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Pressing Questions of the Information Age: 21 Apr 2005
Game not over, game just beginning: A look at digital gaming
Beth Kolko
Associate Professor, UW Technical Communication
In the matter of computer games, it's not just game not over; in fact, the game is just starting. Computer games are no longer confined to the recreational ghetto of the information technology world, and this talk addresses the larger scope of computer games-facts, fictions, and myths-in order to provide an overview of the impact games are having outside of the entertainment industry. Games are played on PCs, on consoles, on cell phones, on PDAs, and sometimes fax machines or via email. There are complex, immersive games like Everquest that bring hundreds of thousands of players together in a parallel universe; there are games like Solitaire that bring the joys of task-avoidance to hundreds of thousands of office workers each day; there are games like Counterstrike that simultaneously teach players about violence, target practice, and the importance of team collaboration; there are games like Zoo Tycoon that are used for formal and informal learning; and there is a soon-to-be-released game that is designed to teach human rights activists how to overthrow their governments. There are games played by women in their 40s and games played by men in their 20s (in terms of overall numbers, those populations come very close to one another as components of the game market). There are games used as a supplement to the traditional advertising industry, and there are games that seep into the player's everyday world by phoning or faxing out of the blue. But what all these elements of the game industry have in common is that they provide a more complex picture of gaming than conventional wisdom would have us believe, and each presents its own compelling reason for turning a more critical eye on a rapidly expanding segment of the computer industry.
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