Video Games - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 32

and Activision , which both have a signifi cantly broader and more diversi-
fi ed portfolio of game titles.
The more burning issue here is, however: how much of the traditional
hardcore subculture approves of this? It doesn't require extensive ethno-
graphical research to conclude that hardcore gamers loathe the casual/
social gaming trends. Using arguments of (low) quality (Groen 2007) and
“dumbing down” (Ahearn 2009) of the game medium, the hardcore gamers
are expressing loudly their strong resentment towards the expansion of the
medium beyond the confi nes of the traditional subculture. Furthermore,
how much of the three-dimensional and technologically advanced tradition
of creating super-high-budget AAA video games from the top ten genre list
can be translated into the two-dimensional smartphone touchscreen world
of Angry Birds ? The traditional game industry was very late in adapting
to the casual/social gaming trends—most of their positions in this mar-
ketspace have been acquired as of late, such as EA's high-profi le US$400
million purchase of free-to-play social networking developer Playfi sh , or
the US$650 million purchase of PopCap Games . Similarly, previous acqui-
sitions of mobile game developer JAMDAT by EA was also driven by its
late-to-the-party paranoia when the mobile gaming trend was all the rage
at the beginning of the 2000s. Mobile gaming with Java-based titles, or
memory card-distributed ditto, never really panned out as a viable mass-
cultural game content strategy. Are we seeing the same this time around
with the social gaming hype—can virtual farming on Facebook become the
way for embracing the global mainstream?
Game Medium—Mass-Cultural Game Aesthetics
How does the game medium change as it is played by millions of non-tra-
ditional gamers? This is one of the most challenging dimensions of the infi -
nite expansion narrative—how does a medium remain loyal to the initial
artistic expression form while embracing signifi cantly larger audiences that
outnumber the early adopters by several tens of times? Does the medium
adapt, rejecting the faithful, or does it continue evolving its own subculture?
By analysing the rise and fall of the comics medium, a cautionary historical
precedence will be compared. History shows how the development of an
artistically innovative new media form of comics was inhibited in its march
to mass-cultural media status by political regulation (Hajdu 2008) but also
by the comics industry's reluctance to adapt the medium to a mass-cultural
audience. Admittedly, the comics medium is, and has been for decades,
in crisis with declining sales (Mackay 2007; Mendryk 2008; Pintor 2009)
and lack of innovative and creative dynamics. Not only are the similarities
between the comics and game medium uncanny in terms of form, content
and narratives with depictions of violence, brutality, bravery and simple
ethical contexts (such as superheroes with epic fi ghts between good and
evil); they also provide a cautionary example of how subcultural media