Socializing Gamers - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 28

more interactive session. All three of these notices to the player must be
dismissed with the press of the A button, which means that at least a basic
acknowledgement of what is on the screen must be made. Accompanying
the ef ort to redefi ne who plays and how they play, Wii Sports expresses a
form of socialization based on redefi ning how games are played, predicated
on making players aware of their surroundings and taking breaks to get
away from the game. 22
Unlike Uncharted 2 , Wii Sports of ers a multi-generational, multi-eth-
nic group of men and women playing games predicated on motion, rather
than a graphical fi delity rivaling an action movie. Wii Sports expresses an
aspect of how play can function to redefi ne who plays video games and
how. Wii Sports shifts focus from appearance to the players themselves,
casting a broad net that seeks to include everyone as a potential player.
However, this ef ort is not without cost, as developing a strategy to attract
the “elusive non-gamer” with Wii Sports cost the Wii a core gaming audi-
ence who experienced a short bit of fun with Wii Sports , but then moved
on to games that better suited the more traditional experiences in games
like Uncharted . 23 Although non-gamers are still courted as a key piece of
expanding the market for video games, it is notable that elements of the
commercials for other motion-based, mimetic products featured a broad
invoked audience of players similar to those in Nintendo's ads. Given the
oppositional dynamics of this pair of console games, it is also relevant to
examine how a pair of computer games expresses some of these aspects
of socialization, while they introduce other elements of words, design,
and play.
FRONTIERVILLE AND CITY OF WONDER
As a rapidly growing platform for gaming, Facebook of ers a radically dif er-
ent approach to designing and playing video games. Unlike Uncharted 2 or
Wii Sports , Facebook games are often developed and published independent
from the platform on which they appear. As a result, they pursue substantively
dif erent methods of reaching their audience. Players need not buy a game
console to play these games; they simply need to be a member of Facebook.
These games generally do not have substantial marketing campaigns outside
of Facebook, unlike the television ads that announce the arrival of the most
prominent console titles. However, the most notable dif erence is that these
games are grafted onto a massively popular site that was initially designed as
a social network, a piece of technology intended to foster some sense of con-
nection among people. In addition to the dif erence in the platform for gam-
ing, a brief analysis of the economics of Facebook games enables us to focus
on the key aspects of socialization and the context of gaming in Frontierville
and City of Wonder . Applying wordplay to Frontierville and City of Wonder
shows how the construction of the games is shaped by the location where the