a positive and beneficial use.

10 See for example: Griffiths, M.D & Davies, M.N.O. (2005) ‘Videogame addiction: does it exist?’, or Griffiths, M.D. & Meredith, A. (2009) ‘Videogame Addiction and its Treatment.’

It is not the first time the genre received positive attention (outside video games media, which report about such benefits frequently). During my research, I came across a 2010 article by The Independent, titled: “Shoot-‘em-ups are good for you, say researchers” (2010).

While both articles presented the benefits of shooting games, there were two main difference between the reports, both in the tone as well as in the message. Jerome Taylor, the author of the Independent report, opened the article by first using some of the most common stereotypes of video games players:

“For many parents they are little more than the source of our children's tantrums, feet-stomping and long periods of hibernation in stuffy rooms behind locked doors” (ibid).

While the rest of the article describes the new research findings, the negative tone towards the medium (or perhaps the genre) was set from the first paragraph. The second main difference is by the use of the term shoot-‘em-ups instead of first-person shooters. As any video game player knows, those are two different genres, each with distinctive perspective and gameplay mechanics. In the article, Taylor refers specifically to first-person shooters which were used in the research (Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament), and there are no shoot-‘em-up games being discussed. Such inaccuracy might seem trivial, but it can suggest one of the following possibilities: The author of the headline simply was not aware of that those are two different genres. While reviewing the article, I found it to be unlikely, since later on the article Taylor mentions popular genres and classify first-person shooters as a specific genre. Hence, considering the negative reputation of first-person games, I found it reasonable to assume that not using the term in the headline was intentional. In order to clarify my assumption however, I managed to contact the author of the article via Twitter (the only means of contact I could find), asking him about the decision not to include the term first-person shooter in the title. Shortly before the completion of this paper, I received Taylor’s reply, in which he stated that the article was “from a long time ago, cannot really remember much about it. However reporter doesn't write headlines, it would have been written by a sub-editor at the paper. They write the headlines. Sorry I can't be much more help” (via my personal Twitter

57 account). While I could not receive a clear answer, I have to acknowledge that it is possible that the sub-editor who wrote the headline was not aware of the fact that the genre discussed in the article is different than the one presented as headline. Polarized approaches are part of a wider discourse on the complexity of the medium, which is what experts such as Jenkins and McGonigal ask to promote. As the gaming market continue to expand, there is a shift in coverage of gamers and the gaming industry, and perhaps the beginning of a process where the medium is considered as a cultural form (beyond a simplistic “good” or “bad” effects discourse). While in the past overwhelming majority of news outlets used to focus almost exclusively on video game violence and negative aspects while ignoring the medium’s many redeeming qualities, the discussion surrounding the industry is slowly getting more diverse, as news outlets began to hire people who are familiar with the medium and provide more in-depth perspective. As a result, all major publications discussed so far have a dedicated section for video games, offering reviews, news and discussions related to the medium. The categories which games are filed under on their main page, reflect to some extent the attitude each publication take towards video games: CNN, BBC, Fox news, The Sydney Morning Herald, Independent and the National Post file games under ‘Technology,’ while The Guardian and The Telegraph file video games under ‘Culture’ category. Such approach might be a sign of a different attitude towards video games, where their complexity can be acknowledged far beyond negative headlines or positive health attributes. It is impossible of course to suggest if there is or not correlation between the categorizing of video games and the nature of the reports from few examples, but from the several articles discussed there was no notable difference between publication with different categories. In addition, both negative and positive elements of video games have been discussed by either conservative or liberal publications, and at the same time both the liberal Guardian as well as the conservative Telegraph filed video games under the ‘culture’ section. While no data have been collected and empirically analyzed to base any claims connecting political affiliation and video game coverage, the examples shown here present an intriguing question for future study.

4.2 Television shows analysis TV shows cover a wider perspective of video games representation than the somewhat narrow depiction of the medium in news reports. Almost every genre on prime time TV addressed video games on a certain level, either using the medium as parody, a tool to support the plot or as a way to define a certain character. Yet in reflection of news reports, violent video game are often the catalyst behind violent act in TV dramas. Two notable and fairly similar examples which caused an uproar among video games fan are a 2005 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit , titled “Game,” where a criminal imitates scenarios from Grand Theft Auto games and violently murder women and then take their money (as possible to do in the game), and a 2007 episode of CSI: Miami titled "Urban Hellraisers" in which a violent bank heist leads to a pseudo Grand Theft Auto game the inspiration behind the robbery. Those TV shows used controversies surrounding Grand Theft Auto at the time, as a way to “cash in” on the negative public discourse. The main complain of video games fans is not necessarily the references, but the simplistic, inaccurate and at times ridicules way the shows deal with the topic. On Fabruary 2015, in the wake of the Gamergate controversy, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit aired an episode titled “Intimidation Game,” in which a female video game developer is harassed and threatened by a group of misogynistic cyber terrorists. Anita Sarkeesian, the feminist critic and blogger who was one of the first victims of Gamergate posted the following Tweet after the episode was aired:

“Predictably this week's Law & Order SVU was sickening. They trivialized and exploited real life abuse of women in gaming for entertainment” (Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency Twitter account 2015).

As we have seen throughout this paper, video games are a complex medium which can be addressed via multiple perspectives and approaches, yet its complexity is often being simplified to a point where the medium is being falsely and negatively represented. I will address three less familiar cases of video games representation in TV shows than those mentioned above, which I believe are useful to our discussion.

Saturday Night Live (1982) One of the earliest examples of the medium receiving special attention in a prime time television (aside from promotional reasons), was a Saturday Night Live (SNL) satirical sketch titled “Allen: A Video Junkie,” aired on September 25, 1982. The 4:30 minutes sketch is a mockumentary11 exploring the harsh underworld of kids addicted to video games through the eyes of Alan, a video game “junkie.” We follow Allen as he passes through dark shady alleys, begging for money so he can go to the arcade. The narrator, in a serious documentary fashion tells Allan’s story: “Alan has a problem. Like millions of American youngsters, [...], he’s strung up on a habit that turned into a $7.8 billion business” (00:12). At the arcades, several puns are made on the games Alan plays, Pac-Man and Donkey-Kong, as the narrator says that now Alan has a donkey on his back, and that the “thrills don’t come cheap. Instead of spending their money on records, kids today are propping quarters into video games, games that are turning them into video junkies” (01:09). The documentary-like exposition continues as we see several children as homeless drug addicts begging for a quarter (which the use of the term “junkie” in the title makes clear), and Allan cleaning cars windshields claiming that he needs the money for school supplies, or pretending to be blind to receive quarters. The narrator then takes us to meet Phyllis, a young prostitute child who supports her video game habit “the hard way, one quarter at a time” (01:57). The hope for the “vgv”, video games addicts, is a new rehab house called “Columbia House” a reference to the American record label, where the addicts get to see that “there is a real world out there, outside of the arcades” (02:20), and encouraged to buy records instead of wasting money at the arcades. The addicted children are going through painful rehabilitation such as shock treatment. We are later on introduced to “Timmy,” an eleven-year-old addict acted by a man who looks at his 60s, a testimony to the “extreme stress” of playing video games. While Timmy is seeking for help, Allan says he can deal with the fact he plays a lot of games, since he is “not hooked or anything” (04:15). As we watch Allan walks away from the camera, the narrator tells us that he was run over by a garbage truck four days after the interview, as he was on his way to a video arcade, and a

11 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “mockumentary” is a film, television programme, etc., which adopts the form of a serious documentary in order to satirize its subject.

“game over” title appear on the screen, followed by the iconic sound of Pac-Man losing.

Context and analysis The sketch aired on 1982, a time considered as “the golden years of the arcade” (Ernkvist: 2006: 10–11), when Japanese companies entered the American market with innovative arcade games, revitalized the coin-operated business. Games such as Space Invaders (1978), Pac-Man (1980) and Donkey-Kong (1981), helped pushing video games outside their traditional bowling alley and bar locales, into shopping malls, movie theaters and restaurants, bringing the new medium to the forefront of mainstream entertainment (Kohler 2004: 20). Pac-Man for example, became a cultural icon, and in the years following its release it inspired a hit pop song, remade into a popular Saturday morning cartoon, and the Pac-Man character even appeared on the cover of Time magazine (Kent 2010: Kindle location 359 - 362). With its success came criticism and fear from older, more established media forms, and the sketch is much more of a mockery towards record companies and the general negative discourse about the medium, than it is to video games. The Oxford English Dictionary define satire as a “poem or (in later use) a novel, film, or other work of art which uses humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize prevailing immorality or foolishness, esp. as a form of social or political commentary” (Oxford English Dictionary: satire, n.). In that sense, when considering the mood of the public the irony is also directed towards the mainstream media’s moral panic and fears from the new medium and its effects on children. The case of records companies in relation to video games should be addressed, since it is, as mentioned, an important part of the public debate at the time and most certainly the basis for the SNL sketch. In 1982 the arcade video game industry's $8 billion revenue surpassed that of pop music and Hollywood films, much of it on their expense. In my research to understand the animosity between the music and games industries, I located am article from The Durant Daily Democrat (a daily newspaper located in Oklahoma) published on July 1982, which reveals the concerns of Hollywood and record companies of the new medium takeover. Titled “Movie Studios Purchase Piece of Video Game Action,” the article opens by discussing the new challenge: “The movie and record industries see the exploding video game business closing in, gobbling costumers’ money the way Pac-Man gobbles electronic

61 blinklets” (1982: 9-A). Hollywood, according to the article was adapting in various ways, mostly by entering the video games business via acquisitions, hoping to make “another billion dollars or so, a quarter at a time” (ibid). The music industry however, was facing a major crisis. When discussing the challenges of records companies, Mel Posner, vice chairman of Electra-asylum records (Warner subsidiary), said that “There are a variety of reasons for the difficulty in the music business, but video games are very significant part of the problem” (ibid). Posner argued that the problem is not only losing money to the arcade business, but also “time spent playing video games is time spent not listening to the radio which is where records become popular enough to sell” (ibid). The music industry, which is heavily dependent on teenage taste shrank from $4.1 billion to $3.7 billion between 1978 to 1981. Industry insiders had various opinions regarding the decline, but they all agreed that video games had significant negative contribution. John Kalodner of Geffen Records, which represented artists such as Elton John and Donna Summer, argued in the article that “Video games aren’t just part of the problem - they’re 90 percent of it. It’s really scary going to the mall and seeing a deserted record store and the arcade next door is full of kids playing Pac-Man. It’s an A&R man’s nightmare” (ibid). “Allen: A Video Junkie” presents the absurdity of the public’s debate towards the medium in a direct way, addressing the common criticism by mocking the industry’s rivals and presenting an ultra exaggerated version of the addictions claims which started to concern educators and policy makers in the early 1980s, as the first reports of video game addiction started to appear in the psychological and psychiatric literature (Grifiths, M.D. et al. 2012: 308). The sketch was followed by a satirical slide stating that the video was “Produced as a PUBLIC SERVICE by the association of AMERICAN RECORD COMPANIES,” clearly emphasizing the absurdity of their alleged concerns. I find that the sketch is a rare positive example of presenting the medium in a way that promotes discussion over its complexity, and the fact that is was produced when the industry was still considered as a novelty adds to its significance. Naturally, the element of addiction takes the center role, but the use of irony reveals that the discussion is far from being so simplistic and involves interest holders as well as media moral panic, which was directed at the same industries that were criticizing the new medium. “Allen: A Video Junkie” is regarded by many fans of the medium as

62 one of the most sophisticated examples of an influential prime time TV show handling the debate surrounding video games.

