The Formation of Gaming Culture: UK Gaming Magazines, 1981–1995

150 Pages·2015·1.897 MB·English

by  Graeme Kirkpatrick (auth.)

The Formation of Gaming Culture:
UK Gaming Magazines, 1981–1995
DOI: 10.1057/9781137305107.0001
Previously published by the author
AESTHETIC THEORY AND THE VIDEO GAME (2011)
COMPUTER GAMES AND THE SOCIAL IMAGINARY (2013)
DOI: 10.1057/9781137305107.0001
The Formation of
Gaming Culture:
UK Gaming Magazines,
1981–1995
Graeme Kirkpatrick
University of Skövde, Sweden
DOI: 10.1057/9781137305107.0001
© Graeme Kirkpatrick 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-30509-1
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saff ron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Th e author has asserted his right to be identifi ed as the author of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fift h Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978-1-137-30510-7 PDF
ISBN: 978-1-349-45470-9
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
www.palgrave.com/pivot
doi: 10.1057/9781137305107
Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 Approaching Video Game History 5
1.1 Context: UK computers in the 1980s 7
1.2 Indeterminacy and the magazines 11
1.3 ‘Born twice’: the analogy with
cinema 16
1.4 Field, habitus, illusio 18
2 S tudying the Magazines 27
2.1 Th e magazines 28
2.2 Themes and counts 32
2.3 L imitations 40
3 Getting a Feel for the Games 42
3.1 Magazines and gaming culture 44
3.2 Shaping perceptions: games from
software 48
3.3 The terms of game appraisal 54
3.4 G amer habitus and the authentic
gamer identity 67
4 Game Addicted Freaks 73
Introduction 74
4.1 Children, adults, gamers 77
4.2 Afflictions of our times 84
4.3 The limits of play 91
4.4 Gaming: oddly normal 97
DOI: 10.1057/9781137305107.0001 v
vi Contents
5 Wimps, YOBs and Game Busters 101
5.1 Diversity and sexism in early games 105
5.2 Gendered articulation of gaming discourse 111
5.3 Gamer performance as male prowess 118
Conclusion: Gaming Culture and Game Studies 125
References 131
Name Index 137
Subject Index 138
DOI: 10.1057/9781137305107.0001
List of Figures
1.1 Advertisement for Electronics and Computing
magazine, which appeared in gaming
oriented magazines in 1985 15
2.1 Cover of the first dedicated gaming
magazine, Computer and Video Games
November 1981 29
3.1 Zzap! presents its readers with a glossary of
terms used in articles and reviews in the
magazine 49
3.2 Criteria used in Zzap! 1985–6. The game
reviewed here was International Basketball
by Commodore 56
3.3 Changes to evaluative criteria 1983–6 63
4.1 Advert for ‘Audiogenic’ software company 78
4.2 Advert for Chromasonic Personal Computers 85
4.3 Results of content analysis counting
occurrences of ‘addiction’; metaphors invoking
drug abuse and altered mental states;
educational benefits of computer use, and
references to bodily harm associated with
excessive use, 1983–91 88
4.4 Ad recruiting ‘hacker’ programmers to
make games 94
4.5 CVG announces the closure of the ‘microsell’
section, a regular feature of the magazine 96
5.1 Advert for The Naughty One, Sphinx Games
1982 106
5.2 Count of statements that are reflective on
gender; exclusionary of females; apply
DOI: 10.1057/9781137305107.0002 vii
viii List of Figures
normative standard of masculinity to gamer
performance in the magazines, 1983–9 114
5.3 A dvert for ‘Mr T’ software 115
5.4 ‘Sadie’s high scores’ first appearance 121
C.1 Diagrammatic representation of constitutive tensions
of gaming’s field 127
DOI: 10.1057/9781137305107.0002
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the work
of Stephen Stuttard, who has performed a valuable service
for the scholarly community by scanning complete back
issues of the magazines in the study. I am also grateful to
Roger Kean and Oliver Frey of Newsfield publications,
who kindly gave me permission to use images from the
magazines in what follows.
Figure 4.3 previously appeared in the journal New Media
& Society and is reproduced here by their kind permission.
Writing this book has been mostly quite a solitary endeav-
our but I have been greatly encouraged by conversations
with some wonderful people and without them writing it
would have been much more difficult, if not impossible.
Helen Kennedy inspires me every time we get to talk, which
doesn’t happen often enough. Jonas Linderoth, Velli-Matti
Karluhahti, Maria B. Garda, Feng Zhu, Melanie Swalwell
and Olli Tapio Leino encouraged me to develop, improve
and sharpen my arguments and I am grateful to them.
Ashley Brown kept going on about normativity until finally
I paid attention – I hope she is satisfied with the result. Paul
Brown’s childhood stories of game piracy were on my mind
during the writing of Chapter 4. He, Cheryl Martens and
Theodor Araby-Kirkpatrick helped with ‘inter-coder reli-
ability’ and each made important and useful comments on
the research design, for which I am grateful.
I owe thanks to my father Jonty Kirkpatrick for buying
me my first computer and for plenty of other things as
well. Finally, thanks to Sarah Carling who has to put up
with me the most when I’m writing yet always manages to
find the right words at the right time.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137305107.0003 ix