TEXTBOOK: Ch. 9: Video Games:

53

53% feel video games help them connect with friends; 42% say games help them spend time with family.

*Third-party publishers*

Nintendo's cartridge-based Game Boy Advance, multimedia DSi (released in 2009), and glasses-free 3-D, Internet-capable 3DS (2011) have dominated handheld devices. Sony countered with PlayStation Portable (2004), offering Internet access for multiplayer gaming, and Wi-Fi -capable PlayStation Vita (2012), boasting the power and graphics of a console and video streaming. But note that all these consoles and handhelds were released in relatively rapid succession. Why? Because hardware makers are struggling to recapture players' loyalty as gamers increasingly abandon consoles and handhelds for smartphones and tablets. Thus, in addition to the frequent upgrades of their mobile devices, all 3 manufacturers introduced powerful new consoles in 2013 and 2014 and then very quickly introduced even more powerful devices. Sony's PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro, introduced in 2016, let players broadcast their games in real time to the Internet, encouraging friends to join in. Its PlayStation Suite offers an array of games that can be played across consoles, handhelds, tablets, and smartphones. Microsoft's Xbox One S, also released in 2016, while maintaining Kinect's features, is a home entertainment hub, integrating gaming, television, the Internet, and movie and music streaming services. When joined with its SmartGlass application, players' tablets become second game and video screens. Nintendo's Switch, released in 2017, is a fully Internet-capable hybrid console/handheld device that can also play cartridge games. Their dominance in hardware provides Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony with more than sales revenue. *___________________________*, companies that create games for existing systems, naturally want their best games on the most popular systems. And just as naturally, better games attract more buyers to the systems that support them. Third-party publishers produce their most popular titles for all systems. For example, Activision's "Call of Duty" is available for all consoles and Macs and PCs; the hugely popular "Madden NFL", which sells more than 5 million copies a year, and the "MVP Baseball" series come from EA Sports; "Metal Gear" is from Konami; "Tony Hawk" is from Activision; "Elder Scrolls" is from Bethesda Softworks; and "Batman" is from Warner Bros. Interactive. Conversely, Codemaster's "MTV Music Generator" is available only for PlayStation and Xbox, and several third-party publishers produce Wii-only software - for example, Ubisoft and EA's Headgate division. Console makers do produce their own titles. Nintendo has the "Pokemon", " Super Mario," and "Pikmin" series. sony publishes the "Gran Turismo" line, and Microsoft offers titles such as "XNS Sports" and "Halo". Concentration exists in the game software business just as it does on the hardware side. Atari owns several game makers, including Infogrames, and EA controls nearly 50% of all video-game sales. In mid-2011 EA further increased it's dominance of the content side of the industry with its purchase of casual game developer PopCap, source of some of the most popular free online games such as "Bejeweled" and Plants vs. Zombies". In an effort to counter this trend, however, a number of websites for independent game designers has sprung up. Most notable is Humble Indie Bundle. Small developers who cannot afford to distribute and market their games on the scale of the big companies upload their games to its website. Interested players can buy them free of copy- and other theft-protection so that they can be shared with other gamers. The games are designed for all platforms and, once bundled with other games, are for sale at whatever price a buyer wishes to pay, with a portion of the proceeds going to charity. In its first 2 years o operation it earned more than $11 million for the site operators, game designers, and charities, and "PC Gamer" magazine named the Humble Indie Bundle its 2011 community hero for its support of the indie game development market.

*LANs (local area networks)* *first-person perspective game*

Arcade games, handheld systems, and home game consoles were joined by personal computer games, beginning with the 1987 release of NEC's hybrid PC/console in Japan. With games being played on microprocessor-based consoles, producing them for microprocessor-based PCs was a simple matter. By the early 1990s, CD-ROM-based computer games were common and successful. "Doom" (1993) and "Myst" (1994) were among the first big personal computer game hits. "Doom" hinted at a development soon to come in games because it could be played over *_________________________________* of computers, typically in a single building; that is, it was an interactive game played by several peopler over a computer network. It was also the first *_______________________________* as well as the first-person shooter game; gamers "carried" the weapon, and all action in the game was seen through their eyes.