Parker Lewis Can't Lose (1991) The next example is an episode from the popular teen comedy Parker Lewis Can't Lose (referred to as Parker Lewis from now on), aired from September 1990 to June 1993. The series depicts the events of Parker Lewis and his best friends Jerry Steiner and Mikey Randall in their high school days, where their prime concern is simply being cool. Parker often narrates in shows, provides commentary and occasionally breaks the 4th wall by addressing the viewers, and many episodes contained subtle references to popular culture, politics and celebrities. The episode in question was the 16th episode aired during the series’ first season, on February 1991, and is titled "Jerry: Portrait of a Video Junkie.” The resemblance with the SNL sketch title, aired almost a decade earlier is obvious, but I was not able to assess if the episode was a tribute to SNL sketch or not, and no references to the events of Allan appeared in the episode (the two shows were also broadcasted on different networks). Aside from the title resemblance, Parker Lewis tackles the issue of video game addiction as well as the discourse surrounding the medium from a different perspective. SNL’s Allan was a standalone sketch in a satirical live TV show, created to reflect the public’s mood at the time. “Jerry: Portrait of a Video Junkie” on the other hand, was part of a greater general plot (not related to video games, hence answering to the limitation discussed in the previous section) with based characters and narrative and appeared at a time where video games held a greater significant role in mainstream culture than a decade earlier. The episode describes Jerry Steiner’s addiction to video games and how it negatively effects his personal and social life as well as his academic achievements. It opens with Steiner dreaming that he is a character in one of his games, and Lewis’s narration tells the viewers that when the pressure of being a teenager get to be too much for Steiner, “he turns to his little blipping buddy, the computer game12” (01:37). We then witness how Steiner’s condition is getting worse, as he tries to play in any chance he gets while disconnecting himself from his environment, and even turns to a

12 Video games are incorrectly referred to as computer games throughout the episode, despite the fact that no computer games appear in the episode.

63 shady “game dealer” to buy new games. Steiner friends Lewis and Randall decide to intervene and “take action” (05:50), confronting Steiner with his video games addiction, and though he initially refuses to acknowledge his addiction, he finally admits he “got a little problem” (11:58). Lewis and Randall send Steiner to the video junkie recovery group, where he admits he is “addicted to video games” (13:22), describing his addiction and says that “it’s easy to see why a guy like me got hooked. It was all about having one thing in life I was really really good at” (14:15). The support group facilitator asks Steiner if he is ready to gain self esteem in different ways, but Steiner storms out of the meeting, when Lewis and Randall decide to take things to their own hands. They put Steiner through a therapy session, showing series of images connected to a sensor which induce either painful or pleasurable shockwaves. The pleasure images include reading, doing physical activity and socializing, while the negative images are all of Steiner playing video games by himself. When it appears that the treatment was successful, Lewis and Randall test if Steiner is in-fact “cured,” just to discover he could not get over the temptation of playing video games. They decide to destroy all of Steiner’s video games, but he turns up saying he has to be the one to destroy them, which he finally does. After Steiner destroys his games, Lewis and Randall hand him a brand new handheld gaming console. Confused, Steiner addresses the two admitting he does not understand. Randall, with a clear reference to the moral panic surrounding Rock n’ Roll in the 1950s, answers that “It’s pure Rock n’ Roll man. You got a problem, don’t blame the guitar, blame yourself” (20:33). Lewis then explain that Steiner’s problem is not any of the games he was playing, since “videos are part of all of our lives; they’re educational, they improve hand-eye coordination, and the best thing is, they’re a lot of fun” (20:48). Lewis narration then appears, stating that “I guess it’s not the games you play that are harmful, so much as the way you approach them. Jerry approached them like a maniac, but fortunately our friendship helped saving him” (21:30).

Context and analysis The video game market changed drastically in the decade since SNL’s Allan, as arcades were no longer the dominant force of the industry, and largest segment was the home consoles market, ruled by Nintendo who almost single-handedly revitalized the global video game industry after the U.S. market crash of 1983. By 1989, home

64 video game sales in the U.S. alone had reached $5 billion, with Nintendo controlling nearly 90 percent of the global video games market and 20 percent share of the entire U.S. toy market (Kinder 1993: 90). Nintendo’s main rival in the mid 1980s was SEGA, which launched its home console system, the Master System, in 1986, followed by the Genesis in 1989. SEGA plays a major role in “Jerry: Portrait of a Video Junkie,” and the Genesis constantly appear whenever Steiner is playing at his house. In all other occasions, he play games on unnamed portable consoles which are dispensable throughout the entire episode. The game system that Lewis and Randall give Steiner as a present at the end of the episode, is the SEGA Game Gear console, which was launched in the U.S. late April 1991, nearly three months after the episode was aired. The inclusion of the brand new system not available in the market yet, was no doubt a marketing move by SEGA aimed promote their new product in light of the “consoles war” of the early 1990s against Nintendo. At the end of the credits, a “Special video services provided by SEGA OF AMERICA” message appears. The lack of consistency in the episode might be explained due to the involvement of SEGA in the episode. “Jerry: Portrait of a Video Junkie” is focused almost exclusively on Steiner struggling with his addiction, and the final comment seems random, with no build-up of any kind throughout the episode to some of the redeeming qualities of the medium. Steiner demonstrates extreme exhaustion and anxiety, disconnect from his environment and neglect all of his responsibilities. While I had no way to assess the degree of involvement by SEGA, we have to consider the possibility that the negative representation of the medium was toned down at the end of the episode to provide a positive message. The theme of addiction was once again at the center of the representation of video games. In contrast to the early 1980s studies, Grifiths et al. argue, most studies conducted in the 1990s mainly examined nonarcade video game playing (i.e., home console games, handheld games, PC gaming) (Grifiths et al. 2012: 309). This trend was clearly reflected in Steiner’s gaming habits, which also correlates with the character personality. Out of the three main characters of Parker Lewis, Jerry Steiner is the stereotypical geek, doing the homework of other students and addressing his friends as “sirs.” Throughout the episode Steiner is constantly playing alone, a very different play style that that of the arcades, and one that echoes Jenkins’s “myth” that video game play is socially isolating. While video games were a massive business and already embedded in mainstream culture, Parker Lewis chose to portray the gamer as

65 the geek character, and not one of the other, “cooler” characters. This stereotypical depiction of gamers as geeks (and vice a versa) is part of a larger narrative about the subculture of geeks, which went through significant changes since the early 1990s. “Geek” was the name given to those who were adept at technology but lacking other skills that tended to make one popular, such as fashion sense or athletic ability (Lule 2016). As many of these people often did not fare well in society, they favored imaginary worlds such as fantasy and science fiction genres in forms of literature tabletop games. Video games, Lule argues, were appealing because they were both a fantasy world and a means to excel at something. This argument resonates with Steiner’s confession at the video games addicts meeting, saying it is easy to see why a “guy like me got hooked. It was all about having one thing in life I was really really good at” (14:15). Hence, as noted by Lule, “video games gave a group of excluded people a way to gain proficiency in the social realm” (2016). Once video games became more of a mainstream phenomenon and the skills required to excel in them began to be appreciated, the popular idea of geeks changed, as it is now common to see the term “geek” used to describe a person who understands computers and technology (ibid). It is common today to encounter stories focusing on geeks which examine the ways in which this subculture has been accepted by the mainstream. Lule argues that while geeks may have become “cooler,” mainstream culture has also become “geekier,” as the acceptance of geek culture has led to acceptance of geek aesthetics alongside the mainstreaming of video games which led to acceptance of fantasy or virtual worlds (ibid), a topic which will be addressed later on. While geek culture has penetrated the mainstream, with shows that empowered geeks such as The Office (2005), The IT Crowd (2006) and The Big Bang Theory (2007), Parker Lewis early 1990s depiction of the geeky addicted gamer was a stereotypical negative representation of the medium and its users. It should be acknowledged however, that despite the unclear motives and lack of balance, “Jerry: Portrait of a Video Junkie” did address the complexities of the medium is a direct and clear way, and its final positive message cannot be ignored.

Life (2007) Life is a crime drama aired from September 2007 to April 2009, and focuses on detective Charlie Crews who is given a second chance at the force after serving time

66 in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Episode 7 of Life’s first season, titled “A Civil War” was aired on November 2007 and deals with what seems to be a hate crime investigation case where two Persian-American teenagers are killed and their friend is kidnapped. The investigators discover that the murder was not a hate crime and that Amir, the teenager who was kidnapped, was involved in a drug deal with the kidnappers who demand to receive their share of the deal. When Crews search Amir’s house in order to find clues that might lead to the kidnappers, Amir’s mother urge him (using Amir’s sister as interpreter, since the mother only speaks Farsi) not to suspect her son since “he’s a good student. He studies. He plays video games” (19:40). After Crews tells the mother that her son is in trouble, she insist and answer that “He studies and play video games” (19:50). The detectives confiscate Amir’s computer and a computer engineer connect it to the station’s conference room network, hoping to find files about the drug deal. Crews, unfamiliar with the computer system, asks the engineer about a screen he never seen before, and the engineer replies “The department doesn’t let us computer geeks have guns, and they don’t let you detectives have access to this level of security” (20:00). While the detectives and engineers cannot find relevant information on the computer, they do locate a reference to a file titled “Farah level ten” which is not located on the computer itself. Since Farah is a common Farsi name, the detectives suspect that the file refer to one of Amir’s acquaintances, but after questioning the family they get to a dead end. Crews follows the lead of the officer who found the file, realizing that there must be another computer. He remembers Amir’s mother comments that “he’s a good son. He studies. He plays his video game” (24:20), and asking the officer if “A game console is a like a computer, isn’t it?” and she replies that “It’s not like one, it is one. It’s just a hard-drive with games on it” (24:25). Crews brings to the station Amir’s video game console, a Microsoft Xbox running the game Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones from 2005. The unnamed computer “geek” engineer tells the team that the objective in the game is to save princess Farah, and Crews ask him if he think he can get to level ten. In reply, the engineer says “Detective, I’m thirty years old, I live with my mother, and I have a Captain Kirk costume in my closet” (24:45). Despite the confidence of his gaming abilities, the engineer fails to complete the game, and Crews notices that Amir’s sister in the next

67 room is pretending to have the controller in her hands. He brings her to replace the engineer, and we follow her gameplay session as she manages to reach level 10 and unlock multiple spreadsheets hidden in the console containing the details of the drug deal.

