Matt Keefe

Earl Brooks
4 November 2014

A World at Play: The Effect of Video Games on Modern Culture

Games are providing rewards that reality is not. They are teaching and inspiring and
engaging us in ways that reality is not. They are bringing us together in ways that reality is not
(McGonigal). At first glance, this quote from game designer Jane McGonigal seems rather
overdramatic. Sure, everyone gets a kick out of firing up their Xbox now and again or wasting a
few minutes on the train playing Angry Birds, but the idea that video games are shaping our
culture and the way that we communicate seems absurd. Until, that is, one looks at some of the
statistics and the history pertaining to the video game industry. In 2013, in the US, where 59% of
the population (187 million people) plays video games, the industry brought in more than $21
billion of revenue (Essential Facts), and the total global market is projected to reach upwards of
$80 billion by 2017 (Gaudiosi). Video games are a massively profitable industry and one of very
few economic sectors with consistent high annual growth, but it wasnt always this way. The
history of video games can be captured in moments, brief instants in the lifespan of the industry
that led to the creation of the multibillion dollar industry that dominates entertainment today.
Three moments in particular have contributed to this explosive growth: the creation of the first
home game console, the rise of Nintendo in the 1980s, and the dawn of online and mobile
gaming. These moments have defined the modern video game industry and brought video games
from the greasy, quarter-sucking depths of bars and arcades to their current position in our

culture as a socially acceptable means of telling a story, communicating with others, and, of
course, having fun.
While its hard to define the first true video game, it is commonly accepted that the
very first was a game called Tennis for Two, which featured a 5-inch cathode ray screen and
archaic controllers (The First Video Game?). Tennis for Two was created in 1958, but it wasnt
until 1972 that the true potential of the basic concept of electronic tennis would be realized. The
video game pioneer company Atari released Pong in November of 1972, a game that was
celebrated both for its simplicity and its addictiveness (Lowood). Players were hooked, and the
era of arcade video games was launched. Arcades and the video games that populated them filled
a peculiar niche in American culture from the late 70s to the early 90s. They were a gathering
place for kids and teenagers where quarters were eagerly exchanged for the instant gratification
of seeing the words HIGH SCORE flash across the screen. Though most arcade games were
one-player only, they showcased the fact that video games truly were a social medium that
brought together people of all different backgrounds for the common love of playing games. In
the end, though, the business model proved unsustainable, and arcades were conquered by the
rival that had plagued them since before their inception: home consoles.
In August of 1972, three months before Pong was released, a man named Ralph Baer,
widely recognized as the father of video games, spearheaded the creation and release of the
Magnavox Odyssey home video game console (Pong-Story). Due largely to the limitations of
the available technology, the Odyssey was, at best, a mixed success. It was priced at $100, which
was shockingly expensive to most at the time, and the actual games that were available on the
console were lacking in creativity, polish, and overall level of fun. Despite all of these failings,
though, Magnavox was the first company to compete for the now-coveted living room space and,

through the Odyssey, provided players with the first and only way to enjoy video games from the
comfort of their homes. The Odyssey paved the way for video games for the next several decades
and established a precedent of design and implementation that caused the very first cultural shift
pertaining to video games. Thanks to the Odyssey, the home video game market was blown wide
open. People now had something to do at home other than watching TV or reading a book. The
kid on the block with an Odyssey was the envy of his or her friends and was sure to draw a
crowd whenever the system was turned on. The Odyssey created the culture of home video
games, which would prove to be the major focus for the industry in the coming decades.
Despite all of the excitement surrounding the new home console, though, the Odyssey
and the entire home video game market nearly collapsed just years after the consoles release.
The market was flooded with low quality games that confused the consumers and were
unsatisfactory to play, causing the market to stagnate for years. It seemed that video games may
have just been a fad after all and that there was no future in the industry as people got tired of
playing variations of Pong. Users demanded new products when the companies were not making
any (Vinciguerra). This problem, which first arose in the 1970s, has persisted, and represents one
of the core relationships between gamers and the industry. The public is constantly demanding
new technology, better graphics, and cheaper products, but game developers have almost never
been able to keep up with this unceasing demand. In the end, the Odyssey and its immediate
successors, the Atari consoles, served more as a warning to future developers than as the ideal
example of what video games could accomplish. Nevertheless, their role in the history of video
games is an important one that demonstrated the general concept of the success that the home
console industry could one day hope to achieve. However, it wasnt until the mid-1980s and the

