Information, Communication & Society 6:4 2003 523–550

THE VIDEO GAME LIGHTNING ROD

Constructions of a new media technology,

1970–2000

Dmitri Williams
University of Michigan, USA

Abstract
New media technologies have long tapped into social hopes and anxieties, and
the turmoil that follows their appearance offers a window into the social
tensions of the time. Clashing sets of utopian and dystopian visions have typically
resulted in an ambivalent portrayal of such technologies. Video games prove
to be no exception. Through a content analysis of media frames in the USA’s
three leading news magazines, the reception and presentation of video-game
technology was tracked over a thirty-year period, 1970–2000. The resulting
patterns tell a story of vilification and partial redemption, owing to the main-
stream acceptance of the medium and the aging user base. Fears of the negative
effects from the new technology were hypothesized to come from a routine
set of conservative worries. The results support this hypothesis. Moreover, the
frames surrounding games, especially in the 1980s, reveal many of the key
social tensions of the times, primarily those surrounding gender roles, the
separation of age and racial groups, and the role of female parents within an
increasingly technological society. The place of video games within the larger
context of media history, and the social causes of the frames are discussed.

Keywords
Video games, media frames, media history, content analysis,
frame analysis

INTRODUCTION

By any benchmark, video games are now a highly popular and profitable medium
in the USA. But with the exception of violence effects studies on children, and
some recent work on gender and identity in gaming, the video-game industry –
which in 1999 equalled motion pictures in domestic revenues (Graser 2000) –
remains largely ignored by communication studies scholars. Studies by histor-
ians and sociologists are also notably absent. To date, the only historical accounts
of video games have come from journalists and hobbyists (Herman 1997; Sheff
Information, Communication & Society
ISSN 1369-118X print/ISSN 1468-4462 online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
[Link]
DOI: 10.1080/1369118032000163240
 DMITRI WILLIAMS

1999; Kent 2000; Poole 2000) and focus on industrial history. Beyond the
details of corporate practices lies an undiscovered social history and a story
of vilification and redemption that echoes that of many earlier new media
technologies.
One key component of such a history is an understanding of how this new
technology was represented in the popular consciousness. Games, like most
new media technologies that preceded them, have been touchstones for a vast
array of social hopes and fears. Their initial foray into the public spotlight seems
at first to be a confusing amalgam of ambivalence, but, as deconstructed here,
it illustrates the simultaneous utopian and dystopian visions that typify a new
medium. Understanding these representations tells us not just about the
particular technology in question, but about how we look at all new media
technologies. And, as a touchstone for social issues, representations of the
nascent medium provide a window to view the socio-political climate. If the
tabula rasa of the new technology is quickly covered by social anxieties and
aspirations, we can learn much by looking at those coverings. In the case of
video games, the framing of the new medium was powerfully affected by a new
conservative movement, by emerging tensions over families, and by the blurring
of age and gender boundaries over the past thirty years (Meyrowitz 1985).
Ignoring these social factors, or pretending that they are not there, limits our
ability to understand new media clearly. Instead, this article unpacks those
social influences, tracks them in media coverage over time, and places the
resulting patterns in the context of media studies and the socio-political moment
in which they occurred.

