Video Games as ‘Kid’s’ Toys - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 39

sold in toy departments and Chuck E. Cheese blended video games with
food only a child could enjoy, but Nintendo's marketing campaign ef ec-
tively equated video game players with young children, predominantly boys.
The late 1980s rise of Nintendo “infi ltrated every conceivable market until
the question was not whether Nintendo's invasion would succeed but what
the invaders would leave in their wake.” 3 In his history of Nintendo, David
Shef notes that “many people see the company as an evil force because it
deals in video games, hypnotizers of the youth.” 4 Moral panics surround-
ing new technologies are not exclusive to video games; the introduction of
everything from topics to rock and roll was met with great concern as the
powers that be were shocked at how the new media form shifted society.
In the case of Nintendo, concerns included the amount of time children
spent focused on playing and discussing games, the rise of injuries induced
by playing too much Nintendo, and that addiction to games was creating
a tribe of Nintendo zombies. The importance of children and video games
was recognized by culture at large, but also established through Nintendo's
advertising, which was targeted “almost exclusively to children and teens.” 5
Children were seen as prominent players within the ads and ads ran during
children's programming; Nintendo's target audience was the young.
The original Nintendo generation has grown up, but the company's
focus on children lingers and wordplay can help explicate how the policies
of the past still impact video games. Those who were candidates for “Nin-
tendo zombie” status are now much older and may be working in the game
industry or playing games that are quite dif erent than the ones they played
as children, but social perceptions about video games have not grown up so
easily. 6 Changes in audience, as well as in society more broadly, have cre-
ated a dif erent environment for game design and play, but the previously
established discursive structures linger. Understanding implications of the
previous discussion about children and games requires looking fi rst to the
demographics of game players and then moving to contemporary discourse
about children and video games.
WHO PLAYS GAMES NOW?
Contemporary demographic data on video game players illustrates how
video games are not an exclusive realm for children. For most people that
actively play games, these data and anecdotal evidence to support it are
almost second nature, as 'we' know that it is not just children who play
video games. Even more so, for many gamers, the games that are trotted
out in public as potential threats to children are games older gamers also
believe should not be played by kids. However, any discussion about the
intersection of video games and children requires looking at the various
target markets for video games because plenty has changed from the early
days of Nintendo's focus on the young.