Digital Gaming

and the
Media Playground
Courtney Gunter & Heidi Considine
 Video Games and eSports Today
● October 1972 - first eSport tournament
● increasingly popular
● TV/streaming audiences
The Development of Digital Gaming
● Industrial revolution → emergence of leisure time
● Four major digital gaming formats

TV Handheld
Computers Internet
Devices
The Development of Digital Gaming
Mechanical Gaming First Video Games & Arcades
Penny arcades
First video game patent

Arcades started popping up

First Chuck E. Cheese

Dave & Buster’s

 The Development of Digital Gaming
Consoles and Advancing Graphics
● Evolution of of consoles is seen through binary digits
● Primary home console makers
 The Development of Digital Gaming
Gaming on PC’s
-Solitaire, Hearts, Spades, Chess,
Myst
-Survived due to social media gaming
Portable Players
-Nintendo made popular the hand held
digital games with Game Boy (1989)
-Continued popularity through the DS
and Switch
 The Internet Transforms Gaming
MMORPGs Online Fantasy Sports Gaming Apps

● Role-playing games ● Mass audience ● Everyday form of

● Virtual fantasy ● Social component entertainment
world ● Managerial perspective
The Media Playground - Genres

Action Adventure Action- Role

Adventure Playing

Platform games

Shooter

Fighting

Stealth

Survival

Rhythm
 The Media Playground - Communities
Inside the game Outside the game
● PUGs ● Collective Intelligence
● Guilds or Clans ○ Modding
● Gaming Sites
● Conventions
Trends and Issues in Digital Gaming
Addiction Violence Misogyny
Trends and Issues in Digital Gaming
Regulation Future of Gaming & Environments
● 1976: first official regulation
● Entertainment Software ● More relational
● Used more in the workplace
Rating Board (ESRB)
and in social settings
The Business of Digital Gaming
In relation to DEMAND
 65%
Of American households have someone in
their house who regularly plays video games
 Ownership & Organization of Digital Gaming
● Game Publishers ● Pay Models for Selling
● The Structure of Digital Game Digital Games
Publishing ○ Boxed game/retail model
○ Subscription model
○ Free-to-play
● Distribution
○ Less brick and mortar stores
○ More digital stores
Digital Gaming, Free Speech, and Democracy
● Electronic games achieved the first amendment protection afforded
to other mass media
○ Ratings are not enforced by the law → spawns continual
parental concern
Media, Video Games, and Christianity
Media, Video Games, and Christianity

“perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is

possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the
sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may
not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it
may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has
never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the
eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown
old, and our Father is younger than we”
-G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)