Context and analysis Video games hardly appear in the episode, and are shown, discussed or referenced about 4 minutes out of a 42 minutes episode, but as described they do play a significant role in the plot and more importantly, the episode provides us with interesting representation of the medium and its users. A common complaint among video games fans, is that neither the medium nor the players are taken seriously by mainstream media. This complaint resonates with Jenkins’s point that video games are not considered as a meaningful form of expression. Life’s “A Civil War” is a perfect example for such claims. While it is not as blunt with its criticism to the medium as Law & Order and CSI, its case is not less offensive, as it does not only mock gamers, it also simplify many of the issues concerning the medium to a degree where the medium appear almost meaningless. Most of the references to video games and the way games are played in the episode are inaccurate: The terminology (he plays his video game instead of video games), Amir’s sister notoriously “mashing buttons” with no correlation to what is happening on the screen, the false technical description of the console’s purpose and abilities and the distortion of the game which was played. The use of the game console to hide details concerning illegal activity, is not only inaccurate from a technical standpoint, but mostly presents it in a negative light which resembles the purposefully sensationalist nature of news reports. As I mentioned in the previous discussion about news, video games consoles were accused of being used for plotting illegal activity, with the most recent example being the claim that the terrorists responsible for the 2015 Paris attack could have used Sony’s PlayStation 4 to synchronize their attacks, a rumor that was based on a short comment made by Belgium’s Interior Minister and turned into several media outlets claiming that the attackers did communicate using the console, including one unfounded story saying that authorities seized the console during one of their raids. The comment made by the computer engineer also deserves our attention, since it provide us with another depiction of the geek gamer. As mentioned in relation

68 to Parker Lewis, the term geek and its meanings have gone through extreme changes since the early 1990s, yet “A Civil War” fails to reflect that. The engineer refers to himself as a “computer geek” with access to the highest security level and appears at first as an empowering geek character. The negative self stereotyping he uses when approaching the game however (thirty years old gamer and Star Track fan who lives with his mother), is the common image that many gamers find offensive. While some gamers probably fit this description “A Civil War” generalized gamers as societal rejects rather than normal people who play video games. The engineer was not able to beat the game, meaning that he failed even on the one territory that socially rejected gamers excel at. Perhaps as a way to redeem the negative representation of gamers, a female gamer was the one able to beat the game, in what seems as an oversimplified approach to gender issues in the video game industry. Finally, we have to address the issue of product placement. The game in question, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, is a game published by Ubisoft in 2005. While the episode presents real gameplay footages, many of the game’s details, goals and mechanics were distorted in order to fit to plot. Examples are numerous, from the inaccurate game objective of saving the princess, to the fact that the actual game does not contain stages. The choice of using a game titled Prince of Persia as part of an episode surrounding Iranian immigrants was probably the creators’ main intention, since the same result was possible by using any other game. The end credits acknowledge “Promotional Consideration Furnished by: “Prince of Persia.” The Two Thrones 2005 Ubisoft Entertainment,” as well as credit to the game’s creator. Since the game was in the market for over 2 years, it is not likely that Ubisoft had any incentive to promote it, which strengthen the assumption that it was used in order to relate to the characters heritage.

4.3 Movies analysis My database analysis (appendix 2) aims to provide the empirical perspective in my larger goal of exploring the representation of video games in mainstream media. Due to limitation already discussed, the database focuses on feature films and includes 116 movies carefully reviewed according to the conventions established earlier. Discussing the analysis process of each one of the movies in the database is a task that is well beyond the scope of this paper. Hence, in the interest of clarity I

69 would like to demonstrate the categorizing process using examples previously discussed. If we were to use Parker Lewis Can’t Lose as an example, the database would have looked like this:

Date TV shows Platform: Game Positive Neutral/ Negative Parody Homage/ Multiple Environmental Cameo elements

Fab Parker SEGA home and X X 4 T/M/A 1991 Lewis Can’t handheld consoles, Lose : multiple games played. "Jerry: Unnamed handheld Portrait of a consoles Video Junkie.”

Parker Lewis’s episode contained both negative (Steiner’s addiction and social isolation) and positive elements (Lewis’s comment at the end of the episode about educational use and improved hand-eye coordination). Both categories are marked by an “X” sign, and the episode is filed under “multiple elements” category. Since video games are a major part of the narrative and are being constantly acknowledged and supporting the plot, the 4th criteria is applied along-side T/M/A, a male teen interacting with video games alone. While not without its limitations, this system allows me to examine large volume of data and determine how many movies incorporate which elements and on what level. The 116 movies are divided across five decades in the following way:

Number of movies per decade

12 6 1970s 1980s 24 45 1990s 2000s 2010s 29

Figure 4: Number of movies per decade

Coin-operated arcade games in taverns, pool halls and bowling alleys became the dominant force of the industry in its early days, largely thanks to Atari’s Pong released on 1972 and was the first game to reach mainstream popularity as well as the first commercially successful video game. With arcades being the dominant force of the industry for the following decade, video games in movies during the 1970s reflected that trend, with five out of the six games in this decade presented arcade machines, and half of the references featured some version of Pong (the only movie not to present arcade machine, was a parody of Pong played on a heart monitor). The 1980s is the decade with the majority of references, yet over 75 percent (n=34) of those references are from the first half of the decade. The early 1980s brought the popularity of the arcades to the living room, (aside from the arcades, most references from the early to mid 1980s feature Atari home console), yet despite their popularity video games were still considered as novelty and most references are product placements. By the mid-1980s, the public lost interest in the medium, mostly due to low quality games and consoles clones flooding the market. The period between 1983 and 1985 is commonly known as the “1983 video game industry crash,” which explains the decline in references in the second half of the decade. Being already part of mainstream and with no significant crisis surrounding the industry, the 1990s, 2000s and the current decade share relatively balanced number of references. Examination of video games representation across five decades reveals not just how much the medium evolved, but also how inherited it became in popular culture. Games in movies played many different functions from promotional tie-ins (along-side its powerful positive message, 1989 The Wizard for example was just a full feature Nintendo commercial than it was a movie), to a way to capture atmosphere and time (numerous scenes from 2005 Roll Bounce and 2014 Ping Pong Summer took place in video games arcade centers to represent the spirit of the late 1970s and 1980s). Next I will examine and discuss the database findings.

Representation The predefined categories are distributed in the following way:

Representaion of video games in movies Positive 5% Multiple elements 29%

Neutral/ Environmen tal Homage/Ca 41% meo 6% Parody Negative 5% 14% Figure 5: Percentage of single category representation

Neutral/ Environmental Neutral/ Environmental representation is the largest segment with 41 percent (n=48) of movies presented games in a neutral way, meaning as entertainment, arcades as hang-out areas or for promotional purposes and product placement. Considering the criteria for choosing the movies this is expected, since any reference to games, whether video game logo appear for several seconds or lengthy gameplay sessions by main characters where included. 43 of those movies (37 percent of the total) used video games as background setting, meaning there was little to no interaction with the games (1st and 2nd criteria). Nearly 50 percent (n=20) of those references included arcade games with people playing in the background.

Positive representation Movies presenting only positive elements account for 5.2 percent (n=6), but when including movies with multiple elements that one of them is positive the number reaches to 19 percent (n=22) of the total. In nearly 32 percent (n=7) of the total positive references, there were at least two positive element combined (e.g. satisfying work and the experience or the hope of being successful).

Satisfying Health Positive elements work benefits 7% 16% Experience/ hope for Education/ success social 23% change 6% A sense of meaning Social 19% connection 29%

Figure 6: Positive elements distribution in movies

The most common positive element is social connection, followed by two elements that were usually overlapping; the experience or the hope of being successful and a sense of meaning by being part of something greater than oneself (figure 6). Those two elements were most common in movies from the 1980s in which video games played the most significant role (4th criteria), and are all considered movies about video games. 1982 Tron, 1983 Wargames, 1984 The Last Starfighter and 1989 The Wizard. Video games in all those movies play a much larger role than just being entertaining, and are used for a great meaningful purpose beyond just the player (fighting for one’s life in Tron, saving the world in The Last Starfighter, Corey helping Jimmy in his struggle with emotional and mental problems by competing in a video game championship in The Wizard). The next movie to combine those two elements is 2015 Pixels, coming as no surprise considering Pixels is mainly a tribute to the classic era of video games and deals with the similar theme of saving the world using video games’ skills.

Figure 7: Positive elements in movies from the 1970s to 2010s

As figure 7 shows us, social connection is distributed differently, with three movies from the 1980s, one from the 1990s and five more movies between 2007 to 2015 presenting this element. Our attention is required since the way social connection was presented in movies from the 1980s and movies from the past decade is significantly different and reflects the maturity of the medium. 1980s references were mostly bonding through video game play (e.g. 1988 Bloodsport, 1989 Parenthood), but the theme was not developed further. For the past decade, several creators took a more serious approach towards video games (while others took much less serious one, as will be discussed later). Their approach is reflected in their movies, with one likely assumption is that nowadays more people involved with film industry grew up playing video games, and while the following example is by no means a movie about video games, it feature the medium as a powerful tool for human connection. 2007 Reign Over Me is a great example of a movie that deals with games thematically and intelligently, a lot due to the contribution of editor Jeremy Roush (Kotaku 2007). The movie, staring Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle follows the story of Charlie who lost his family during the 9/11 attacks. In the original script Sandler’s character Charlie was playing a shooting game with aliens “that was very much the typical fake game that you see in TV and film” (Roush in ibid). As a gamer himself,

Roush thought of a real game that was actually thematically relevant to the plot. He demonstrated the game Shadow of the Colossus to the director and cast who acknowledged the contribution of the game to the script. Through the game, Charlie could tackle his inner demons, reconnect and bond with his former college roommate. As Brian Ashcraft put it, the movie let the game speak for itself: “Characters bond through games and lose themselves in them, only to find themselves again” (ibid). Between the shootings, the actors became experts in the game and in order to capture the reality of the them playing video games together, some of the scenes simply include Sandler and Cheadle playing together for “real,” a significant departure from typical “mashing buttons” common scenes in movies and TV shows (e.g. Life). Roush reveals that “Some of the moments where they failed, we used in the film. The failure, the frustration and the happiness are all a part of playing the game. It's hard to act in some ways (ibid). Regarding the place of video games in the film industry, Roush argues that “we’re starting to get people in Hollywood who have perspective of what the video game experience is like, what it can feel like” (ibid). Another notable example of a movie successful implementation of social connection, can be found in 2008 The Wrestler, in which the production created a real functional game for a scene that lasted less than a minute, in order to capture the authenticity of an 8-bit video game from the late 1980s and fit the game to the plot. The main character plays the fictional NES game with one of the neighborhood kids living in his trailer park. As they play, the two talk about the old style 8-bit game and a the modern Call of Duty 4 (2007), a conversation that highlights not only the contrast between the two games, but also the decades, generations apart between the man and the boy, and the man and his old self. It also reflects how the man is living in a world that outgrew him, and how he connects to that world by playing a 20-year-old game with the next-door kid. Finally, 2011 Another Earth present a key scene in which the main characters, one grieving over the death of his family in an accident while the other unintentionally caused it without the other knowing, bond over a game of Wii Sports Boxing, using the game as away to work out some of their respective guilt and anger.

Negative representation Movies presenting only negative elements account for 13.8 percent (n=16), but when including movies with multiple elements that one of them is negative the number reaches 31 percent (n=36).

Negative elements

Aggression 2% Illegal Children’s activity violence medium 10% 19% 2%

Meaningless form of Stereotypical expression male geek 2% gamer Socially 40% isolating activity Desensitizing 10% effect Addiction 5% 10% Figure 8: Negative elements distribution in movies

The stereotypical male gamer representation is the most common element, followed by violence representation. What I considered the most negative combination, namely a teenage, anti social male playing a violent game alone appears only in two movies, 1983 Nightmares and 1994 Brainscan. 40 percent (n=17) of all movies included a stereotypical representation of gamers. Gamers’ stereotypes in the past decade however, are very different than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. The 1980s had 11 percent (n=5) of movies representing gamers in stereotypical way that shares many features with those who were considered socially challenged (e.g. 1989 Ghostbusters). As a niche hobby in its early days, gaming was a sanctuary for those who considered themselves outcasts or lacked some social skills, meaning that some gamers did fit into that stereotype, making the relatively low percentage of this element in the 1980s reasonable.

