Walkthrough: videogames and technocultural form - Seth Giddings

Figure 5: Myst (1993)
Yet even discourses that are sympathetic to the possibilities of popular computer media tend to
downplay or exclude the videogame and videogame culture. No doubt factors such as the age and generation
of new media researchers as well as their cultural preferences are factors in this marginalisation: the
videogame can be an awkward and intimidating medium to study for those who have not grown up with
them. Uniquely among popular screen media the videogame (like other types of game or sport) requires a
certain level of physical skill, technical know-how and experience before the potential scholar can even
engage with it as a form. It is perhaps for this reason that, when games are mentioned, the example given is
often Myst (Brøderbund 1993), a game that relies more on cerebral puzzle-solving and sedate exploration
than hand-eye co-ordination or quick reflexes (Miles 1999, Bolter and Grusin 1999, Dewdney & Boyd 1995,
Flynn 2000, Manovich 1998).
However there are other – systemic or ideological – reasons for the sidelining or demonisation of
videogames within new media studies. Key discourses within new media studies are profoundly suspicious of
popular, commercial and commodified versions of digital media and information technologies. As has
already been noted, popular discourses of childhood and computer technology often ambivalent about ICT
and games in particular. Green, Reid and Bigum (1998) explore this rhetoric: it is sometimes celebratory (for
example Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Nintendo generation’), sometimes anxious (the ‘aliens in the classroom’) (Green,
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