*exergame* *gamification*

Using Media to Make a Difference: Using Games for Good: The video-game industry has reached a level of legitimacy and respectability equal to that of other mass media. Now it is being asked the same questions regarding content as the older media are: What is the impact on kids? What regulations should be imposed? How is the medium used? And just as important, how can we use the medium to make a positive difference? Game industry professionals, social scientists, educators, and parents regularly examine this last question. Their efforts focus on the use of games for policy change, training, and learning. Their products include initiatives such as Cisco Systems' "Peter Packet Game and Challenges," designed to confront poverty, and the work of nonprofit Global Kids Inc., which has teamed with organizations such as Lego, Microsoft, and PBS in an effort to encourage kids to create their own educational video games. Persuasive Games is yet another example of a provider building electronic games designed for instruction and activism, as is P.O.V. Interactive, which uses interactive games in coordination with PBS documentaries to explore environmental and other issues. The National Academy of Sciences is funding game development by the Federation of American Scientists, designed to build enthusiasm for science as a discipline and a career. One of the most successful games-for-good efforts is Games for Health, a community of game developers, researchers, and health care and medical professionals who maintain an ongoing "best-practices" conversation-online and in annual conferences-to share information about the impact existing and original games can have on health care and policy. Japanese game maker Konami's "Dance Dance Revolution," for example, is an existing *__________________* that invites people to exercise while they play. Players follow cascading arrows on a video screen, mimicking their movements on a large footpad attached by a cable to a game console. Sony and Nike teamed up to produce another beneficial exergame, *"EyeToy Kinetic," that encourages users to kickboxing, practice yoga, or engage in a number of other physical activities in a variety of simulated environments. Other existing games - just about anything played on a handheld console - are frequently used to reduce children's anxiety before anesthesia, dialysis, or chemotherapy. Research has shown that time on a portable game relaxes preoperative children even more than their parents do. New games, too, are developed specifically to meet people's health needs. They are particularly effective in matters of health because of their interactivity. "One of the great strengths of video games is that automatically a player goes into a game expecting to have some agency [control]," wrote Amy Green, one of the developers of "That Dragon, Cancer," a game designed to aid people dealing with a family member's cancer. For example, Nintendo's "GlucoBoy" and "Dr. Mario" help children and other patients manage their own diabetic needs. Another games-for-good practitioner, Games for Change, joined forces with the Half the Sky Movement, a global effort to reduce oppression and build opportunity for poor women, to bring "Half the Sky Movement: The Game" to Facebook. Players take on virtual tasks such as collecting books for young girls in Kenya. Their in-game success leads to real-world payoff; for example, collecting enough books unlocks a donation of actual books to a nonprofit that brings improved literacy and gender equality to developing countries. These efforts are examples of *________________________* of society, using video-game skills and conventions to solve real-world problems in medicine, health, policy, personal responsibility, and in fact, any issue that humans face. In this sense, gamification is the ultimate use fo games for good.

*virtual worlds games*

30 million people worldwide play these *______________________*< and one, the hugely popular "World of Warcraft," has more than 12 million subscribers.

*advergames*

Advergaming: Product placement in games has proven so successful that, in many instances, brands have become the games themselves in *__________________*. Brand-specific game websites are sometimes downloadable and sometimes played online, and many brands offer mobile app versions of their games. Their goal is to produce sand enjoyable experience for players while introducing them to the product and product information. Chipotle's "The Scarecrow", a free iPhone game app is designed to deliver the message that the chain uses only natural products, is a well-known award-winning effort. Using the Tic Tac game on your smartphone, you can design your own dispenser, and you can play Kia's automotive game to win free test drives in real life (and of course, become a hot lead for the car dealers). "Uber Drive" gives you the thrill of being a virtual Uber driver, but the game's true intent is to recruit you to work for the company, as you can fill out your application from inside the game. Cable television's Hallmark Channel goes in even another direction, establishing its own game set, "Fun & Games" which offers scores of games, all conveniently designed to promote its basic cable programming.

*advocacy games*

Advocacy Gaming: Companies or organizations wanting to get their noncommercial messages out turn to *_________________*, primarily on the Web and for mobile devices. Many national political candidates are "supported" by advocacy games. You can still play the arcade game "Obama Race for the White House", or you might prefer to fight "big money, special interests, fat cats, and mudslingers" on Vermont senator Bernie Sanders's "Bernie Arcade." Dr. Ian Bogost, who created the genre with his 2004 release of the "Howard Dean for Iowa Game", said "I didn't;t get into game because I wanted to reach a demographic. I did it because I think games can communicate political concepts and processes better than other forums." Supporters of political advocacy games see 3 significant strengths. First, the games are relatively inexpensive. A good political game can be created in a few weeks for about $20,000, well under the cost of television time. Second, like other advergame, they are sticky, and the message is reinforced with each play (broadcast ads are fleeting). Finally, they are interactive, making them a powerful means of communicating with potential voters, especially younger ones. More traditional forms of advocacy messaging, such as radio and television ads and campaign fliers, passively engage voters with their campaign rhetoric. But games encourage potential voters to interact with the message.

*sticky*

Different titles attract different demographics - "Mortal Combat" and "Grand Theft Auto" draw different players than do "Spider-Man" and "Viva Piñata". Another reason advertisers are attracted to online games is that they are *_____________*. Players tend to stay (stick) with a game site longer than with other websites. Players don't just "visit" sites so much as they seek them out to stay and play a while. Sponsors - and the games they advertise on - hope to monetize this attention. Regardless of the platform, industry research indicates the average console or online gamers spends 2 to 4 hours playing a single game in a single sitting. Sponsors use games to reach their targets in 4 ways - product placement, freemium games, advergaming, and advocacy gaming.