Figure 9: Negative elements in movies from the 1970s to 2010s

As seen in figure 9, after a decline in the 1990s, the stereotype element surged in the 2000s. Along-side the evolution of geeks which influenced the way gamers are represented, a new stereotypical gamer emerged from the late 1990s. Gamers who grew up playing arcade and Nintendo games in the 1980s and early 1990s were now in their twenties and thirties. The arrival of game consoles which could do more than just play games but also play CDs, DVDs and streaming services, brought the medium out of arcades and kids’ bedrooms into the living rooms, creating a new trendy image of a “slacker gamer” (the first example of such stereotype can be found in 1995 Mallrats). 33 percent (n=8) of movies in the 2000s have established this new gamer stereotype, a lazy man-child playing video games instead of socializing, find a proper job or have romantic and sexual relationship (e.g. 2004 The 40-Year-Old Virgin, 2006 Grandmas’ Boy). This image became the typical gamer stereotype along-side the geek character of a grown man living with his mother as seen in Life and movies such as 2007 Die Hard 4. The element of violence appear in 19 percent (n=8) of movies with nearly 90 percent of those references are from the1990s and 2000s. As shown in figure 9, there are no violence references in the 1970s and 2010s, and one reference in the 1980s (1983 Nightmares). The highest percentage of violence movies per decade is from the 1990s, where the violence element appeared in 13.8 percent (n=4) of movies (one of those movies, 1994 Brainscan also combined the aggression element).

As earlier discussed, there were violent video games since the mid 1970s, yet their popularity peaked in the 1990s mostly due to much more realistic graphics. Companies like SEGA in the early 1990s and Sony from the mid 1990s, used violent content to counter the family-friendly Nintendo games and appeal to teenagers who grew up playing Super-Mario and were now looking for “hardcore” content (SEGA for example had a cheat code to enable blood and gore in Mortal Kombat, a feature that was not available on the censored Nintendo version). Reflecting the 1990s somewhat shallow public debate surrounding violence in video games (as well as some of the not-so-sophisticated games of the time), most movies from that decade presented somewhat simplistic references to violence, (with the exception of 1996 Box of Moon Light which used a violent game as an indication to a father absence from his son). In the 2000s however, we see the topic being addressed differently as an outlet to discuss issues of violence beyond video games. I do however, considered such movies as presenting a negative image of the medium, since despite the important message the creators ask to convey, they do so by using video games as a scapegoat. 2006 Inside Man is a good example of such case. Inside Man is a crime thriller centered on an elaborate bank heist over a 24-hour period. The movie features a scene where an 8-year-old African-American boy who is being held hostage at the bank plays a horribly violent fictional video game on a PlayStation portable game console. The game, titled Gangstas iz Genocide shows a grotesque and elaborated animated sequence, in which afro-American characters perform series of ultra violent and graphic murders against each other, with gameplay mechanics and presentation that clearly use the Grand Theft Auto franchise as a reference. The captor casually sees the game and try to play, asking young hostage to explain him how the game works. The boy answers that “you get points for doing dirt, like jacking a car or selling crack.” After the robber plays a scene where the character shoves a hand-grenade into the mouth of his rival and walks away as it explodes, he blanch and put the game away, asking the boy “What’s the point of this?,” threatening to tell the kid's father about the game. Director Spike Lee had the game sequence be made especially for this scene, as it shows his personal take on black-on-black violence, the overt glamorization of gangster culture and the desensitization of video game-obsessed youth (backstage

2006). Eric Alba, one of the fictional game’s graphic artists, discussed the script requirement:

“it was supposed to be very violent game a kid was playing, and he was supposed to be really desensitized to the violence of the game but (enamored by) the glamorized gangsta lifestyle […], (Lee) was very specific that the characters be black" (ibid).

On an interview from 2006, Lee clarified the purpose of the game scene:

“I just hope people understand that this is an absolute statement about my horror at how violent these games that young kids play are, and also the infatuation with violence and gangsta rap among the black community. It's not a real game but it's not that far-fetched from the games that are being sold, and more importantly the mindset behind them. There are just too many black men killing each other as it is” (in The Guardian 2006).

The captor who was repelled by what he witnesses, the article states, vents in Lee's place (ibid), reminding us that filmmakers are not creating movies in isolation and are just as likely to be influenced by the same news reports as the general public, reports which are later on reflected in their works. Those works in turn, influence the general public with the same messages only on a different medium. It is important to clarify that presentation of negative elements of video games does not equals negative representation of the medium of video games. This is where the question of objectivity is most apparent: Inside Man is a complex example of whether or not it falls under this distinction. In the broader context of the entire movie however, I perceived it more as a criticism towards video games as a medium that promotes violence (using a game that an 8-year-old should not be allowed to play) than other social criticism messages Lee asked to promote. Having said that, I do consider this example as a positive evolution of the discourse surrounding video games and the way they have become a narrative medium for a generation of filmmakers who wish to discuss social ills.

The examples reviewed are only small portion of the entirety of movies examined, yet they reveal a gradual shift in the attitude filmmakers take towards the medium which is starting to be acknowledged as a powerful storytelling device and is being used as such. In addition, as seen in figure 10, after two decades of mostly negative representation, there are more positive references to video games than negative in movies published since 2010. This trend is most likely to intensify, considering how even acclaimed filmmakers are now involved in movie productions where games are at the center (e.g. Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, based on Ernest Cline’s novel and schedule for release in 2017), or even collaborating on projects with game designers (e.g. Guillermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima’s 2014 P.T. and Death Stranding, TBA), along-side the entrance of a new generation of filmmakers to the film industry, as discussed earlier.

Figure 10: Number of positive and negative elements in movies

Such notable shift is a demonstration of not only how video games have gradually emerged from arcades and children bedrooms into our collective everyday lives, but of the medium’s step forwards towards unbiased cultural acceptance. Parody Parody references as a single category count for 5.2 percent (n=6), but that number doubles when parody is one of several elements. The first parody reference appear surprisingly early in 1976 Silent Movie when a heart monitor is used to play a pong

81 version, a testament to the games’ enormous popularity and cultural strength. Nearly 70 percent of references however are from the late 1990s onward, when games where already embedded within popular culture and parody references could be easily acknowledged (e.g. 2000 The Beach video game hallucination scene).

Homage/Cameo Homage/Cameo category was referenced as a single category in 6 percent of the movies (n=7), and 14.7 percent (n=17) as one category of multiple elements. Much like in the case of parody, video games had to gain a certain cultural status before audience can appreciate homage paid to the medium or recognize familiar characters’ appearances as cameos, and as the data shows, nearly 50 percent (n=5) of movies in the current decade have references to video games under this category, most notably 2012 Wreck-it Ralph and 2015 Pixels.

Demographics There are 11 movies where there is no interaction with games (i.e. game logo or game console appear on top of the TV), or only interaction by a non-humane (e.g. 1984 Gremlins). Hence, for following discussion I will only consider the remaining 105 movies which include human interaction. Women appear in 36.2 percent (n=38) of those movies. As seen in figure 11 ,women players appear alone or with male players in 16.6 percent of movies in the 1970s, 47.2 percent of movies in the 1980s, 35.7 percent in the 1990s, only 13 percent in the 2000s and more than 58 percent in 2010s. Most references from the 1980s with female players are in arcades, which were common hang-out places for teenagers, explaining the presence of female players in nearly half of the 1980s movies. The 1990s messaging of both video game advertisements and acceptance took a different turn, as most commercials around video games featured only young boys and teenagers13.

13 For a fascinating piece about gender issues and video games see 2013 Polygon’s “No Girls Allowed.” 81

Figure 11: Male and Female representation timeline

The 1990s also brought a significant technological advancement in advanced 3D graphics which allowed violent games to look much more realistic than the bulky, pixilated images of the 1980s. The abundance of bloody, gory games of the 1990s didn’t appeal to many female players and was one factor that slowly pushed women away from the medium. Another important factor that was enabled due to technological improvement was sexual objectification of female characters. Earlier this year Journal of Communication published an article on content analysis of female characters in video games across 31 years. According to the study, in the 1980s and early 1990s, a lot of the graphical integrity did not allow for the characters to be sexualized. With the transition to 3D graphics on next generation consoles from early to mid-1990s, the study shows spike in the sexualization of female characters which continued its upward trajectory through the early 2000s (Lynch et al. 2016: 13). The popularity of the hyper-sexualized character Lara Croft in 1996 Tomb Raider served as a catalyst for other developers to adopt more sexualized female characters (known as the “Lara Phenomenon,”), as a way to boost sales among male players, the predominant audience at the time (ibid: 5-6). At the same time, Lynch et al. argue, preponderance of men in the game industry led to a culture in which “the male perspective is the only one” (ibid: 3). Both factors played major role in turning off female players, leaving male teenagers as prime users of the medium, a stereotype that followed deep into the

2000s. The nature of the movies during this decade as previously discussed, explains the extremely low representation of female players in the 2000s. The drastic rise of female representation since 2010 is explained by both the more serious approach many movie creators take towards video games (as previously discussed), as well as by larger presence of female developers in the video game industry. As Lynch et al. study shows, there is a constant decline in sexualization of female characters, with the decline in recent years steeper than the researchers expected (2016). According to Lynch et al., these findings might be influenced by how much broader the video game market is than in the past, and the larger involvement of women in the industry. The result is nearly 60 percent of movies with female characters since 2010, significantly higher than the 41 percent of female players reported by the Entertainment Software Association (2016: 3). Finally, children appear in 27 percent (n=28) of the movies, either alone or with other teen or adult players, with nearly even distribution across the five reviews decades. Hence, the stereotype of the medium as children activity is not apparent in the data. The negative element of referring to the medium as children activity is also not significant and counts for only 2 percent of negative elements. The data shows that only two movies featured children directly interacting with violent games, the first is 1996 Box of Moonlight and the second 2006 Inside Man which was previously discussed for its relation to violence and desensitizing effect elements.

4.4 Questionnaire analysis In addition to providing me with useful references to TV shows and movies to examine in comparison to my finding, the data collected from the questionnaire revealed valuable insights regarding the place of video games in mainstream media and the way respondents were affected by it.

Demographics Demographics were heavily affected by my decision to distribute the questionnaire among first year university students in Japan. More than 80 percent of respondents (n=144) are between 18 to 24, followed by 16.5 percent (n=29) respondents age 25 - 34 (figure 12). The dominance of a relatively young age group can of course limit the variety of the findings, but at the same time people in this age group are very well informed on current trends and pop culture.

Figure 12: Respondents age group

Gender was also influenced by distributing the questionnaire at a class with a majority of female students. This however turned out to be an advantage which balanced the high percentage of male respondents in gaming sites, resulting in nearly equal ratio of 53.4 percent (n=94) female respondents to 46.6 percent (82) male. Eventually, as expected the majority of respondents are Japanese, counting for 41 percent (n=72), with the reaming nationalities range across more than 10 different countries, led by Finland, the U.S., Israel and China. While I will not be analyzing the data in regards to nationality, it is an important variable that in some cases clearly influenced the results. In addition, considering the content discussed in this paper is all English, Western based, the nationality variable has to be acknowledged.