release of the Nintendo Entertainment System that the console market was truly launched into its
modern scale.
The release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) modernized the video game
industry and laid the groundwork for its current status. Nintendo learned from the mistakes of its
rivals, and implemented regulations that have been described as draconian for its game
publishers, ensuring that Nintendo and Nintendo alone would have the final say on what games
were released on its system. The company thoroughly screened all games produced for its
console, enforced regulations related to how many NES games per year a company could release,
and introduced a lock and key method to keep unlicensed games off of its system (the NES
wouldnt play a game unless it contained a secret key code). This tactic proved to be massively
successful, and the NES skyrocketed to new heights, selling seven million units in just 3 years,
an unprecedented amount for the time period (Arsenault). The system was lauded for its
innovations and its high quality games, proving to the world that video games could be a serious
business with a real potential for growth. The prevalence of the NES gave Nintendo almost total
control of the home video game industry for many years, and the golden era of home video
consoles began.
Under Nintendos careful censorship, the video game market was revitalized. After the
markets second crash in the early 80s, it had rebounded to once again become a multi-billion
dollar industry. The NES made video games standard to every home, and the generation that was
born at the same time as the NES now plays more video games than any other group (Essential
Facts). Thanks to the NES, the world began to look at video games in a new light. Blockbuster
series such as Mario and The Legend of Zelda that have united hundreds of millions of people
across the world were born on the NES, and games produced for the NES established a set

format for video games of the future such as control schemes, menu setups, and reward systems.
It was on the NES that modern video games were first introduced, and the importance of the
console cannot be overstated as it relates to video game history.
In 1970, the average American spent just 4.3% of their income on entertainment, but by
1994, after the success of the NES, that number had doubled to 8.6% (Williams). This increase
coincides with the rise of the video game industry and the two are implicitly related. The overall
increase in Americans need for entertainment caused them to seek new modes of recreation, and
many of them found video games as a result. Once people stumbled across video games they
were hooked, and were willing to spend a significant amount of time and money to support their
gaming habits. Part of the reason that video games caught on as much as they did is because they
are truly the only active form of digital entertainment available. When two people sit down on
the couch next to each other to watch a television show, it is completely passive and all they can
do is watch. They can talk about the show, they can look up information about the show, and they
can even reenact the show, film it, and put it up on YouTube. But in the end, they have absolutely
no effect what happens on the screen. A video game is the exact opposite: everything happening
on the screen is being controlled by the players.
It is this level of control and interactivity that makes video games so entertaining, and
also what has made them into a major new art medium. According to author and professor James
Paul Gee, This proactive production by players of story elements, a visual-motoric-auditorydecision-making symphony, and a unique real-virtual story produces a new form of performance
art coproduced by players and game designers it is a form that has the potential to integrate
pleasure, learning, reflection, and expanded living in ways that we expect from art (Gee). It may
be hard to consider Pong or the original Super Mario Bros. as works of art, but as technology has

evolved, so have video games, resulting in masterpieces that combine visual and auditory
aesthetics with story and characterization, all delivered via gameplay mechanisms that allow the
player to call the shots and participate in the creation and execution of the work of art. One of the
most highly-praised games of all time, The Last of Us, which was released in 2013, was
celebrated for its stellar graphics, immersive world, and the riveting and emotional story that
drove the plot of the game. Time even went so far as to hire a war photographer to play the game
and use a mode built into the game to take pictures of various scenes (Gilbertson). In the minds
of many, video games such as The Last of Us are redefining the perception of art and the
capability of video games to make people feel certain emotions and elicit certain responses.
Video games are now yet another way to tell a story alongside books, plays, movies, paintings,
comic books, and other media. Debates still continue in the public as to whether or not video
games can truly be considered art, but as time progresses and video games continue to
improve, their case becomes stronger and stronger. As an interesting note, movies, which have
long been accepted as a valid form of art, have been borrowing from video games for decades as
directors adapt games for the big screen. This trend will continue in upcoming years, as major
production companies and actors are joining projects for adapting such blockbuster hits as The
Last of Us and Assassins Creed.
Beyond simply being a form of art and storytelling, though, video games have had a
significant impact on people, especially children, in this increasingly technological world. For
example, people who are exposed to computers and electronics through video games at a young
age are much more readily able to adopt new technology as it was developed throughout their
lifetimes. According to a study by USC professor Dr. Dmitri Williams, Games functioned as
stepping stones to the more complex and powerful world of home computers (Williams). In