*freemium games*

Freemium Games: Even more deeply integrating products into games are *_______________________*, in which consuming advertising or even spending actual cash allows players to progress in their play. Freemiums happen in a number of ways. In some games, in exchange for watching a commercial, players can obtain virtual goods, like weapons or armor, rather than work to earn the credits necessary to buy them (this is the most popular form of freemium reward). In others, choosing to use a brand-name product imbues players with special in-game attributes unavailable to players content with generic products. There is a third form of freemium games in which players can spend actual money in order to advance. A game like "World of Warriors," for example, has energy metes; when players run out of energy-giving food or elixirs, they must recharge their depleted energy levels to continue their quest to vanquish the Skull Amy. There are 3 primary ways to do this: wait, barter for energy with in-game earned crystals, or buy it with actual cash. Spending real-world money is the least favored from of freemium activity.

*massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMOs)

Home computer users, able to interact with other gamers for decades via MUDs, have been joined by console players in flocking to *__________________________________________* such as "Ultima Online," "World of Warcraft", "EverQuest," and "Second Life."

*casual games*

Much, if not most, of today's mobile gaming takes the form of *____________________* - classic games such as card games (poker, cribbage, solitaire), table games (checkers, pools), matching games, and word and trivia games. Casual matching game "Candy Crush Saga" has been downloaded more than half a billion times and has more than 400 million regular monthly users. Globally, there are 1.9 billion mobile casual game players. More than half of all Americans ages 13 and older, nearly 70% of the country's smartphone owners, play casual games on their mobile devices, the majority of whose (63%) are female.

*virtual reality games*

Players' comfort with technology has also been a factor behind the early growth of *___________________________*, which through the use of a headset generate realistic images, sounds, and other sensations that replicate an actual or imaginary environment, simulate players' physical presence there, and make it possible for them to interact with the space. Sony offers PlayStation VR, and Microsoft has Scorpio, an enhanced version of its Xbox One. Virtual Reality gaming generated more than $5 billion in hardware and software revenues in 2016, and industry research indicates that a majority of gamers are not only familiar with VR, but that they intend to play games on this new technology.

*LED (light-emitting diode)*; LCD (light-crystal display)*

Rapid-Fire Developments: What followed, partly as a result of the swift advance of the microchip and computer industries (and a healthy dose of technological genius from a thriving game industry in Japan), was a rapid-fire succession of innovation and development. In 1975 Atari, by marketing "Home Pong" through Sears, made its first steps toward bringing arcade games into the home. Its 1890 release of home "Space Invaders" cemented the trend. Also in 1975, Midway began importing "Gunfight" from Japanese manufacturer Taito. "Gunfight" was significant for 2 reasons. Although Sega, with "Periscope," began importing arcade games into the United States in 1966, "Gunfight" was the first imported video game. It was also the first game to use a computer microprocessor. In 1976, Fairchild Camera and Instrument introduced "Channel F", the first programmable, cartridge-based home game. Mattel Toys brought true electronic games to handheld devices in 1977, with titles like "Missile Attack," "Auto Race," and "Football," played on handheld, calculator-sized *___________________________*, and *______________________________*, screens. In 1979 Milton Bradley released Microvision, the first programmable handheld game system. 2 Japanese arcade imports, Namco's "Pac-man" in 1980 and Nintendo's "Donkey Kong" in 1981, became instant classics, all-time best sellers, and with the introduction of Nintendo's groundbreaking game console NES in 1985, home-version successes. The Japanese company further advanced gaming with its 1986 release of home console game "Legend of Zelda," revolutionary because it introduced open structure play - that is, players could go wherever they wanted and there were multiple routes to winning, now standard in modern games.

*e-sports*

Scope and Nature of the Video-Game Industry: Players in the United States spend more than $16.5 billion a year on game content, another $4.9 billion on hardware, and $2.1 billion more on accessories. Globally, gaming is a $100 billion-a-year industry, overshadowing all other forms of entertainment. A championship video-game tournament can easily draw 70,000 live spectators, and more than 70 million people across the globe watch high-level game play on the Internet - as many as 8 million at the same time - an audience sufficiently large to encourage Amazon to buy Twitch, a game streaming site with 9.7 million active daily viewers who watch on average 106 minutes a day. Several college sports conferences, for example, the Big Ten, sanction intercollegiate *________________* streamed online game competition. Half of YouTube's top 100 channels are gaming-focused, as is every one of its top 10 ("Most Popular", 2016). "Grand Theft Auto V" made $1 billion in 3 days in 2013, 14 days faster than it took the film "The Avengers" to reach the same goal; it earned $800 million in its first day, selling 16.5 million units, both records.

*video game* *MUD (multiuser dimension)*

What Is a Video Game?: As technologies converge, the same game can be played on an increasing number fo platforms. "Myst", for example, was originally a computer game written for Macintosh computers, then IBM PCs, then external CD-ROM drives, and then video-game consoles such as PlayStation. Now it can be played online. Versions of "Donkey Kong" can be played in arcades and on consoles, on the Internet, on Macs and PCs, and on handheld game consoles. "Q*bert" can be played on arcade machines and on collectible Nelsonic game wrist watches. Thousands of games can be played on smartphones and tablets. For our purposes, then, a game is a *_______________* when the action of the game takes place interactively onscreen. By this definition, an online text-based game such as a *_______________________________*, which has no moving images (games like 1977's "Zork" and 2016's "Azereth"), is a video game, but the home version of "Trivial Pursuit," employing a DVD to offer video hints to those playing the board game, is not.