Gaming habits More than 70 percent of respondents currently play some type of digital/video game. Percentage of female respondent who play games stand on 28.4 percent (n=50), and is lower than the reported average 41 percent of female players. This is somewhat unexpected results, as I assumed most female students do play simple games on their phone, especially in Japan where commuting is done mostly by public transportation. According to figure 13 respondents play games on more than one device and the majority of respondents play seven or less hours per week, regardless of the platform.

Figure 13: Platforms used for gaming by respondents

Games and mainstream media The responses related to video games’ image provided me with references to games in mainstream media to examine, as well as the answer to the question of representation effect on the respondents.

Positive representation 44.9 percent (n=79) of respondents reported they have encountered cases in which video games, playing video games and/or gamers were presented in a positive way in any media form. Out of those Respondents, 68 answered the open question asking them to specify which kind of positive representation they refer to, and on which media form it was presented. Due to the nature of open questions, not all answers contained the same elements, with some respondents only mention “TV shows” or “eSports,” while others provided more in-depths responses:

“Here in Finland, video game industry is rapidly growing. I live in the same town where creators of Angry Birds, Rovio, live (Kajaani, population of only about 40 000 people) and the local newspaper often reports and celebrates the international success of Finnish game developers. At least here, gaming is held in high enough regard that I'm glad to be a gamer” (18-24 Finnish male).

“As a result of famous youtubers like pewdiepie and markiplier, a lot of mainstream news outlets with look at gaming less as a hobby, but more as a serious profession” (18-24 Japanese-American female).

“A man who won the national game match and got money. A story from news that two people who didn't share any language got familiar with each other by playing game together” (18-24 Japanese male).

“Pokemon Go had great economic impact as gamers actually went out to the city and did some exercise which is a positive change concerning about health issues” (18-24 American male).

Media forms presenting positive images I coded the responses into two categories: Media and image, namely the media form brought in the example, and the positive image presented.

Figure 14: Media forms representing positive elements

According to the respondents, majority of positive images appeared on TV (figure 14), followed by movies, YouTube and news. Most comments did not mention a specific show (aside from The Big Bang Theory), but did refer more frequently to talk shows where celebrities play video games on stage than TV shows and commercials. Movies’ references were more specific and include 1982 Tron, 1983 Wargames and 2015 Pixels, all appear in the database for including positive elements. YouTube was mentioned in regards to the popularity of famous YouTubers and the positive way they present the medium, and news were mostly brought up in relation to health benefits.

For positive image, I combined elements appearing in the comments into larger categories containing the elements discussed. eSports/proffesion covers all comments about professional gamers competing in video games tournaments, gaining both fame and large amount of money, and streamers playing video games for a living. Health benefits cover reports about games assisting in preventing dementia, improving hand-eye coordination and relieve stress. Comments about Pokemon Go reports on how the game encourages players who usually stay indoor to go outside and exercise were frequently mentioned, and are also categorized under health benefits.

Figure 15: Positive elements referenced by respondents

As shown in figure 15, comments about professional eSports players were the most frequent, as well as the popularity of YouTube video games streamers. The impact of those new highly profitable segments did not escape the eye of mainstream media which cover the topic, and eSports tournaments being aired live on ESPN added a sense of prestige to the profession. eSports is most popular in Asian countries and is regarded in Korea by some as a national sports (League of Legends 2015 final match was held at the same stadium hosting the 2002 world cup opening game, drawing over 120,000 viewers in the stadium and millions online and on live TV). I assumed that most respondents addressing this element will be from Asian countries,

87 yet comments about the popularity of eSports were divided among multiple nationalities, demonstrating the place it holds in different societies as a professional sport. Large number of comments regarding health benefits can be credited to Pokemon Go, since the game was still near its peak popularity at the time the questionnaire was published and was frequently generating headlines (positive as well as negatives). As seen in figure 16, positive image of playing video games and gamers in mainstream media is hardly a factor in the interest of the respondents to play games.

Figure 16: Reasons for engaging with video games

Only eight respondents (three females and five males across four nationalities) consider positive image of video games as one factor (all eight chose additional reasons as well) encouraging them to engage with the medium. We have to consider however, that most respondents in the dominant age group are most likely to consume information via social media rather than traditional media, and while only accounted for 11 percent (n=14), social media appears to be a more positive influential form for video games representation.

Negative representation In comparison, 67.6 percent (n=119) of respondents have reported to encounter cases where video games, playing video games and/or gamers were presented in a negative way in any media form. Out of those Respondents, 108 answered the open question asking them to specify which kind of negative representation they refer to and on which media form. Again, simple answers included only “TV shows” or “addiction,” while others provided concrete and elaborated examples:

“If video games makes the news, it's either something bad (e.g. linked tentatively to violence) or neutral (console release, some new sales record). I can't recall a mainstream media source talking about video games in a genuinely positive light ever” (18 - 24 ,mixed Japanese male).

“Every time a criminal is caught, the news always connect his crime to games, if he plays any” (18-24 Taiwanese male).

“Games are often blamed for various things, For Example: News reported how people who committed school shootings played videogames, and that took the headline instead of the actual crime, the victims or the actual cause which was mental health issues” (25 -34 Finnish male).

“Since lots of children, especially those who in Japan are addicted to the games, they played them all the time without sopping. Also, I heard that sometimes it caused them to be less sociable since they can enjoy the games alone” (18 - 24 Japanese female).

Media forms presenting negative images The media on which negative representation appeared according to the respondents’ comments were as followed:

Figure 17: Media forms representing negative elements

Like in the case of positive representation, figure 17 shows that most examples of negative representation were seen or heard on TV shows, followed by news reports. Most examples of news reports mentioned general incidents such as school shootings, murder caused due to a violent game or death after extensive gaming sessions. TV shows were also usually generalized, but concrete examples included shows such as The Big Bang Theory and Law & Order, while movies were mostly addressed specifically with examples such as 2006 Stay Alive, 2009 Gamer and 2015 Pixels. The data reflects my database findings, which shows a significant decrease of negative references in movies. While those results correlate to my database categorizing of negative elements representation as well significant decrease of negative references in movies, they also clearly demonstrate the objectivity factor: both The Big Bang Theory and Pixels were mentioned previously as examples for positive representation. As part of my database, I also categorized Pixels under “multiple elements,” as it empowers gamers on the one hand (their gaming skills save the world), yet on the other it presents an exaggerated version of typical stereotypes that gamers find offensive. Negative images appearing in the comments were also combined to larger categories. “Negative stereotype” for example, includes the following elements from each comment: Nerds, geeks, ,otaku, lonely, anti-social, bad hygiene, obese. Violence and aggression include school shootings, murders influenced by violent games etc.

Figure 18: Negative elements referenced by respondents

The most common negative element mentioned by the respondents is stereotyping (figure 18), which correlates to the database findings and appear to be the most common negative representation of video games and mostly gamers. Addiction was the second highest element, which can be explained due to the majority of respondents being from Asian countries, where incidents surrounding game addiction are a major concern (see for example Jenkins, 2008a). 13 out of the 15 respondents mentioning addiction as a common negative element in mainstream media were from Japan, Taiwan, China and S. Korea. The same can be applied to explain the high number of negative effects on studies, an element that was only mentioned by Asian respondents, and most likely reflects the common discourse Much like in the case of positive reports, Pokemon Go also generated negative reports associating the game with violent incidents, criminal activity and life risking accidents. Despite the fact that nearly 70 percent of respondents have encountered negative representation of video games in mainstream media, its effect on their decision not to engage with the medium is relatively low among respondents who do not play any type of digital games (figure 19).

Figure 19: Reasons for not engaging with video games

As the data shows, only five respondents chose “negative image of playing video games and gamers in mainstream media” as the reason for no playing games. Interestingly enough, all five are 18-24 female Japanese respondents. While the small sample does not allow us to reach any concrete conclusion and is beyond the scope of

91 this paper, the role of media and self image among young Japanese female has been explored (e.g. Darling-Wolf 2003), and might be applied in our case.

Gamer: self-identification The final question directed to all respondents and aimed to examine how they see the term gamer by addressing it to themselves.

Figure 20: Respondents self- identifications as gamers

Since the emergence of mobile games which pushed games into our everyday lives, and with the increasing popularity of indie developers’ games on multiple platforms, the term gamer is almost obsolete, at least as a description separating those who play games from those who do not. Jenkins argues that “It may, however, still work much like the term, “reader,” to distinguish those who gain some kind of social identity through their relations with games from those for whom game playing is simply one activity among many” (Jenkins 2008). That caused the gaming community to be divided roughly between hardcore gamers and casual gamers. The latter is almost considered an insult among gaming forums and message boards, since it implies that a person only plays mobile games or web browser based games, and not a “serious” AAA game on a dedicated console. The discussion surrounding the term is of course much broader and can be the subject of an entire paper, as Shaw reminds us that like other forms of identity, “being a gamer is defined in relation to dominant discourses about who plays games, the deployment of subcultural capital, the context in which players find themselves, and who are the subjects of game texts” (Shaw 2013). By dividing the term into those two segments, I asked to provide broader options to respondents who otherwise might hesitate to define themselves as such. While nearly 70 percent of respondents currently play some type of digital game, 47.2

92 percent (n=83) do not consider themselves as any type of gamers. That means that 38.55 percent (n=32) of those who play games do not consider themselves as gamers, either hardcore or casual. Females were the majority of those respondents, with 71.88 percent (n=23). One way to explain this discrepancy, is first by acknowledging that this might not actually be one, since the term is largely based on self-determination. The second is that it might carry connotations in other languages that the respondents did not want to be associated with and are beyond my knowledge. Looking at the remaining 5.1 percent (n=9) respondents who do play game and chose to answer “other” reveals in some cases a clearer answer. Most respondents placed themselves between casual and hardcore, or describing themselves as “passionate gamers” rather than hardcore, showing that the common terms used in gaming communities might still be too simplistic. Another respondent emphasized that he mostly plays specific genres and identify himself by it (a “japanophile gamer”). Lastly, two respondents had issues with the term itself: one 18-24 Japanese female respondent simply replied “I Play Games,” perhaps to avoid or distance herself away from the term, and 25-34 Israeli male who was more specific, stating that “I play tons of video games, but don't like to be associated as a “gamer”. Term carries a negative charge in my opinion.”

Part three Chapter five: Discussion

By examining video games representation across multiple media forms and several decades throughout this paper, the majority of this study’s questions have been mostly answered. However, while the question regarding possible reasons for video games struggle for cultural legitimacy was partially addressed, after considering the analysis it needs to be explored further. As a fairly young medium constantly growing and evolving, there are countless possible reasons to explain why the image of video games was shaped the way it is. Since video games are not the first medium to deal with such critical scorn, some critics argue that maturity of the medium can explain part of the problem and solve it in time. Jenkins uses movies as an example:

“if it’s 1910 and you ask, ‘What’s the state of movies?,’ I’m going to say mostly chases and pie fights. By 1915, when D.W. Griffith makes Birth of Nation, now I’m saying that this is a mature storytelling medium that has enormous power to shape the debates within our culture” (Jenkins, 2004, in Bogost, 2007: preface).