NEW MEDIA IN THE SPOTLIGHT

The story of how games emerged, were quickly vilified and then earned some
measure of redemption is part of a larger history of new media technologies.
Previous media have encountered a consistent series of utopian and dystopian
reactions to new technologies, often simultaneously. Over several cases, we
have begun to see consistent patterns in these reactions. One commonality has
been that in each case, the technologies tapped into tensions particular to the
era. For the nickelodeon, it was powerful class tensions that even erupted into
riots in major cities (Gabler 1999). For the telephone, it was dramatic changes
in lifestyle and social activity (Fischer 1992). For both film and television, it
was fears about delinquent children (Lowery and DeFluer 1995). For radio, it
was a major change in attitudes about race and sexuality (Douglas 1999).
Starting with film, each case lead to a major series of social science-based media
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studies to determine what effect the newfangled technology was having on the
unsuspecting populace, most frequently on children (Lowery and DeFluer
1995). Video games were no different.
Another pattern has been the ambivalence reflected by simultaneous utopian
and dystopian visions. On the utopian side, new media technologies have been
seen as a way to transcend nature, add convenience to daily life and spread
egalitarian, democratic values in a kind of software and hardware socialism –
all classes and groups are equally empowered by the new technology (Czitrom
1982) in a ‘global village’ (McLuhan 1964). Even cultural critics have seen the
utopian potential in what they consider the most ideological and degraded
media (Jameson 1979). On the dystopian side, new media are suspected to be
morally bankrupt, poisonous to participation in a democratic society, and to
have created new stresses and inequalities that had not existed before (Neuman
1991).
The questions here, then, are what fears and hopes the advent of video games
tapped in to, and what representations of games can tell us about the time in
which they emerged. While there is no theory about the hopes and aspirations
that new media systematically arouse, there is guidance on the negative side of
the ledger. According to Wartella and Reeves (1983, 1985), media coverage
and subsequent research has followed a three-wave pattern. First, fears emerge
out of concern that the new medium might be displacing a more ‘constructive’
activity, ironically often the use of a previously feared medium (Wartella and
Reeves 1983). Then fears of health effects appear, followed by fears of social ills.
Another complementary theory suggests that there is a conservative political
component to these fears, especially the ones about negative displacement of
children’s time. Ofstein (1991) has described this kind of thinking as the ‘River
City’ effect, referring to the fictitious townsfolk of River City in the musical
The Music Man. As this thinking goes, if children weren’t wasting their time
with the useless new medium, they would be doing something more valuable,
like reading classic literature.

SETTING THE HISTORICAL TABLE

Before engaging in an analysis of video games, it is helpful to have a basic

understanding of that industry’s major events over the last thirty years, and a
socio-political backdrop. A quick summary of the industry might proceed as
follows.
Video games burst onto the mainstream American scene in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, endured a spectacular crash, and then re-emerged to become
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a mainstream media industry in the late 1980s and beyond (Herman 1997;
Kent 2000; Williams 2002). Certainly, these facts are the backbone of a video-
game history, and it is tempting to stop there – the emergence and diffusion
of video-game technology are merely a series of business successes and failures,
and the result of the inevitability of an innovative technology to penetrate the
mass audience.
However, this would be a mistake because new technologies do not emerge
from, or into, vacuums. A numbers-only analysis ignores the importance of
social and cultural factors in understanding technological diffusion. Technolo-
gies emerge the way they do because of their specific historical contexts, and
they succeed or fail in large part due to those same contexts (Pinch and Bijker
1999). Culture, power, class, gender and identity are as important as gears,
3D accelerators and distribution channels in understanding the emergence
of new technologies, and in understanding how they are perceived by their
contemporaries. Cowan (1999) points out that the diffusions of new technol-
ogies are fundamentally sociological in character, and any worthwhile history
will incorporate social factors.
Certainly, one of the major instruments in the diffusion of knowledge about
new technologies is the news media. An examination of the portrayal of a new
technology should tell us what its public image was. But the media portrayal
of reality and reality itself are often different. Media theorists have long been
aware of the ways in which news media can affect the portrayal of the news,
and a rich literature suggests that we should consider the gate-keeping functions
(McQuail 1994) of media elites (Lichter et al. 1986) and the practices and
characteristics of the writers themselves (Schudson 1978; Gans 1980; Hall
2000) as important influences in the dissemination of news.
Although the news media present facts and events in a particular way as both
natural and as common sense, we cannot take this depiction of the world for
granted (Gitlin 1980). Gitlin demonstrated that media frames organize the world
for journalists and audiences. Frames are ‘persistent patterns of cognition,
interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion, by
which symbol-handlers routinely organize discourse’ (Gitlin 1980: 7). In look-
ing at how something is presented to us – in this case, the portrayal of video
games – we must ask ‘What is the frame here?’ and ‘Why this one and not
another?’ Frame analysis helps illustrate the power of reporters to promote
a particular problem, causal interpretation, moral evaluation or treatment
recommendation (Entman 1993). The portrayal of science and technology is
especially subject to media framing because audiences must rely on experts and
journalists to make sense of new, and sometimes confusing, information (Nelkin
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1987). Nelkin notes that technology reporting is also particularly sensitive to

issues of power and social norms.
Clearly then, a frame-based analysis calls for contextualization. What were
the major social, cultural and demographic changes that occurred in the period
in which games emerged, sank and re-emerged? In the years 1970–2000,
there were several major shifts worth noting in recreation, demographics, the
composition of families and in mainstream political thought. In the USA, a
large number of women entered the work force, creating new time pressures
in exchange for income. For families of all descriptions time became scarcer,
while disposable income for leisure increased. This combination impacted leis-
ure activities, which became ‘intense, frenzied, and compressed instead of
evenly metered throughout the year’ (Vogel 2001: 8). In 1970, Americans
spent 5.97 per cent of their disposable income on leisure, and, by 1999, 8.22
per cent (Vogel 2001). Cohorts also play a role. Demographically and politically,
the last third of the twentieth century was dominated by the Baby Boom
generation, and that group’s children entered adolescence in the 1980s and
1990s. These younger cohorts, sometimes labelled as Generations ‘X’ and ‘Y,’
have now reached maturity and exhibit leisure preferences different than the
Baby Boom generation, particularly in their use of technology.
At the same time as these population trends were evolving, dramatic changes
were taking place in the role of the family and in American politics. Even as
economic and social conditions had begun to change what ‘family’ meant, the
very notion of family continued to be an epicentre for political and cultural
struggle. Divorce and remarriage, and new non-traditional forms of family
challenged traditional, previously fixed concepts as promoted in official dis-
courses and in media representations (Chambers 2001). And yet, at the same
time, the 1981 Reagan revolution marked a key historical moment when
conservative forces swept to power in American politics. In a shift away from
the progressive politics and gains in the women’s movement in the 1970s
(Wandersee 1988), conservatives questioned the morality of non-traditional
family types, and called for a return to earlier times. News media increasingly
served as a conduit for anti-feminist, and often anti-mother, rhetoric in the
1980s (Faludi 1991), and, despite real gender progress in news rooms, journal-
ism continued to be a profession dominated by men (Byerly 1999).
As a direct result, fears and anxieties about parentless children, irresponsible
single mothers and a general decline in moral and family values permeated
socio-cultural debate. Also, the emergence of other forms of electronic media –
cable, VCRs, the home computer – gave rise to a new wave of fears about the
influence of mass media.
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In sum, games emerged to find a public eager for entertainment, but also
one struggling with social changes and particularly anxious about families and
children. With this context in place, and with an eye to the patterns of the
past, here are the hypotheses for the study:

Ω H1, The ‘River City’ Hypothesis. The advent of a new medium will first give
rise to fears of displacement of ‘constructive’ activities and of associations
with deviant behaviour.

Ω H2 , The Fear Order Hypothesis. With the advent of video games, news frames
involving children will occur in the following order: fears of destructive
displacement of worthwhile activities (H1); fears of negative health effects;
and, then, fears about the effects of content on values, attitudes and
behaviour.

In following Cowan’s advice about the sociological aspects of technological

diffusion, the study explored the following research questions:

Ω R1 : What stages does video-game coverage go through generally?

Ω R2 : What gender frames are presented by news media in the coverage?
Ω R3 : What age frames are presented by news media in the coverage?
Ω R4 : What other media frames occur systematically in news coverage?

