Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World

20 Playing the GamePerformance in Digital Game Audiences

20 Playing the Game Performance in Digital Game Audiences Garry Crawford and Jason Rutter Research into audiences and their engagement with cultural texts has often followed a trajectory established by Morley (1980), Hobson (1982), Radway (1984), Ang (1985), and Hermes (1995), namely, an emphasis on the consumption of routine—if not mundane—texts in everyday, often domestic, environments. Its sizable contribution to cultural studies has, in no small part, been the means by which this emphasis has opened up the study of the rich variety of practices, knowledge, and discourses that audience members bring to their involvement with everyday cultural texts. Conversely, the research trope that appears to be developing around much of the study of digital games has emphasized the spectacular (e.g. King & Krzywinska 2002), the out-of-the-ordinary (e.g. Kennedy 2002), the place of digital games in a canon of “art” (e.g. Jenkins 2005a), or possible links to aggressive and violent behavior (see Bryce & Rutter 2006). This chapter explores the validity of such assumptions by situating digital gaming within a broader socially situated context. We provide a brief introduction to the consideration of digital gaming and gamers as an audience and argue that the literature on media audiences and fans provides useful theoretical tools for understanding the use of digital gaming in patterns of everyday life. In particular it is argued that the concept of “performance” allows parallels to be drawn between the literatures on gaming and on fans/audiences, which allows for an understanding of how game-related performances and interactions can extend beyond the game interface. Furthermore, we suggest that the inclusion of gaming within 271 debates on audiences and fans can expand our understanding of audience engagement with “texts.” Digital Gaming Though the origins of digital gaming can be traced back to the 1950s, it was not until the late 1970s and 1980s that digital gaming began to develop as a leisure industry. It was during this period that arcade games such as Pong, Asteroids, Pac Man, and Space Invaders were first produced, along with machines designed for the home, such as the Video Computer System (VCS) from Atari, Nintendo’s Famicom, the Vic-20, and Commodore 64, along with various (often unlicensed) clones of Atari’s Pong. Today, entertainment software and digital gaming are a major international leisure industry worth in excess of $21 billion (ELSPA 2005). The largest entertainment software market is the United States, where in 2003 continuing growth made the games industry worth in excess of $7 billion (ESA 2004). However (contrary to popular belief), digital gaming is not restricted to male adolescents. The North American–based Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA 2002) suggests that 55 percent of regular console gamers and 60 percent of computer gamers are over the age of thirty-five. While digital gaming is by no means a level playing field when it comes to gender (Bryce & Rutter 2003; Crawford & Gosling 2005), Fromme’s (2003) study of over a thousand German school children suggests that almost a third of girls claimed to “regularly” play digital games (55.7 percent of boys), with only 2.2 percent of the children surveyed having never played a digital game. Although access and experience related to digital gaming vary across demographics, digital gaming has developed into a common leisure practice for a wide range of individuals. Given the increased popularity of games, it is reasonable to question what the everyday practices are that have become established and associated with being a digital game player. Digital Gamers: Players or Audience? The textual (often narratological) emphasis commonly evident in work on digital games along with a focus on the disruptive possibilities of games 272 s h i f t i n g c o n t e x t s , c h a n g i n g f a n c u lt u r e s technologies has meant that rather than being understood as an “audience ,” much of the literature on gaming continues to situate gamers as individual players. Despite notable contributions to the understanding of gaming as a social and situated practice (such as Schott & Horrel 2000; Yates & Littleton 2001), there remain often implicit assumptions about digital gaming and the engagement with a certain piece of technology. These are often encoded in a range of metaphors, from “immersion” (Murray 2001), “being there” (Newman 2004), and “relationship” (Aarseth 1997) to more almost-symbiotic approaches...