Indeed, in order to explore this issue, we are required to consider the role of video games along-side other media that went through relatively similar process. A common argument, and one that was briefly mentioned earlier, is placing video games reception under moral panic, a term coined in the 1960s by Stanley Cohen as means to explain the social reaction to that era’s phenomenon of “Mods and Rockers.” According to Cohen, moral panic is:

“A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are

evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible” (Cohen 2002: 1).

Several forms of entertainment in past decades that were not available to the previous generation were marked as such. Examples range from the comic books and rock ‘n roll music of 1940s and 1950s, to punk culture in the 1960s and Dungeons & Dragons in the 1970s and early 1980s. Video games, as one of the most popular pass time of 1980s and 1990s young generation, served as moral panic since then, only drawing growing negative attention with every technological leap the medium went through. Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. argue that the novelty of each new media, in that case video games, is seen as inherently dangerous for people (readers, viewers, or players, depending on the medium) who are thought to be incapable of distinguishing fantasy from reality (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. 2016: 166). Williams, as earlier shown, places reactions to games alongside reactions to prior media, discussing number of waves each new media undergo, checking the boxes of many common arguments against video games from health issues to antisocial behaviors like aggression and violence (Williams 2003: 250). In addition to moral panic and in accordance with the maturity of the medium as a possible explanation, Michael Saler argues that video games worlds, and online gaming worlds in particular, are another link in the chain of imaginary worlds of modern enchantment, and “there is a direct lineage between these computer-generated virtual worlds and the textual virtual worlds” (2012: 101). According to Saler, many of those textual virtual worlds which gained growing popularity in the late 19th century, became associated with the “cognitive outlooks of groups traditionally seen as inferior by Western elites: ‘primitives,’ children, women and the lower classes” (Ibid, 9). In the same sense, many inhabitants of online virtual worlds are often being typecast as solitary and antisocial misfits in media lore (Ibid: 102), while in reality contemporary online virtual world communities have been diversified in terms of gender, age, profession and nationality, and play a significant role in what Saler refers to as “modern enchantment.” Much like in the case of other media, for example the popularity of book/film series such as The Lord of the Rings and comic book adaptations, the idea of a fantasy or virtual worlds is gaining growing popularity and have come to appeal to greater

95 numbers of people. This is an important factor to consider and reflects how dynamic both the medium and its representation is. James Newman for example, argued in 2004 how triviality is a crucial hindering factor for video games acceptance, meaning that the medium is considered inconsequential because it is perceived to serve no cultural or social function save distraction at best, moral baseness at worst. Video games, he continues, are perceived to be “mere trifles - low art - carrying none of the weight, gravitas or credibility of more traditional media” (Newman 2004: 5). Arguments such as one made by Newman were addressed throughout this paper. Yet when placing them along-side other media, as Lule notes, the process where video games worlds such as those represented in the Grand Theft Auto, Halo and World of Warcraft, expanded the idea of virtual worlds so that they gradually considered as more than mere means of escape but as new ways to interact (Lule 2016). Considering not only cases of misrepresentation but also underrepresentation, Naomi Alderman’s comments provide us with an insightful insider’s perspective. Alderman is an author, games writer and gaming columnist for The Guardian, which as previously mentioned has a dedicated gaming section filed under the culture portal. She lists several possible answers to the question of why do video games receive so little coverage in mainstream cultural media. Cultural programmers on TV and radio Alderman argues, “do a fun segment about games once a quarter at best while reserving discussion and analysis for interpretive dance or experimental opera” (The Guardian 2016b), echoing Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. argument of distinction between high culture and pop culture and art and non-art as discussed earlier. This “lacuna”, Alderman argues, is the result of a generation gap between those who play games and cultural “taste-makers” who control programming and edit papers, and tend to be “a bit old to have come of age with video games or understand them” (ibid). This claim brings to mind Roush’s argument discussed earlier in relation to the movie Reign Over Me. As the film’s editor and avid gamer, Roush used his personal PlayStation console and copy of the game to showcase his idea about including it in the movie to director Mike Binder. Binder, in his late 50s, spent his childhood deep in comic books like most filmmakers of his generation, a possible explanation as to why Hollywood of late has had better success with comic books than with video games (Kotaku 2007). Much like Alderman’s argument on the cultural taste-makers generation, Roush claims in relation to filmmakers and video

96 games that “It's just how much exposure they’ve had to games as a kid,” and that it is merely a generation gap (ibid). Another reason Alderman raises is that games are often less susceptible to the “single creator” or celebrity who can represent them. It is an interesting point, as the most recognizable faces of the gaming industry are virtual characters who cannot provide interviews or expose games to the public in a way cultural media is familiar with. The industry has its own non-virtual celebrities, mostly “legendary” developers that are the superstars of the medium and have avid fans in the gaming community, but only few of them (see the example of Miyamoto, Super Mario’s creator at the Apple event) are recognizable beyond gaming sphere. The place of not only content, but also its users is being addressed by Mikolaj Dymek, who refers to the video game industry as a subcultural industry, and as such it “produces subcultural content for a subcultural audience with a subcultural industry logic” (2012: 36). It is true that as players congregate they form subcultures centered around a specific game, but at the same time, as argued by Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., this also places the players in the wider culture of gaming itself (2016: 186). Avid Halo players for example can feel a sense of belonging when interacting with other Halo fans, as they have developed particular subculture slang and the terminology unique to the game’s meta. Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. argue that such elements will only be fully intelligible to other devoted players, partly understandable by fans of other first-person shooters, only vaguely understandable by fans of other genres, and close to unintelligible to non-gamers (ibid). In this case, it is convenient to refer to the example discussed earlier about the 10 billion Covenant kills in Halo 3 and the meaning this milestone had for the Halo community. Players of action games and first-person shooters in particular can appreciate the accomplishment since they are aware of the effort and skills required to achieve it, while players of completely different genres such as strategy games or puzzle games can appreciate it for the dedication of the players, the community aspects and the gameplay perspective. Non- gamers however, might not only be oblivious to why such event is meaningful for an entire community, but might consider it a waste of time which could have been used for “real life” achievements. While Halo is used to demonstrate this process, the same can be said about most modern games and their communities that have their own jargon, game’s meta, mechanics and ecosystem.

Placing video games along-side other media forms to address arguments of subculture mentality and moral panic may help us understand the tension between mainstream media representations of video games and those who play them, and the way the medium and the culture surrounding it is viewed by those who engage with it. In addition those arguments howeve, we also have to acknowledge that is some cases it is the inability (or will) of both gamers’ communities and industry policy-makers to bridge that gap and push the medium to become (or at least appear) less exclusive and more welcoming to outsiders. At the moment, cultural attributes of the traditional video game subculture might not be flexible enough to adapt to a mainstream majority culture. In other words, the practices of the video game industry itself and its somewhat confined nature, might alienate mainstream media and create a false representation. In addition to her previous argument, Alderman refers to such elements when trying to answer why video games gain so little coverage in mainstream cultural media, arguing that the games industry simply doesn’t care enough to make it happen, giving example of how tedious is the process of receiving new games from publishers for articles and reviews compared to books publishers for example. While it might sound like nothing more than technicality or bothersome bureaucracy, Alderman argues that “if the games industry wanted to be treated like other cultural media, it could start by making its work accessible to mainstream journalists” (The Guardian 2016b). The game industry, she suggests, has no real motivation to be covered in broadsheet culture sections, simply because it will not necessarily be reflected in sales:

“It is already the biggest selling entertainment industry in the world – what good would, for example, a weekly Radio 4 games programme do for it? That’s its prerogative, of course. But I wish it would play ball anyway. Because I think games aren’t just fun, they’re also important, and I’d like to see them discussed that way in the mainstream” (ibid).

When considering several factors, Alderman’s argument sounds reasonable. First, as seen by the use of the game Prince of Persia in Life, the game’s publisher obviously did not care about the trivial and inaccurate way the game was represented,

98 or to the fact that it was used to cover illegal data. The game was not used to promote sells (as it was dated at the time of the show and was used on last generation console), and so it is most likely that the publisher gained royalties for allowing the production to use it, with little to no interest to the way it is presented. Second, while only covers very small sample, the questionnaire results clearly showed that mainstream representation of video games, positive or negative, have hardly any effect on peoples’ consideration if to engage with the medium or not. Lack of in-depth and accurate coverage of games in mainstream cultural media affects the way people think about the medium, Alderman argues:

“It means “gamers” are still being portrayed as spotty teenage nerds, probably sexless and with a hobby of online harassment – rather than the truth, which is that loads of us are in our 30s and 40s with very normal lives, mortgages, jobs, relationships and so on. It means we don’t get the kind of analysis that mainstream media can produce – wide as well as deep – thinking about the position of games in our culture” (ibid).

As a journalist in a major publication that do efforts in recent years to present multiple perspectives of the medium and encourage readers to acknowledge it as a cultural form, Alderman’s take on the topic presents us with an important insider’s input which have to be considered by industry policy-makers. Yet although major publishers hold some of the responsibility for the medium’s place in mainstream culture, we must not forget the unique elements video games encompass, the medium’s scale and the modern environment in which it operates that allows flow of information at a degree none of the other media forms had to deal with. Hence, gamers communities and individuals also play a significant role in the image constructed around the medium and it players, as industry insiders themselves testify. Numerous voices in the industry are concerned about negative implications caused by incidents such as Gamergate or developers harassments, by individuals or entire gaming communities. Those voices are raised not only for the sake of the individuals who suffer directly from the implications, but also for the image of video games as a whole. In those cases, the industry cannot simply point a blaming finger at mainstream media for demonizing the medium, and has to

99 acknowledge its own faults and criticize some of its practices and fans, as acknowledged by video game journalist Jim Sterling: “This is the kind behavior that justifies the Fox News stereotype of the basement-dwelling, antisocial nerd. [...] That’s how gamers look when something like this happens” (Tassi 2014: 793-797). After David Vonderhaar, a developer in Activision, the publisher behind the Call of Duty franchise made some simple balance changes to a weapon in the game, he started receiving messages by angry fans who threatened to kill him and his family for the tweaks he made to their virtual gun. Activision community manager, Dan Amrich addressed the community with a statement regarding the threats aimed at Vonderhaar:

“If anybody thinks for a second that this is okay, it is not. But if the loudest voices in the Call of Duty ‘community’ act like an angry mob instead, guess how the entire world views Call of Duty? Now consider that these Internet Tough Guy rants and demands are not unique to COD [Call of Duty], but exist everywhere, in many gaming communities. This is why the world often does not take gaming seriously; this is why gamers are assumed to be immature, whiny assholes. Because the immature, whiny assholes are louder” (in ibid: Kindle Locations 738-742).

In his conclusion to this case, Tassi also addresses how such incidents negatively affect the medium’s image in both mainstream media and in the public’s eye, arguing that despite over two decades concrete push from the industry to prove that games are not only for stereotypical teenage boys but for everyone, gamers’ childish and often violent attitude hurt the image of the entire community. Echoing Amrich, Tassi also argue that the louder voice of the minority is the one that is heard the most and that their opinions are confused for consensus or popular opinion by the mainstream media. In addition, although demographics clearly show that gaming is far more representative of the general public and inclusive than many would guess, gamers’ infantile behavior damage the public perception of the medium (Tassi 2014: Kindle Locations 742-749). The place of mature games in the image of first-person shooters (one of, if not the most popular genre in the video game market) and the question of why the

111 medium is recognized mostly by such violent shooting games was addressed shortly on chapter two and should be further explained. Ridyard notes four popular games in 2014, each from different genre, that represent the tastes of a significant proportion of the gaming public. While those popular games do not represent the entirety of game types and genres, they are diverse in their appeal and were played by vastly different groups of people. According to Ridyard, only one of the four of those games14, Call of Duty, conforms to the most popularly represented violent genre while the other games cater to different audiences than what mainstream media represent as the ‘typical’ gamer (Ridyard 2014: 2). Hence, he argues that one of the main problems with the stereotyping and misunderstandings of what video games really are is that they are typically represented as a genre of entertainment, rather than a medium.