METHOD

The method used was a combination of Gitlin’s qualitative frame analysis with
the more systematic aspects of standard quantitative content analysis. First,
analytical categories and frame types consistent with the hypotheses and
research questions were generated by reading through a sample of the news
media coverage of video games. The frame categories covered (1) measures of
the industry’s maturation and legitimacy as a real business; (2) the gender and
age identity of game players; and (3) utopian and dystopian visions. These
frames were then included on coding sheets and counted in the sample by two
coders. As an example, two of the frames described in more detail below
involve age and gender. An article from 1981 entitled ‘Invasion of the Video
Creatures’ (Langway 1990) featured pictures of young boys and an older man
playing an action game in an arcade, accompanied by text describing the way
both adults and children have come to enjoy the then-new fad. The coders
independently found that this particular article framed gameplay as both a
child and adult phenomenon, but that for gender, only males were shown
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or mentioned playing the games, and thus only the male gender frame was
recorded.1
The sample was drawn from the USA’s three most widely circulated news
magazines, Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report. News magazines convey
information and imagery ‘generally consistent’ with other vehicles of popular
culture (Nelkin 1987).2 For the years 1970–2000, all articles from the three
news magazines cited in the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature under the
following keywords were included in the analysis: video games, electronic
games (until the mid-1980s), computer games, Atari, Nintendo, CD-Rom
games, interactive multiplayer, Sega, PlayStation, Dreamcast.3 The sample con-
tained 119 articles, and each was read twice for coding and once for a qualitative
analysis. Scott’s pi (Scott 1955) intercoder reliability scores for the coding were
satisfactorily above the generally accepted standard (Wimmer and Dominick
1997): Of the thirty-one variables coded, the mean pi was 0.82, and the median
value was 0.80 (see Appendix for all scores).

RESULTS

This section will address the research questions and hypotheses by explaining
the individual frames in detail, providing examples of them from the sample,
and showing their patterns in time series graphs. These patterns are then
deconstructed.

The general evolution of coverage

R 1: W h a t s t a g e s d i d v i d e o - g a m e c o v e r a g e g o t h r o u g h
generally?

The data in figure 1 are based on the total number of frames present per
year in the coverage. This is a proxy for how much the topic was generally in
the public eye. As one might expect, total coverage grew with, dropped off
with and re-emerged with the financial success of video games. In the last
few years, game coverage has grown substantially and remained consistent,
indicating that it is becoming a more commonplace element of the general
culture.
More specifically, three frames demonstrated the presence of video games
as a mainstream medium (see Figure 2). These three frames are coverage of
designers or producers as auteurs, a ‘games as artistic’ frame and a ‘technical
quality’ frame. An index of these frames suggests how seriously the new medium
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Figure 1 Total frames, 1970–2000.

is regarded as a legitimate business and a part of culture. A passing fad such as

the Pet Rock would not be likely to register these frames, whereas more
accepted and mainstream media like movies or books would.
Coverage of video games as a mature, mainstream medium grew steadily
after the second resurgence of the late 1980s, and video games now enjoy
coverage approaching that of motion pictures in news magazines. Over time,

Figure 2 Maturation index.

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the coverage moved from thin accounts of a faddish new toy to more analytical
and respectful accounts of games as the artistic creations of technically savvy
designers. But even with this growing respect, cultural critics still suggest that
games are incapable of creating artistic experience in the way movies can (Kroll
2000).

Identity frames: gender

R2: What gender frames are presented by news media in

the coverage?

The two genders were framed differently in video-game coverage. Differences

were framed primarily as the result of biology, but this was awkward cover for
a consistent pattern of male technocratic privilege that manifested in frames
ranging from light-hearted jokes about the difference between the sexes to
more serious lashing out at women. Numerically, games were framed strongly
as the province of males until the mid-1990s, when several articles covered the
rise in women players (see Figure 3). However, the numbers are, in general,
too low for conclusions and, in articles where no gender was mentioned,
maleness typically operated as the invisible norm.
General stereotypes about males and females took on the theme of the
nursery rhyme that asks: ‘What are little boys and girls made of ?’ The answer
for boys is ‘snakes, snails and puppy dog tails’, and for girls ‘sugar, spice and

Figure 3 Who are games ‘for’? Gender.

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everything nice’. In this vein, gender differences were consistently stated or

assumed to be biological. Males – primarily male children in the coverage –
were framed as the primary users for video games and as inherently aggressive,
competitive and brutal by nature. The games themselves were also consistently
coded as male. Although gender was absent in the first few stories about video
games, it did not take long for a male frame to emerge. By 1976, a headline
dubbed the new phenomenon ‘Jocktronics’ (‘TV’s New Superhit: Jocktronics’
1976). Twenty years later, this style of headline persisted, for example ‘Boys
and Their Toys’ (Thomas 1996a). By the early 1980s, this male-centric framing
of the technology had taken on a frame of biological determinism. The snakes,
snails and puppy dog tails were implied to be natural ingredients, the results
of which were hopelessly violent boys. This frame was repeated frequently
during the 1980s and 1990s: ‘Nintendo speaks to something primal and powerful
in their bloody-minded little psyches, the warrior instinct that in another culture
would have sent them out on the hunt or the warpath’ (Adler et al. 1989,
emphases added); For boys, the games satisfy a ‘basic urge’ (Quittner 1998,
emphases added); ‘Unlike young girls, who seem to be able to take video games
or leave them, boys tend to be drawn into the games at a deep, primal level’
(Elmer-DeWitt 1993a, emphases added). Boys, unlike girls, were also
described as preferring repetition and less cognitive effort in their video games
(Thomas 1996b), and in being concerned with games of reflex and skill rather
than intelligence and strategy.
This biological determinism was frequently combined with a hypodermic-
needle media-effects frame; the violent-by-nature boys were framed as espe-
cially susceptible to the negative media effects that plague society in general:
‘It is a madness that – like most – strikes hardest at adolescent boys and their
young brothers’ (Adler et al. 1989).
Early on, while video games were being constructed as the province of men,
women were described as sources of strife and contention in coverage that
clearly framed men as technophiles and women as ignorant obstacles. Consider
the decidedly unsubtle tone of this 1982 feature article:

Women, especially if they are wives, generally resent the games, and quite often regard them
with outright loathing. . . . Ear-weary males, their backs welted with wifely sarcasm, may
grumble that women are afraid to look foolish in public, or that they simply do not know
how to play. . . . They say that women view the games as black holes, soaking up male
attention, and that even liberated wives are made nervous when their male protectors act
like little boys.
(Skow 1982)

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Figure 4 Website advertisement, 1999. Source: NextGeneration.

A recent advertisement (figure 4) blends the male-centric viewpoint with the

image of a beautiful woman trying unsuccessfully to seduce her man away from
his game-playing machine. In the advert, the woman is simultaneously an
obstacle on the road to technological mastery, a sex object, and uninterested
in technology herself. Coverage of technology and video games was so male-
centric that maleness became an invisible baseline; when female video-game
use was discussed, it was nearly always in comparison to male use.
In contrast to the male frames, females were decidedly more filled with
sugar, spice and intelligence, but often with a lack of interest in technology.
For example: ‘Girls rarely seem to have either the chance or inclination to get
plugged in’, and said one father trying to buy games for his daughter ‘ ‘‘Anytime
I brought home another game, she just wasn’t interested’’ ’ (Greenwald 1996:
49). However, positive female frames emerged in the mid-1990s as female
game developers and users sought and gained exposure. Biology was less overt
in female framing, but still present. Stereotypes of adolescent girls fixated on
boys and shopping persisted. Girls were also depicted as decidedly social in
their game use, whereas boys were framed as isolated: ‘These games, unlike
the single-player games targeted at boys, are designed for crowding around the
computer and playing as a group’ (Thomas 1996b). Such statements simply
ignore the long history of multi-player games, dating back to the original Pong.
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Identity frames: age

R 3: W h a t a g e f r a m e s a r e p r e s e n t e d b y n e w s m e d i a i n t h e
coverage?

The social construction of age in gaming can be examined for both adults and
children, defined here as high-school age or younger. The media construction
of adult use was marked heavily by social norms that the writers implied about
the acceptability of adult video-game use. This construction began to change
in the 1990s as Generation X entered early adulthood. Media constructions of
children’s game use centred entirely on media effects and social status.
The popular conception of game use as a purely child-centric phenomenon
is a media construction that did not emerge until well after games had entered
the popular consciousness, and home games became widespread. This is not
surprising since the initial video-game boom occurred in adult spaces such as
bars and nightclubs. It was not until home units first gained widespread popular-
ity in 1981 and 1982 that adults suddenly began to be framed as shameful or
deviant in their game use, and it was not until the late 1990s that this frame
began to dissipate.
Adults, not children, made the first games popular (Kent 2000), and the
initial coverage treated the phenomenon as a social fad. For the most part,
coverage of game users was stories of professional workers seeking escape from
the daily grind: ‘For a mere quarter, Asteroids will turn an unassuming cost
accountant into the commander of an embattled spaceship’ (‘The Asteroids are
Coming’ 1981: 62). This frame was reinforced by some game advertising.
Figure 5 shows an advertisement from 1982 that was clearly targeted at the
upscale adult audience. The central figure is a professional who enjoys playing
video games, especially as a way to relax after a day at the office. The ad
copy reads:

After treating patients all day, Dr. Grayson puts down his stethoscope, picks up his
LIGHTSABER and prepares to do battle with anyone who’s up to the challenge. Maybe some
day you’ll be good enough to be called a JEDI MASTER too.

But by the end of 1981 and early 1982, these adults began to be framed as
ashamed of their gameplay. A Time article provides an example by framing an
attorney who plays games as shamed by his habit: ‘I’d really rather you didn’t
use my name. This is my secret place. It would drive my wife crazy. I really
don’t come here very often’ (Skow 1982: 53). Through a series of similar
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Figure 5 Parker Brothers’ ‘Jedi Arena’ advertisement. Source: Newsweek.

articles, it quickly became clear that adults were no longer permitted Jedi
training (see Figure 6).
Throughout the 1980s, and less so recently, there was a prevalent ‘adults
aren’t able to understand games’ frame, reinforcing games as the exclusive
province of children, and adult play as deviant: ‘The kids get it right away.
Nobody has to tell a 10-year-old boy what’s so great about video games. . . .
Grownups, as a rule, don’t get it’ (Elmer-DeWitt 1993a: 67). And grown-ups
were framed as unable to play games with the same skill as minors: ‘Aptitude,
however, seems to decrease with age’ (Langway 1981: 91).
But, where adults were framed as furtively hiding their illicit habits in the
1980s, adults in the 1990s were seemingly able to come out of the video-games
closet. This trend was probably reinforced by a transition within news magazines
to younger writers for the video-games beat. Even while some older players
were still framed as hanging on to their childhood longer than they should –
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Figure 6 Who are games ‘for’? Age.

’The Dad-needs-a-sports car syndrome has hit the desktop’ (Thomas 1996a) –
many writers began actively to resist this frame, especially for young adults.
First was the acknowledgement in the late 1990s that adults once again found
games pleasurable. Gradually, fewer articles (by percentage of total articles in
a year) mentioned the age of users at all, a sign that game use is no longer as
age coded as it was previously.

Figure 7 Effects reporting by Age.

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As with what age games are ‘for’, the framing around the effects of games
shifted in 1981 (see Figure 7). Before the shift, children were shown either
enjoying a new pastime or experiencing an improvement in social status. Ini-
tially, this was a gain in status for disenfranchised minors. An early story
featured a homeless boy in Times Square able to find validation through his
gameplay: ‘This is my world – it stinks, don’t it? When you start to think
you’re a loser, you come here and get 4,000 at Space Invaders, and you ain’t a
loser anymore’ (Langway 1981: 91). Later stories focused on the high status
of ace players, but, with the vilification of arcades, the ace gave way to the
‘computer nerd’ stereotype or the awkward boy who turned to machines
because he was unable to connect with other human beings. With later accept-
ance of gaming, such frames decreased.

Utopian and dystopian frames: general patterns

Two patterns emerged from a general view of utopian and dystopian media
frames. First, the appearance of frames followed the success of video games
with waves of coverage occurring around the home boom of 1981–1982, the
Nintendo re-emergence of 1988 and the PlayStation/Nintendo 64 boom of the
mid-/late 1990s. Second, as will be explained below, the particular kinds of
utopian and dystopian frames appeared in distinct phases.

