Videogaming as Craft Consumption

The Consumption of Food at Video Game Events

This paper develops the discussion from a completed ethnographic PhD thesis (Law 2016); it draws on the data gathered from interviews, focus groups and participant observations to consider the consumption of food at video game events. To date, there is still little empirical research conducted on video gamers that attend various video game events; in particular, the relationship between the consumption of food at video game events. Though it was not the intention of the research to explore the consumption of food amongst video gamers, the subsequent analysis of this data highlighted patterns in relation to the consumption of food amongst male and female gamers at video game events. This paper argues that the consumption of food provided a social significance to connect gamers together through ritual practices, such as eating and drinking together – which little has been explored within games studies.

The Sacred and the Mundane: Video Games in the Convenience Store

Dots, Fruit, Speed and Pills: The Happy Consciousness of Pac-Man

Spanning 30 years and 40 individual videogames across a range of platforms, Pac-Man is one of the most recognizable of all videogame characters and a pop–culture icon. In spite of its widespread popularity, the game receives little sustained academic engagement or analysis. In an attempt to address this, the paper argues that in its classic iterations Pac-Man generates complex notions of space and time which are indicative of changing cultural, ethical and political considerations in wider society. This is explored through recourse to Borges’ work on labyrinths, Bauman’s discussion of the ethical position of videogames, Poole’s rejoinder and Ritzer’s critique of consumerism, ultimately arguing that the dynamics, themes and leitmotifs evident in Pac-Man are experienced by gamers, consumers and citizens described in Marcuse’s One Dimensional Society, whereby the welfare and warfare state coalesce to generate the Happy Consciousness.

“How many headshots you’ve done”: Achievement as discursive practice in videogame play

In this paper I argue that achievement is a significant discourse in practice in videogame use. Drawing from Bauman’s (2001) discussion of an individualised society were progress is episodic and autonomous, and from phenomenological interviews with adult players I discuss how players use videogames to perform progress. The use of games as compensation for an otherwise unsatisfactory life reproduces new forms of progress, but these remain dependent on endless consumption of new technologies. This presents videogames as having a pacifying role that allows players to go on (buying) in the face of persistent failures to experience the progress ‘promised’ by consumer culture.

The Pleasures and Practices of Virtualised Consumption in Digital Spaces

Videogames now enable players to spend virtual fortunes on exotic virtual goods and even create and sell virtual artefacts. Online consumers may also browse endlessly through virtual marketplaces and create and display virtual goods. These virtual commodities are desired and enjoyed as if they were real, but are not actually bought, or owned in a material sense – often resulting in frustration amongst marketers. In this paper we account for virtualised consumption by highlighting its pleasures. We start by historicising the trend towards imaginary consumption practices, depicting virtual consumption as the latest stage in an ongoing transformation of consumption from a focus on utility through to emotional value, sign value and finally playful experience. Viewed from this perspective, we consider the role of emerging virtual consumption spaces as liminoid, transformational play-spaces and explore examples of consumer practices found in these spaces. Ultimately we argue that virtual spaces encourage the development of new consumption practices and therefore constitute the ability of the market to stimulate consumers’ imaginations in new and exciting ways based on digital play.