“This misunderstanding about video games results in a narrow representation of gaming based on the public perception of what sort of entertainment is favoured by the medium. Games are typically represented as violent, misogynistic power fantasies targeted at a male audience and while elements of this representation have been true in some popular games [...], these genres are not representative of the whole picture of which games are available, or even representative of which games are most popular amongst the entire gaming public” (Ridyard 2014: 1).

Ridyard raises an important argument, as the game industry is fragmented well beyond a single genre. However, when a violent genre is the most popular among gamers, it becomes the “poster child” of an entire industry. According to data presented by Jenkins in 2008 for example, only one out of the five most popular games in the U.S. that year was rated M for mature. Yet the same data indicates that 50 percent of boys named a game with mature or adults only rating as one of their top three favorite games (Jenkins 2008). In addition, recent data reveals that while the ESRB rated only 11 percent of games as ‘Mature’ in 2015 (which correlates to the diversity argument by Ridyard), five of the ten best selling home console games of the

14 It is important to note that Ridyard also refers to mobile games in his analysis. 111 year (including the top spot) and four out of ten best selling computer games were rated M (ESA 2016: 11)15. Hence, it is hard to deny that when it comes to home consoles and personal computers, namely the most influential and profitable segments in the industry, games containing violent elements are gaining the highest popularity, and most likely effecting the public’s and mainstream media perspective about the entire medium being violent. In other words, it is hardly surprising that the video game industry is still far from being identified with creations dealing with social issues and personal traumas, and the image of video games is very much related to criminals in GTAV or Futuristic soldier in Halo rather than a child in Darfurian refugee camp as in Darfur is Dying or a family’s struggle in face of terrible lose and tragedy in That Dragon, Cancer.

15 Similar data was found on the 2015 report covering games from 2014. 14 percent of games were rated M, and four of the top ten console games (including the top spot) were rated M, as well as 5 out of ten PC games (ESR 2015: 11)

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Conclusion

The issue of video games and gamers culture representation is effected by both external mainstream media common moral panic and stereotypes, as well as by gamers communities, content and industry’s practices. This is a complicated formula that other media forms have dealt with, yet none of those had to operate in the conditions under which video games perform as an interactive media in high-speed information global society. While scholars such as McGonigal and Jenkins are laying out ways for the medium to emphasise its the potential to build communities and contribute to positive social change in new and unique ways, mainstream media, and in many cases the industry itself, are both pushing such positive messages far behind negative headlines on violent behaviour and misogynist community. It seems however, that the young generation of people who play games, either self defined gamers or not, are hardly influenced by the medium’s image in traditional media. With new channels of information, on which video games are the dominant force, and along-side the growing number of taste-makers into key positions in mainstream media, the nature of video games representation and acceptance will shift towards mainstream. It is yet to be seen how the medium will adapt to such changes. Shortly before the conclusion of this study, on December 1st 2016, the video games industry held its annual game award ceremony. The ceremony is watched live by millions of fans worldwide and has all the elements of other media events, from celebrities hosts to popular singers performing live music on stage. The show encapsulates some of the topics discussed in this paper, and I would like to shortly address them. The “trending gamer” award, namely a streamer/influencer/media member who has made an important impact on the industry in 2016, was handed to Steven Williams, AKA “Boogie2988,” a highly popular YouTube video games streamer. When accepting the award, Williams, a 42-year-old extremely overweight man who had to receive the prize at his seat, had this to say:

“I’ve been playing video games since before a lot of you were born, and if you look at me, like physically, there’s not a lot I can do in this world, but the games creators […] have created worlds that I can explore, worlds that I can accomplish, worlds that I can be a hero in.”

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Shortly after, Michael Phelps came up to the stage to present the award of best eSport player. Announcing the category, Phelps, an avid gamer, said that “there is absolutely no question to me, the level of skill, training and devotion required in becoming a professional gamer.” When presenting the nominees, the most decorated Olympian of all time addressed them without the slightest sense of cynicism as “fellow athletes”, before handing the prize to 22-year-old Brazilian Marcelo David, a professional first-person shooting game Counter-Strike player.

Finally, That Dragon, Cancer won the Games For Impact award. As earlier mentioned, the game is about developer Ryan Green’s young son’s struggle with cancer, who eventually passed away during the process of the game’s development. Green came on stage, accepting the award in tears, and in a shaking voice said:

“Often in video games we get to choose how we’re seen. Our avatars and our tweets and the work that we do are all meant to portray the story that we want to tell the world about why our lives matter […]. You let us tell the story of my son Joel. In the end, it was not the story we wanted to tell. But you chose to love us through our grief by being willing to stop, and to listen, and to not turn away. To let my son Joel’s life change you, because you chose to see him and experience how we loved him.”

Unlike the cases discussed in the first chapter, the game awards event did not generate any headlines in major publications’ front pages. Yes, the event was presented and discussed in numerous video games press publications, and in gaming sections of major publications such as The Guardian. Yet Williams or Ryan’s speeches were not quoted in “regular” news reports, outside of gaming sections. Nor did the winner for Game of the Year, the video game industry equivalent of the films’ industry Best Picture. In other words, while an academy award winning film or director will be acknowledged, even briefly, on the evening news or the morning newspaper front page, 2016 video game of the year or best game direction will not receive the same attention, not to mention the examples presented above. The question of if such event should be addressed, or even the harder question if the video game industry, both creators and fans, wishes for it to be addressed the same way as other media, is a question that requires future studies. The award show showed us

114 many of the elements that were discussed but mostly shows us the complexity of the medium and what it has to offer. From the fact that stereotypes might indeed be accurate in some cases (it is hard to ignore the similarities between Williams and Parker Lewis’s Steiner’s comments on their inability to achieve something in the real world), but that they also requires much more in-depth examination, to the fact that gamers are not only anti-social angry teenagers, but can also be acclaimed athletes and be respected for their profession, and that games can and have helped people in various ways, and are far more than just entertainment. Since events such as that of the game show are mostly ignored by mainstream media, those cases are absent from the medium’s representation, and as a result from the general public’s discourse about video games. From the perspective of the medium however, I conclude by offering both industry policy makers as well of researchers of video games, to consider the following comment by Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., reminding us video games scholars that our research is “not a phenomenon that epitomize high-brow cultural expression” (2016: 8). As such, we have to acknowledge that it might be frowned upon, yet at the same time we must also avoid any sort of paranoia. If our field of research is not accepted, they argue, “we must not comfort ourselves with conspiracy theories nor view our field as populated by enemies. We should instead raise out internal standards” (ibid). The same approach I believe, should be applied for the video games medium as a whole, if it is to be acknowledged for its merits above its flaws, meaning, the appreciation that video games are unique in not only incorporating the representation of reality via interactions between players and space (either realistic or fantastic), but understanding that they are themselves a form of reality representation that communicate a sense of both the game world as well as the physical world. In that sense, it is nearly impossible to expect that the representation of video games would be without its flaws. It is, however, crucial to strive that mainstream media representation of video games, will be just as complex as the media it asks to represent.

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Appendix 1: Apple’s Keynotes

Event’s title Date Duration Apple Announces iPad 27 January 2010 1:33 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 7.96% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, April 2010 8 April 2010 59 min Percentage of games and games related content stage time 3.53% Event’s title Date Duration Apple WWDC 2010 Keynote Address 7 June 2010 1:52 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 7.02% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, September 2010 1 September 2010 1:10 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 7.38% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, October 2010 20 October 2010 1:31 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 0% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, March 2011 2 March 2011 1:13 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 0% Event’s title Date Duration Apple WWDC 2011 Keynote Address 6 June 2011 1:58 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 1.69% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, October 2011 4 October 2011 1:36 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 4.25% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, March 2012 7 March 2012 1:25 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 8.53% Event’s title Date Duration Apple WWDC 2012 Keynote Address 11 June 2012 1:54 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 2.87% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, September 2012 12 September 2012 1:57 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 5.41% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, October 2012 23 October 2012 1:12 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 0% Event’s title Date Duration Apple WWDC 2013 Keynote Address 10 June 2013 1:58 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 0% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, September 2013 10 September 2013 1:26:51 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 5.37% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, October 2013 22 October 2013 1:23 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 0%

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Event’s title Date Duration Apple WWDC 2014 Keynote Address 2 June 2014 1:57:44 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 3.82% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, September 2014 9 September 2014 2 hours Percentage of games and games related content stage time 3.33% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, October 2014 16 October 2014 1:19:08 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 0.63% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, March 2015 9 March 2015 1:34:45 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 0% Event’s title Date Duration Apple WWDC 2015 Keynote Address 8 June 2015 2:20 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 3.1% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, September 2015 9 September 2015 2:19 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 6.49% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, March 2016 21 March 2016 1:03:28 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 0% Event’s title Date Duration Apple WWDC 2016 Keynote Address 13 June 2016 2:03 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 0.18% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, September 2016 9 September 2016 2 hours Percentage of games and games related content stage time 12.85% Event’s title Date Duration Apple Special Event, October 2016 27 October 2016 1:22 Percentage of games and games related content stage time 0.61%

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Games and games related content in Apple's keynotes

ASE, Jan 10

ASE, Apr 10

WWDC Jun 10

ASE, Sep 10

ASE, Oct 10

ASE, Mar11

WWDC Jun 11

ASE, Oct 11

ASE, Mar12

WWDC Jun 12

ASE, Sep 12

ASE, Oct 12

WWDC Jun 13

ASE Sep 13

ASE, Oct 12

WWDC Jun 14

ASE, Sep 14

ASE, Oct 14

ASE, Mar15

WWDC Jun 15

ASE, Sep 15

ASE, Mar16

WWDC Jun 16

ASE, Sep 16

ASE, Oct 16

Time

55 30 05 05 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 00 05 10 15 20 25 35 40 45 50 55 00 10 15 20 25 30

: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

0 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 (minutes) 0 Total time Games and games related content time

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Appendix 2: Movies database

Date Movie Platform: Game Positive Neutral/ Negative Parody Homage/ Multiple Environmental Cameo elements

