Video game culture

Template:Current-GCOTW Computer and video game culture is a form of new media culture that has been influenced by computer and video games. As computer and video games have increased exponentially in popularity over time, they have caused significant impact upon popular culture. This form of entertainment has spawned many fads. Video game culture has evolved in time, particulary in connection with internet culture. Today, one can see the impact of computer and video games in politics, television, popular music, and Hollywood.

Demographics

Historical

Today

The average age for a video game player is about 30^[1], a number slowly increasing as people that were kids playing the first arcade, console and home computer games, continue playing now on current systems^[2]. The gender distribution of gamers is reaching equilibrium, according to a 2003 study showing that 57% of gamers are male and 43% female^[1].

Online gaming

Online gaming has drastically increased the scope and size of gaming culture, although this has much to do with the usage of the internet itself as a communication medium. Online gaming grew out of games on Bulletin Board systems and on college mainframes from the 1970s and 1980s. MUDs offered multiplayer competition and cooperation but on a scope more geographically limited than on the internet. The internet allowed gamers from all over the world - not just within one country or state - to play games together with ease.

One of the most important titles in the history of online gaming is Quake, which offered the ability to play with sixteen, and eventually up to thirty-two players simultaneously in a 3D world. Gamers quickly began to establish their own organized groups, called clans. Clans established their own identities, their own marketing, their own form of internal organization, and even their own looks. Many clans created their own skins or even mods to supplement their own particular visions. Some clans had friendly or hostile rivalries, and there were often clans who were allied with other clans. Clan interaction took place on both professionaly set competition events, and during normal casual playing where several members of one clan would play on a public server. Clans would often do their recruiting this way; by noticing the best players on a particular server, they would send invitations for that player to either try out or accept membership in the clan.

From Quake, gaming grew beyond first-person shooters and has impacted every genre. Real-time strategy, racing games, card games, sports games can all be played online. Online gaming has spread from its initial computer roots to console gaming as well. Today, every major video game console available offers degrees of online gaming, some limited by particular titles, some (like the Xbox 360) offer up whole virtual communities.

Competition

Slang and terminology

Certain words and phrases have been invented by, or have become popular with, the gaming community as a whole. However, gaming slang and terminology has much in common with internet slang. Some are used to describe gaming events, games themselves, or aspects of games. Many games, especially online games, have their communities create neologisms to refer to specific events, situations, actions, or people in the games. Notable recent examples include Diablospeak and the phrase "Aggro" from World of Warcraft. Other notable terms include:

LAN party
Leet – A pseudo language, with its own unique system of grammar, multiple systems of spelling, and unique words.
Newbie
Headshot
Gibs
Frag

Massively-multiplayer online gaming

Massively-multiplayer online gaming today has become ubiqitiuous in the computer gaming realm. Titles like World of Warcraft and EverQuest II have millions of players. Within this population base, gamers are divided into servers of tens of thousands of people, often called realms. The importance this virtual world has is highly varied among gamers. Some gamers spend as much free time as possible, while others play much more casually. Massively multiplayer online games have become so important that virtual economies have sprung up that allow players to pay real money for virtual property and items. One game, Second Life, has its entire focus on the usage of real-life currency for everything in the game world. Some gamers actually make a decent living, "farming" items and selling them on auction sites, like eBay.

Academic studies on Social Interaction in Online Gaming

Gaming and popular culture

Advertising

Games are also advertised on different TV channels, depending on the age demographic they are targeting. Games targeted toward younger kids are advertised on Nickelodeon, while games targeted toward teenagers and adults are advertised on MTV and G4.

Gaming as portrayed by the media

Throughout the 1970s through even the 1990s, video game playing was mostly seen as sub-culture hobby activity and as a subsistute for physical sports. However, during several times in its early history, video gaming caught the attention of the mainstream news outlets. In 1978, Pong become the first video game pop-culture phenom. This was followed by Pac-Man in 1981.

As games became realistic, issues of questionable content arose. The most notable early example is NARC, which through its use of digitized graphics and sound and its adult-oriented theme quickly become a target by the press. These same issues arose again when Mortal Kombat had debuted, particulary its home video game console release on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo systems. In response to to these issues (and also in parallel to similar demands made upon the music and movie industries), the ESRB was established to help guide parents in their purchasing decisions. 1994's Doom caused quite a stir, with its detailed 3D graphics and plentiful use of blood and gore. The 1998 Columbine shootings were for a time directly blamed for the incident by being labeled "murder simulators" and have since been consistantly linked with the tragedy.

In 2001, Grand Theft Auto III was released, which started the controversy over again. The main issue was that the graphics had advanced much, which made the game seem to have a greater potential impact.

Today, video gaming is viewed as a serious industry, comparable to the movie industry or the music industry. News outlets cover video game console releases in the same manner as they cover the release of a highly-anticipated movie.

Television channels

The first video game TV show was GamePro TV.

The first televison channel dedicated to video gaming and culture, G4, was launched in 2002. However, over the years, the channel has moved away from video game shows, and more towards male-oriented programs. X-Play, one of the channel's most popular shows and the highest rated video game review show, is still produced at G4.

There are also video game shows that appear on other channels, such as Spike TV and MTV.

