Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade
(Adobe PDF eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Video gaming: it's a boy's world, right? That's what the industry wants us to think. Why and how we came to comply are what Carly A. Kocurek investigates in this provocative consideration of how an industry's craving for respectability hooked up with cultural narratives about technology, masculinity, and youth at the video arcade.
From the dawn of the golden age of video games with the launch of Atari's Pong in 1972, through the industry-wide crash of 1983, to the recent nostalgia-bathed revival of the arcade, Coin-Operated Americans explores the development and implications of the "video gamer" as a cultural identity. This cultural-historical journey takes us to the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, for a close look at the origins of competitive gaming. It immerses us in video gaming's first moral panic, generated by Exidy's Death Race (1976), an unlicensed adaptation of the film Death Race 2000. And it ventures into the realm of video game films such as Tron and WarGames, in which gamers become brilliant, boyish heroes.
Whether conducting a phenomenological tour of a classic arcade or evaluating attempts, then and now, to regulate or eradicate arcades and coin-op video games, Kocurek does more than document the rise and fall of a now-booming industry. Drawing on newspapers, interviews, oral history, films, and television, she examines the factors and incidents that contributed to the widespread view of video gaming as an enclave for young men and boys.
A case study of this once emergent and now revived medium became the presumed enclave of boys and young men, Coin-Operated Americans is history that holds valuable lessons for contemporary culture as we struggle to address pervasive sexism in the domain of video games—and in the digital working world beyond.
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Carly A. Kocurek. (2015). Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade. University of Minnesota Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Carly A. Kocurek. 2015. Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood At the Video Game Arcade. University of Minnesota Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Carly A. Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood At the Video Game Arcade. University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
MLA Citation (style guide)Carly A. Kocurek. Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood At the Video Game Arcade. University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
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Video gaming: it's a boy's world, right? That's what the industry wants us to think. Why and how we came to comply are what Carly A. Kocurek investigates in this provocative consideration of how an industry's craving for respectability hooked up with cultural narratives about technology, masculinity, and youth at the video arcade.
From the dawn of the golden age of video games with the launch of Atari's Pong in 1972, through the industry-wide crash of 1983, to the recent nostalgia-bathed revival of the arcade, Coin-Operated Americans explores the development and implications of the "video gamer" as a cultural identity. This cultural-historical journey takes us to the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, for a close look at the origins of competitive gaming. It immerses us in video gaming's first moral panic, generated by Exidy's Death Race (1976), an unlicensed adaptation of the film Death Race 2000. And it ventures into the realm of video game films such as Tron and WarGames, in which gamers become brilliant, boyish heroes.
Whether conducting a phenomenological tour of a classic arcade or evaluating attempts, then and now, to regulate or eradicate arcades and coin-op video games, Kocurek does more than document the rise and fall of a now-booming industry. Drawing on newspapers, interviews, oral history, films, and television, she examines the factors and incidents that contributed to the widespread view of video gaming as an enclave for young men and boys.
A case study of this once emergent and now revived medium became the presumed enclave of boys and young men, Coin-Operated Americans is history that holds valuable lessons for contemporary culture as we struggle to address pervasive sexism in the domain of video games—and in the digital working world beyond.
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September 15, 2015
Kocurek (director, digital humanities, Illinois Inst. of Technology) brings us a case study of the coin-operated video game era, stretching from the launch of Pong in 1972 to the industry crash in 1983. It traces the emergence of the term gamer as an identity and examines the cultural, political, and economic strains surrounding key periods in the industry's earliest days. Drawing on press coverage, narrative media, trade journals, oral histories, and marketing and advertising, Kocurek ties the pressures of the moment to the gaming's efforts at gaining respectability. Her research reveals the industry's portrayal of gamers as "idealized visions of youth, masculinity, [and] violence," a collection of traits Kocurek calls "technomasculine." She also leads a phenomenological tour of the arcades of the late 1970s and early 1980s, deconstructs "world record culture," documents the rise of violence in video games, shows how moralists fought the business, analyzes the portrayal of gamers in film, looks at why arcades have made a comeback, and more. VERDICT An excellent study of the early history of the video game industry and how it came to define the gamer as male.--Paul Stenis, Pepperdine Univ. Lib., Malibu, CA
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Video gaming: it's a boy's world, right? That's what the industry wants us to think. Why and how we came to comply are what Carly A. Kocurek investigates in this provocative consideration of how an industry's craving for respectability hooked up with cultural narratives about technology, masculinity, and youth at the video arcade.
From the dawn of the golden age of video games with the launch of Atari's Pong in 1972, through the industry-wide crash of 1983, to the recent nostalgia-bathed revival of the arcade, Coin-Operated Americans explores the development and implications of the "video gamer" as a cultural identity. This cultural-historical journey takes us to the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, for a close look at the origins of competitive gaming. It immerses us in video gaming's first moral panic, generated by Exidy's Death Race (1976), an unlicensed adaptation of the film Death Race 2000. And it ventures into the realm of video...
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Microcosmic Arcade: Playing at the Cultural Vanguard
2. Gaming's Gold Medalists: Twin Galaxies and the Rush to Competitive Gaming
3. Adapting Violence: Death Race and the History of Gaming Moral Panic
4. Anarchy in the Arcade: Regulating Coin-Op Video Games
5. Play Saves the Day: TRON, WarGames, and the Gamer as Protagonist
6. The Arcade Is Dead, Long Live the Arcade: Nostalgia in an Era of Ubiquitous Computing
7. The Future Is Now: Changes in Gaming Culture
Notes
Bibliography
Index- bisacCodes
- code: COM079000
- description: Computers / Social Aspects / General
- code: COM080000
- description: Computers / History
- code: HIS054000
- description: History / Social History