May Soylent Arcade: Computer Space 3 A/F/A 1973 Green (set as a home console) Jun The Arcade: Pong 3 A/M+NH/S 1974 Parallax View Mar Rancho Arcade: Pong clone 3 A/M/S 1975 Deluxe Jun Jaws Arcade: Killer Shark, 3 C+T+A/M/S 1975 Computer Space Jun Silent Movie Heart Monitor: Pong clone 3 A/M/S 1976 Sep Dawn Of Arcade: Multiple games 2 A/M/S 1978 The Dead played Feb Midnight Arcade, Home Console: X X 3 A/M+F/S 1980 Madness Star Fire Jul Airplane! Atari home console: 2 A/M/S 1980 Basketball Oct Time Square Atari home console: 1 -/-/- 1980 Multiple games on display NA The Atari home console: Space 2 A/M/A 1981 Creature Invaders Wasn't Nice Jun E.T. the Atari home console: NA 1 -/-/- 1982 Extra- Terrestrial Jun Blade Atari logo 1 -/-/- 1982 Runner Jun The Thing Atari home console: NA, 2 A/M/A 1982 PC: Chess Jun Poltergeist Atari home console: NA 1 -/-/- 1982 Jul Tron Arcade, Pseudo super X X 4 A/M+F/S 1982 computer Aug Fast Times Arcade: Several games 2 C+T/M+F/S 1982 At played Ridgemont High Dec Best Friends Atari home console: Space 2 C/M/S 1982 Invaders Dec Jekyll & Arcade: Multiple games 2 A/F/S 1982 Hyde... played Together Again Feb Videodrome Atari home console: 2 -/-/- 1983 Combat and Air-Sea Battle Mar Max Dugan Atari home console, PC: 1 -/-/- 1983 Returns Multiple games Mar Eddie Arcade: Gorf 2 A/M/S 1983 Macon's Run Mar Joysticks Arcade: Multiple games X X X 4 T+A/M+F/S 1983 presented Jun Wargames Arcade, PC: Multiple X X 4 T/M/S 1983 arcade games played, pseudo PC game Jun Twilight Arcade: Tempest 2 C/M/A 1983 Zone: The Movie Jul Mr. Mom Atari home console 1 C/M+F/S 1983 Sep Nightmares Arcade: Bishop of Battle 4 1983 (pseudo) T/M/S+A Oct The Dead Atari home console 1 -/-/- 1983 Zone Oct Never Say Arcade: Multiple games X X 2 A/M+F/S 1983 Never Again presented Oct High School Arcade: Multiple games 1 T/M+F/S 1983 U.S.A. Jun Blind Date Atari home console: X X 4 A/M/A 1984 Multiple Atari games appear, Super Breakout played Jun Gremlins Arcade, Atari home 2 -/NH/S 1984 console,Handheld/tabletop : Star-Wars, Donkey Kong Jun Cannonball NA: Pac-Man 2 A/M/S 1984 Run II

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Date Movie Platform: Game Positive Neutral/ Negative Parody Homage/ Multiple Environmental Cameo elements

Jul The Last Arcade: Starfighter X X 4 A/M/S 1984 Starfighter Jul Cloak & Atari home console: X X 4 1984 Dagger Multiple games C+T+A/M+F/ A+S Jul Hollywood Arcade: Several games X X 2 A/M+F/S 1984 Hot Tubs played Jul Revenge of Atari home console: 2 C/M/S 1984 the Nerds Spacemaster X-7 Nov Night of the Arcade: Tempest 3 A/F/A 1984 Comet Dec Thrillkill PC, Arcade: Multiple X X 4 A/M+F/A+S 1984 games Apr Just One of Atari home console: NA 1 -/-/- 1985 the Guys Jun D.A.R.Y.L. Atari home console: Pole X X 2 C/M+F/S 1985 Position Jun Ferris Arcade: Karate Champ 2 T/F/S 1986 Bueller's Day Off Sep The Princess Home console: Hardball 2 C/M/A 1987 Bride Oct Terminal PC: Pseudo X X X 4 T/M+F/S 1987 Entry Nov Death Wish Arcade: Multiple games 1 A/M+F/S 1987 4: The Crackdown Feb Bloodsport Arcade: Karate Champ X X X 3 A/M/S 1988 Apr K-9 Nintendo Handheld: 2 A/M/A 1989 Manhole Jun Ghostbuster Reference to Boggle and 2/A/M/- 1989 s 2 Super Mario Brothers Jul Parenthood Arcade: Bad Dudes Vs X X 3 C/M/S 1989 Dragon Ninja Sep In Country Atari home console: Ms. 2 A/M/A 1989 Pac Man Nov Back to the Arcade: Wild Gunman, 3 C+T/M/S 1989 Future Part Nintendo home console: 2 Jaws Dec The Wizard Arcade, Nintendo home X X 4 1989 console, Nintendo C+T+A/M+F/ peripherals, games and A+S products are abundant Mar Teenage Arcade: Multiple games 2 T/M+F/S 1990 Mutant played Ninja Turtles Jun RoboCop 2 Arcade: Multiple games 2 1990 C+T+A/M+F/S Aug My Blue Nintendo home console: 2 A/M/A 1990 Heaven The Goonies 2 May Scanners II: Arcade: Multiple games X X 3 T+A/M+F/S 1991 The New played Order May Hudson Nintendo references are X X X 3 A/M/- 1991 Hawk abundant Jul Boyz n the Nintendo home console: X X 3 A/M/S 1991 Hood Duck Hunt Jul Terminator Arcade: After Burner 2 2 C+T/M+F/S 1991 2: Judgment Day Aug Child's Play Atari Lynx console: NA 1 C/M/A 1991 3 Sep Freddy's Nintendo console 3 A/M/A 1991 Dead: The peripheral Final Nightmare Jan Juice Arcade: Street Fighter X X 2 A/M/S 1992 Feb Wayne's Sonic the Hedgehog 2 -/-/- 1992 World cameo May Encino Man Arcade: Multiple games 2 T/M+F/S 1992 played Aug 3 Ninjas Nintendo home console: 2 C/M/A 1992 Super Mario Bros 3 Jul Rookie of Nintendo Gameboy 3 T/M/A 1993 the Year handheld console: NA

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Date Movie Platform: Game Positive Neutral/ Negative Parody Homage/ Multiple Environmental Cameo elements

Aug Surf Ninjas Sega handheld console: X X X 4 C/M/A+S 1993 Surf Ninjas Feb Ski School 2 Arcade: Pole Position 2 A/M/S 1994 Apr Brainscan PC: pseudo 4 T/M/A 1994 May Beverly Nintendo reference X X 3 A/M/ - 1994 Hills Cop 3 Jul The Net Arcade: Multiple games 1 T+A/M+F/S 1995 Sep Hackers Arcade: Wipeout X X 2 1995 prototype. Nintendo T+A/M+F/A+ peripherals, Atari VR, S “Nintendo generation” reference Sep Four Rooms Sega home console: 2 A/F/S 1995 Rambo 3 Oct Mallrats Sega home console: NHL X X 3 A/M/A 1995 All-Star Hockey Nov Toy Story Arcade center 1 C/M+F/S 1995 Aug Box of Moon Jaguar: Ultra Vortek 3 C/M/A 1996 Light Aug Swingers Sega home console: NHL 3 A/M/S 1996 94 Apr Grosse Arcade: Doom 2 (V) 3 1997 Pointe Blank T/M/A Jan The Arcade: Multiple games 2 A/M+F/S 1998 Replacement Killers Jul BASEketball Nintendo (reference) 3 A/M/S 1998 Nov Enemy of Sony Playstation home 2 C/M/S 1998 the State console: NA Feb The Beach Video game hallucination, 2 2000 inspired by Nontendo’s A/M/A Banjo-Kazooie May Road Trip Atari T-Shirt X X 3 T/M/- 2000 Aug Bring It On Sony Playstation home 2 T/M/A 2000 console: Twisted Metal, Handheld game system: NA Mar Shaun Of Sony Playstation home 3 2004 The Dead console: Timesplitters 2 A/M+N H/S Aug The 40- Home console: Mortal X X 3 A/M/A+S 2005 Year-Old Kombat: Deadly Alliance Virgin Sep Roll Bounce Arcade, Atari home 2 T/M/S 2005 console: Asteroids, Centipede Jan Grandma's Arcade, Home consoles: X X X X 3 A/M+NH/S 2006 Boy Multiple references Mar Inside Man Sony Playstation handheld 4 2006 console: Pseudo Gangstas C+A/M/A iz Genocide, based on GTA 3 Jun Monster Arcade: Pseudo beat em 3 A/M/A 2006 House up game Mar Stay Alive Pseudo home console and 4 2006 virtual reality A/M+F/A +S Aug Snakes on a PlayStation, Xbox and 4 A/M/S 2006 Plane Microsoft Flight Simulator reference Sep Crank Protagonist perspective in 1 A/M/A 2006 intro similar to FPS game Sep Cashback Atari home console: Video 2 C/M/S 2006 Olympics Dec The Pursuit Atari home console: 2 C/M/A 2006 of Asteroids Happyness Mar Reign Over Sony PlayStation home 4 2007 Me console: Shadow of the A/M/A+ Colossus S Jun Die Hard 4 Microsoft home console: 3 A/M/A 2007 Gears of War Aug Superbad Sony PlayStation home 3 T/M/A 2007 console: The Getaway

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Date Movie Platform: Game Positive Neutral/ Negative Parody Homage/ Multiple Environmental Cameo elements

Jan The Nintendo home and X X 3 C+T/M/A 2008 Wackness handheld consoles: The Legend of Zelda Sep The Hurt Microsoft Xbox home 3 A/M/S 2008 Locker console: Gears of War Dec The Wrestler Nintendo home console: X X 4 C+A/M/S 2008 Pseudo + Reference to Call of Duty 4 Apr Crank: High Pixel Art intro 1 -/-/- 2009 Voltage Jan Adventure Arcade: Several games 2 A/M+F/S 2009 land presented and played Jan Paul Blart: NA: Guitar Hero 3 A/M/A 2009 Mall Cop Sep Gamer Pseudo virtual reality 4 2009 game: Society and Slayers T+A/M+F/ A+S Jun The Karate Arcade: Pseudo dancing 3 2010 Kid game T/M+F/S Aug Scott Abundant video games X X X 4 T/M+F/A+S 2010 Pilgrim vs. references across different The World platforms and generations. Jan Another Nintendo home console: 3 2011 Earth Wii Sports Boxing A/M+F/ S Mar The FP Arcade pseudo game Beat- X X X 4 A/M+F/S 2011 Beat Revelation Mar The Jeffery Atari home console: Pitfall 2 A/M/S 2012 Dahmer Files Apr The NA: Galaga 3 A/M/A 2012 Avengers Aug Noobz Multiple games, mostly X X 4 2012 Microsoft Xbox home C+T+A/M+F/ console Gears of War 3 A+S Nov Wreck-It Numerous references and 4 2012 Ralph cameos C+T+A/M +F/A+S Oct Her Pseudo hologram game X X X 3 A/M/A 2013 Jan Ping Pong Arcade: Multiple games 2 2014 Summer presented and played T/M/S

Jul Mission: PC/Microsoft Xbox home 2 A/M/A 2015 Impossible - console: Halo 5 Rogue Nation Jul Pixels Abundant video games X X X X X 4 2015 references across different C+T+A/M+F/ platforms and generations. A+S Index: C - Child, T - Teen, A - Adult /M - Male, F - Female, NH - Non-human/ A - Alone, S - Social

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characters are interacting with games in the background would fall under that criteria. 3. Game or game related content support but not move the plot, as well as providing significant context. Game shown by title/pseudo title and/or acknowledged/referenced by a speaking character (not necessarily by title). An example would be a gameplay session by two characters that discuss the game while they are playing, or a way in which the activity of playing together represent the characters’ relationship with each other either positively or negatively. 4. Games are a significant element in the movie and are connected with main characters/narrative, or/and support and move the plot in a meaningful way. Most movies about video games will fall under this criteria.

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Appendix 3: Questionnaire

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