Influences on music

Video game music has been utilized in many ways. The earliest example is Buckner & Garcia's Pac-Man Fever released in 1982. This album featured songs that were both about famous arcade games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Berzerk and also used the sound samples from the games themselves as instrumentation.

Aphex Twin, an experimental electronic artist, under the name "PowerPill" released the Pacman ep in 1992 that featured a heavy use of Pac-man sound effects. An entire music genre called chiptunes or sometimes gamewave have artists dedicated to using the synthesizer sets that came with past video game consoles and computers, particularly the Commodore 64 and the Nintendo Entertainment System. These bands include Mr. Pacman, 8 Bit Weapon, Goto 80, 50 Hertz and Puss. Moreover, many gamers collect and listen to video game music, ripped from the games themselves. This music is known by its file extension and includes such formats as: SID (Commodore 64), NSF (NES) and SPC (SNES). Cover bands like Minibosses have been founded recently that peform instrumentations.

Full orchestras, such as the Symphonic Game Music Concert tour North America, the United States, and Asia performing symphonic versions of video game songs, particularly the Final Fantasy series, the Metal Gear series, and Nintendo themed music, such as the Mario & Zelda Big Band Live Concert.

See: Nobuo Uematsu, Rob Hubbard, Category:Computer and video game music composers, Bitpop

Video games and hip-hop

File:50centbp 02.jpg

Screenshot from 50 Cent: Bulletproof

Video game references are frequent on hip-hop songs. For example, Busta Rhyme's radio edit versions of his songs often utilize video-game sound effects, particularly ones from Defender. Highly sucessful rapper Notorious BIG included in his mega-hit Juicy the line: "Super Nintendo Sega Genesis/When I was dead broke I could never picture this". Lil' Flip's 2003 hit single "Game Over", featured a music beat from Pac-Man.

Rap music, like many music styles, is often featured in video games. Many titles, such as the Grand Theft Auto and Madden Football series, and Need For Speed: Most Wanted (the latter ones from EA), include rap as part of the tracks selected for in-game music. Rappers have been also featured in several video games: extreme examples are Def Jam Vendetta and Def Jam Fight for New York, with a whole slew of artists to play as. Individual contributions include Snoop Dogg -- who created exclusive music track for Gran Turismo 3 -- featured in True Crime: Streets of LA as a secret character, and 50 Cent, with his own game called 50 Cent: Bulletproof. In the light of Grand Theft Auto III, the urban warfare genre has arisen. Many of its titles, such as 25 to Life often deal with urban violence settings and gang culture, the same subject matter of gangster rap, which is pre-eminent today.

Video game & Movie crossovers

Movies based on video games

As video games often have settings, characters, and deep plots, they have often become the basis for Hollywood movies. The first movie based upon a video game is 1991's universally panned Super Mario Bros., featuring John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper. However, most of the movies released that are based upon video games have often been universally panned by critics, especially the movies created by Uwe Boll. The contributing factors to the unucessful transition from home television to theatre screens are attributed to are: a dramatic re-envisioning of the video game that provides a disconnect from the game's plot, the game itself not having a plot rich enough to provide a decent script (particularly with versus fighting games), a substantially altered plot to make the movie more "mainstream" (Doom), emphasis on using celebrity actors over storytelling.^{[citation needed]}

Examples: Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, BloodRayne, Doom, House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil

Movies about video games

Hollywood has also created movies that are about video games themselves. However, there are notably fewer examples. Some movies come close to discussing video games, but with a more fantisful approach, such as 1996's Virtuosity. The first film of this kind is 1982's WarGames, which is about a fictional compouter game called Global ThermoNuclear War. 1989's The Wizard, staring Fred Savage is the first movie about a real video game. The plot revolves around about adolescents who compete at games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. This movie is also notable as it was a the first look at the mega-hit Super Mario Bros. 3. The most current example of a movie of this type is 2006's Stay Alive, a horror movie about a next-generation video game that is so realistic that it kills its players.

Interactive movies

Interactive movies as a comptuer and video game genre was the result of the multimedia expansion of computers and video game consoles in the mid 1990s, primarily because of the increased capacity offered by the CD-ROM format. Interactive movies started out on personal computers but quickly expanded to video game consoles such as the Sega CD, the Phillips CD-i and the Panasonic 3DO. The games are characterized by more emphasis on cinematic sequences, using full-motion video and voice acting. Interactive movie games have been made in a number of genres, including adventure games, rail shooters, and role-playing games.

Notable examples – Bioforge, Night Trap, Sewer Shark, Under a Killing Moon, Rebel Assault

Gaming and drug culture

Outlets

Fan fiction

Console fanboyism

Web comics

The most notable and popular webcomics include:

Web blogs

Gaming news sites have long been a central point for discussion and dissemination of gaming news, whether its realted to upcoming games, current games, patches, tournaments, equipment and so on. Notable sites include:

Blue's News – One of the oldest gaming websites, started in 1996 for the Quake community.
Joystiq
Kotaku

Forums

There are many Internet forums in which aspects of a number of computer and video games are discussed, sometimes to great depth. Most often, these forums are outlets of popular web destinations that focus on gaming. The most popular of which include: