Personal Review

In my personal opinion, I feel the author effectively used evidence in his argument to convince me that computer games have altered many aspects of our society. Kirkpatrick’s evidence, directly correlated with the evidence found in multiple articles from our reader, which solidified his argument for me. I really enjoyed reading a book about computer games because computer gaming is a prominent part of my life, as my brother is constantly playing them. Growing up in a world of technological advancements, with increased social media and portable electronics, I have noticed the way in which we interact has significantly changed. Instead of playing board games or playing with dolls, young children now turn to their IPads to play virtual dress up or online board games. Teenagers are constantly consumed with video games and mobile phone games, which distract them from schoolwork. Social media, such as, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are now the most prominent means of communication for these teenagers and create virtual communities. 

Although virtual communities may create less face-to-face interactions, there is an argument that these online spheres may actually build stronger communities in a society full of unconscious prejudices about race, class and gender. These online interactions may build better relationships because racial, social and economic standing do not matter as online users are stripped of their physical appearance and the stereotypes and biases that come along with it. However, I see this gaming phenomenon as becoming an obsession, where young teenagers will not be able to go anywhere without their portable electronics. I worry this will lead to a world completely based on online interactions through virtual communities. Young teenagers may grow up not knowing how to interact with their peers, employers and teachers because they are not used to talking face to face. Computer games are extremely entertaining, but our society must monitor how much and where these electronics are used so we can maintain a society based on true relationships.

Social Imaginary

The most important theme of this book is the idea that computer games have changed the sense of self in terms of the  “social Imaginary.” The social imaginary is where we find rules of sense making that we use from day to day and maintain the society we live in. The factors that most affect our specific historical experience of the social imaginary are the communications media through which we share and distribute ideas in a social register, such as, computer games. In turn, these media technologies establish “imagined communities.” Kirkpatrick describes these communities as, “ a place where social activity and interactions take place in imagined spaces they share with others- detached from an actual place” (Kirkpatrick, 2013, p.9).  These communities are part of the network society, where new experiences of space are produced. Computer games allow gamers to, “use technology to re-fashion their immediate environments, infusing them with new symbolic contents and alternative structures” (Kirkpatrick, 2013, p.20); in doing so, it changes society’s way of communicating. 

This new way of communicating is described in Jan van Djiks essay, Social Structures, as he explains that there is a new time-space distantiation. Traditional society is based on direct communication between people, but modern societies, with more technological advancements, widen time and space and detach people from their direct social environment (van Djik, 2010, p. 157).  In these new social spaces, they create virtual communities, which are “associations of people not tied to a specific time, place and physical or material circumstances, but are created in electronic environments with the aid of mediated communications” (van Djik, 2010, p.166). These virtual communities only have one thing in common, which is the interest that brought them together. Overall, the emergence of computer games have change the way in which people interact, as a shift from face-to-face interaction, to online interaction with imagined and virtual communities has occurred.

New Spirit of Capitalism

The industrial revolution created a new spirit of capitalism, where corporate interests lurk behind computer games, so they are used not simply to distract people, but to make them into consumers. Computer games have become mass market commodities central to the global culture industry. Kirkpatrick describes this industry as detrimental because, “individuals are far more dependent on the objects they are involved in. We define ourselves more than ever through our purchases and gadgets” (Kirkpatrick, 2013, p.20). The commercialization or game production leads to a degraded product because computer games have the capacity to be something much better, more beneficial to humanity, but capitalist commercialization inhibits and distorts that potential just to gain more profit. 

For example, Kirkpatrick introduces the example of the Nintendo as a console manufacturer that dominates the global culture industry and uses corporate interests to make people into consumers. He explains that, “Nintendo imposed restrictions on which firms they would allow to make their games for their new console, the Nintendo Entertainment System” (Kirkpatrick, 2013, p. 102), which effectively prevented non-approved developers from gaining access to the console market. In Electronic Frontiers: Branding the “Nintendo Generation,” Stephen Kline introduces Nintendo’s “digital lock-and-key” tactic as he states, “ it was impossible to play cartridges that had not been approved by Nintendo on the NES. Nintendo justified this device as a block to counterfeiters” (Kline, 2013, p111), which effectively enforced Nintendo’s ability to control the software side of the video game business. Nintendo’s use of branding, also explained by Kirkpatrick and Kline, was a way to control consumers because “in truth, mainstream customers like to be ‘owned’- it simplifies buying decisions, improves the quality and lowers the cost of the whole product ownership” (Kline, 2013, p.125). Overall, computer games have created a new spirit of capitalism that has led to more control over consumers in the global culture industry. 

Information Revolution

Part one of this book provides a clearer understanding of the cultural importance of the computer game in the information revolution. Kirkpatrick explains that, “It is claimed that computer games have become culturally mainstream, that everyone plays them regardless of age and gender, and that they are a part of a new social and cultural reality with political import” (Kirkpatrick, 2013, p.9). In the years that computer games have developed, there has been rapid transformation in our society, such as, the emergence of “the information revolution” and “globalization.” 

In The Cosa Nostra of the Data Processing Industry, Nathan Ensmenger explains that the emergence of the “information technology is a revolution that would radically reshape the landscape of the modern corporation, completely reversing the recent trend toward participative management, recentralizing power in the hands of a few top executives, and utterly decimating the ranks of middle management” (Ensmenger, 2010, p. 154). As described in Computer Games and the Social Imaginary, this new form of production makes the labor process more of an adventure and it also places demands on inner resources of each individual employee because “networked organizations rely on people to manage themselves much more than the old hierarchical bureaucracies” (Kirkpatrick, 2013, p. 22). The industrial model of production has given way to this flexible system that is horizontally integrated; instead of being managed from above, workers take responsibility for their own role in creative processes, which makes this work much more creative, but also economically unstable. Overall, computer games have altered the way in which the workforce is managed and how production is run. 

Introduction

In this compelling book, Graeme Kirkpatrick, argues that computer games have fundamentally altered the relation of self and society in the digital age. This book argues that closer attention to games and gaming, adds an important dimension to our understanding of society and contemporary culture.

Tracing the origins of gaming to the revival of play in the 1960’s counter culture, Computer Games and the Social imaginary describes how the energies of that movement transformed computer technology from something ugly and machine-like into a world of color and fun. Computer games have played a central role in the development of the digital technologies that are widely known to have transformed the global economy over the past decades. Computer games were central to the emergence of personal computers, to the diffusion of easy-to-use interfaces on technologies and to the rise of the Internet and naturalizing our experience of ‘virtual’ space.

Gaming is also an important force in fundamental social and cultural processes because the gaming industry has been a leading role in developing new working practices. Computer games have become a driving force behind the “network society” which Jan van Djik states in his text, Social Structure, that the network society eliminates constraints between time and space and connects the public and private spheres of living. “In the network society, new social structures seem to fill the void (depth) of traditional communities and associations that are lost in modern society” (van Djik, 2006, p.156).  Gaming is vital to the applications of technology that have become definitive of the modern organization in networked capitalism and modern consumption. This book describes the ways in which gaming technology, computer design and technology change has shifted the way we think about society.