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Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
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Claiming a Stake in the Videogame

What Grown-Ups Say to Rationalize and Normalize Gaming

Helen Thornham

City University, UK, helen.thornham.1{at}city.ac.uk

This article explores the rationalizations and normalizations adult gamers offer in their justifications of both gaming 'itself', and the possession of a videogame console. While there has been a proliferation in research on the videogame recently in terms of what Kerr et al. describe as the 'productive use of new media' (in their 2006 article 'New Media — New Pleasures?' p. 64), which includes issues relating to gender, pleasure, production and gameplay as well as more ethnographic research relating to young people and games, there has been a significant gap in research around adult gamers. This article is the result of four years' ethnographic research, which followed 11 participant gaming households (along with the questionnaire of over 100 respondents), recording, interviewing and observing them prior to, during and after gameplay. Included in this demographic are all-female and all-male households, mixed gender, sexuality and ethnicity, and diverse geographical intake from Northern Ireland to southern England. Throughout my research and this article, I argue the political and social necessity of including gamers and their discourses into research on gaming in order to better understand the significance of gaming and gaming discourses on our social and political lives.

Key Words: adulthood • discourse • play • pleasure • social gaming

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Vol. 15, No. 2, 141-159 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1354856508101580
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