Table Of Content108982.book Page i Wednesday, April 23, 2003 7:36 PM
digital play
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Digital Play
The Interaction of Technology,
Culture, and Marketing
stephen kline,
nick dyer-witheford,
and greig de peuter
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca
108982.book Page iv Wednesday, April 23, 2003 7:36 PM
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2003
isbn 0-7735-2543-2 (cloth)
isbn 0-7735-2591-2 (paper)
Legal deposit second quarter 2003
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the
Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through
the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided
by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Funding has also been received through sshrc grant no. r2298a04,
The Canadian Video and Computer Game Industry.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also
acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp)
for our publishing activities.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing
in Publication Data
Kline, Stephen
Digital play: the interaction of technology, culture, and marketing /
Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig de Peuter.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-7735-2543-2 (bnd)
isbn 0-7735-2591-2 (pbk)
1. Electronic games industry. 2. Electronic games – Social aspects.
i. Dyer-Witheford, Nick, 1951– ii. de Peuter, Greig, 1974–
iii. Title.
hd9993.e452k58 2003 338.4’77948 c2002-905794-9
Typeset in Sabon 10/12
by Caractéra inc., Quebec City
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Contents
Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
11 Paradox Lost: Faith and Possibility in the “Information Age” 3
part one theoretical trajectories 27
12 Media Analysis in the High-Intensity Marketplace:
The Three Circuits of Interactivity 30
13 An Ideal Commodity? The Interactive Game in Post-Fordist/
Postmodern/Promotional Capitalism 60
part two histories: the making of
a new medium 79
14 Origins of an Industry: Cold Warriors, Hackers, and Suits,
1960–1984 84
15 Electronic Frontiers: Branding the “Nintendo Generation,”
1985–1990 109
16 Mortal Kombats: Console Wars and Computer Revolutions,
1990–1995 128
17 Age of Empires: Sony and Microsoft, 1995–2001 151
18 The New Cyber-City: The Interactive Game Industry in the
New Millennium 169
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vi Contents
part three critical perspectives 193
19 Workers and Warez: Labour and Piracy in the Global Game
Market 197
10 Pocket Monsters: Marketing in the Perpetual Upgrade
Marketplace 218
11 Designing Militarized Masculinity: Violence, Gender, and the Bias
of Game Experience 246
12 Sim Capital 269
Coda Paradox Regained 294
Notes 299
Bibliography 331
Index 357
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Illustrations
tables
1 Genre by Unit Sales, 1998 254
diagrams
1 The Circuit of Capital 51
2 The Three Circuits (a) 51
3 The Three Circuits (b) 52
4 The Three Circuits of Interactivity 53
5 Contradictions in the Three Circuits of Interactivity 54
6 The Three Circuits of Interactivity in the Mediatized Global
Marketplace 58
7 The Interactive Game Industry 172
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108982.book Page ix Wednesday, April 23, 2003 7:36 PM
Acknowledgments
When we first embarked on this project, relatively little scholarly
attention was devoted to computer and video games and the emergence
of an interactive entertainment industry. Yet today this book is part of
a rapidly expanding commentary on the computer and video games
industry, including, among others, Michael Hayes, Stuart Dinsey, and
Nick Parker’s Games War, J.C. Herz’s Joystick Nation, Steven Poole’s
Trigger Happy, Douglas Rushkoff’s Playing the Future, and David
Sheff’s Game Over. We have used their work extensively, but in reading
their accounts, perceived the need for a more critical analysis of this
new medium.
Stephen Kline wishes to thank his children, Daniel Shennen and
Meghan Sarah, for alerting him to the importance of this new medium,
and graduate students Brent de Waal and Jackie Botterill who helped
him transfer his parental concerns about Leisure Suit Larry into a
research program supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada. Diana Ambrozas and Brent Stafford
made important early contributions to the development of this research
project and David Murphy has provided encouragement and technical
support throughout. He also wishes to thank the many colleagues who
have listened with patience and commented generously on various
aspects of this work in progress.
Nick Dyer-Witheford thanks many friends in the Media, Information
and Technoculture program of the Faculty of Information and Media
Studies at the University of Western Ontario for their ongoing support
and inspiration: Bernd Frohmann, Gloria Leckie, and Catherine Ross
for welcoming him to the program that provided an exciting matrix
for work on this book; Carole Farber, Tim Blackmore, and Jacquie
Burkell for collegial exchanges about webs, war, and women online;
and Zena Sharman, David Kinlough, Anthony Martin, Dave Kudirka,
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x Acknowledgments
Edward Fraser, and many other students, undergraduate and graduate,
for discussions of digital play that made teaching truly interactive. He
also thanks his wife Anne, and his daughters, Adrienne and Miranda,
for supporting the toil behind this book and also for not getting too
interested in computer and video games – one of their many shining
examples of autonomy from the compulsions of virtual capitalism.
Greig de Peuter thanks students and faculty in the School of Com-
munication at Simon Fraser University for facilitating an environment
for critical thought. For providing intellectual support and personal
encouragement in equal intensity, Greig extends special thanks to
Albert Banerjee, Mark Coté, David Murphy, and Katharine Perak;
your words were vital in seeing this project through to completion. He
also thanks his partner, Sheila, for her role in moving this project from
the virtual to the actual. Finally, he thanks his parents for buying him
an Atari 2600.
At McGill-Queen’s University Press, we wish to thank Aurèle Parisien,
for his enthusiastic support for the project from the outset. Claire
Gigantes, our copyeditor, has provided the thorough reading that a
multiauthored manuscript requires, and Joan McGilvray has helped
usher the book through the final stages of publication. We would
especially like to express thanks to our two anonymous reviewers for
their insightful remarks and helpful suggestions.