addition, there is a broad market of educational and cooperative video games designed for
younger children. Playing any video games can be beneficial for childhood development:
according to one recent study, children who typically invest less than one-third of their daily
free time showed higher levels of prosocial behavior and life satisfaction and lower levels of
conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems, and emotional symptoms (Shapiro). Learning
to play video games and use technology at a young age has become a standard of socialization
for children that is similar in value and importance to more traditional play outside with friends.
Another significant effect that video games had on American society was that it gave
people a shared experience. Video games introduced a new medium of entertainment that united
the world, and they have continued to do so ever since, especially in todays hyper-connected
society. As of November 2014, there are 279,260 games available for download on Apples App
store (App Store Metrics), and approximately 234,200 games on Googles equivalent, the Play
Store (AppBrain Stats). This staggering amount of video games is available to almost everyone
who owns a smartphone, which, in January 2014, was 58% of American adults, approximately
180 million people without even counting children (Mobile Technology Fact Sheet). Flurry
Analytics, a market research company that harvests mobile app usage data, reports that
smartphone users, who spend an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes on their phones, spend 32%
of that time (about 50 minutes) playing games (Khalaf). After some simple math, all this
information means that in one day, Americans combined spend 151 million hours solely on
mobile video games.
So what do all of these numbers really mean? Simply this: thanks to the development of
mobile gaming, video games have reached a shocking level of popularity, rivaling even that of
television, and are creating one of the largest shared experiences in the entire world. The

hundreds of millions of people who played Angry Birds or Candy Crush were all a part of one
massive community that collectively talked about the game, shared tips on the internet, and
recognized and bought Angry Birds-themed merchandise. Video games are slowly and surely
changing the way that we interact with each other and are unceasingly rising in popularity as a
way to communicate with others. Thanks to the advent of online gaming, a player in America can
start up his or her copy of Call of Duty and instantly find him or herself playing against and
talking to fellow gamers in Japan. Playing video games is no longer just a way for a couple of
bored teenagers to spend a few hours on a Saturday afternoon; it is a massive, multibillion dollar
industry that is connecting the entire world.
However, gaming has evolved even beyond simply connecting two players in an online
lobby and letting them work together or against each other to play a game. It has become so
integrated into the worlds culture that it is defining the way that we interact with each other. In
his documentary How Videogames Changed the World, host Charlie Brooker stated that the most
significant video game in the world is Twitter. Heres how he described Twitter: Twitter is a
massively multiplayer online game in which you choose an interesting avatar and then role play
a persona loosely based on your own attempting to accrue followers by repeatedly pressing
lettered bubbles to form interesting sentences. Brooker is referring to a process called
gamification, which, as he describes it, is nothing more than applying the mechanics of video
games to real life (How Video Games Changed the World). In Space Invaders, people who
shoot the attacking aliens are rewarded with points and power-ups. On social media like Twitter,
Facebook, and Instagram, people who come up with witty posts or take attractive photos are
rewarded not with coins or secret levels, but with likes, retweets, and favorites. Video games

have permeated modern society to such a degree that they have radically affected the way that
billions of people communicate every single day.
Video games have changed. In the 1970s, video games were a novelty, a casual
experience that might take place in someones living room or in an arcade, but not something
that would affect ones life. They were simply a means of enjoying yourself in front of a screen
for an hour or so. Now, forty years later, video games are a key sector of the entertainment
industry that rakes in tens of billions of dollars every year. Video games have spawned a new
form of art and have dramatically affected the way that billions of people around the world
communicate with each other through the gamification of modern society. As technology
continues to rocket forward, the exact future of video games is uncertain; it may take the form of
holograms, virtual reality, or simulations where ones body becomes the controller. But one thing
is for sure: video games, whether we play them or not, have changed us all, and will continue to
do so as long as technology exists. Video games have changed the world, in some ways for the
better and in others for the worse, but in all irreversibly.

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