Utopian frames: two waves

The first wave of utopian frames occurred primarily in the 1980s, and func-
tioned as reactive, defensive frames. If, as Wartella and Reeves (1983, 1985)
hypothesized, initial fears of new media centre around negative displacement
and health risks, the utopian frames here seem primarily to be reactive counter-
measures. Instead of keeping children out of school, games were framed as
keeping them out of trouble. Instead of promoting violence, they were providing
a cathartic release valve, etc. By contrast, the second wave of utopian frames
is pro-active, simply celebrating the positive aspects that games bring to society,
including enjoyment, intelligence and familiarity with computers.

Wave I. The four first-wave frames identified here are games as a way to
improve skills, as cathartic, as educational and as a way to keep kids out of
trouble (see Figure 8).
The ‘physical skill’ frame focused on the hand-eye coordination and spatial
abilities presumed by some writers to be a benefit of games. Ace gamers
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Figure 8 Utopian Wave I.

described their learning curves and fellow players spoke of how valuable hand-
eye motor skills were.
The ‘violence as catharsis’ frame was common in the initial stories, most
typically in reference to professional men who used games as an outlet for job
stress or boredom, or to exhibit some kind of control they were denied at
work. ‘You go back to the office more relaxed, partly because you have been
able to control something. It’s either this or the psychiatrist’ (‘The Asteroids
are Coming’ 1981: 63).
The ‘games as educational’ frame occurred frequently in coverage, but was
rarely discussed in depth. Another aspect of this frame was the level of activity
players had compared with their assumedly passive television-viewing
counterparts.
Lastly, ‘games as good displacement’ was a common early frame that spoke
directly to fears about control, space, and the role of parents as supervisors.
Employed as a direct counter to River City-type fears about truancy, this early
frame stressed that children in arcades were off the streets and not getting into
real trouble. Moreover, arcades were initially framed as socially quite positive
before their coverage became significantly negative in 1981 and 1982. Prior to
this period, arcades were framed entirely as places of safety, positive socializa-
tion and even racial harmony: ‘Look at all these people together – blacks,
whites, Puerto Ricans, Chinese. This is probably the one place in Boston where
there are not hassles about race’ (Langway 1981: 91).
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Figure 9 Utopian Wave II.

Wave II. In contrast with the first wave of utopian frames, which defensively
sought to dispel fears of truancy, the second wave celebrated the medium as
intelligence-building, fun, social, and an important way to empower children
with technology skills (see Figure 9).
‘Building intelligence’ was a frame mentioned only in passing in stories until
only very recently. The typical example was of a player learning strategies to
defeat a game, more commonly on the more recent PC games than on the
action-oriented early arcade or console games. The recent upsurge in this frame
included a professor who used the game Minesweeper to open up a new area
of mathematic problem solving that had stymied colleagues for years (Lord
2000).
‘Games as enjoyable’ seems like an obvious frame, but surprisingly little
enjoyment was mentioned in early gameplay. Early on, players were described
as using games to ward off anomie. But with less social stigma in the late 1990s,
coverage simply showed people enjoying themselves.
‘Games as social’ was a surprisingly rare frame. One exception was male
writers touting the bonding aspects of gathering and hurting each other virtu-
ally: ‘You can’t beat a console evening. Invite your friends over, gather round
the TV, crack open a six-pack and get down to the serious business of knocking
the stuffing out of them. It does wonders for your social life’ (Taylor 1999b:
98). But even at the end of the 1990s, adolescent boys were still largely absent
from this social frame, assumedly playing alone.
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Lastly, in the ‘technoliteracy’ frame, games in adolescence were repeatedly

suggested to lead to comfort and mastery of technology, often leading directly
to careers in science and technology. As one editorial writer put it, ‘Games
stimulate a taste for computers’ (Loftus 1984: 72).

Dystopian frames: two waves

Like the utopian frames, the dystopian frames also occurred in two distinct
waves over the 1980s and 1990s. The types of frames that occurred within
these waves, and the order in which they occurred, support the study’s two
hypotheses.

H1, the ‘River City’ hypothesis was that the advent of video games would first give
rise to fears of displacement of ‘constructive’ activities and of associations with
deviant behaviour. These negative displacement frames were among the first
to emerge in coverage, and took place most heavily in the first wave. Notably,
several stories actually used the same River City analogy in describing the
reactions of town elders to arcades.
The first wave consisted of four frames: bad displacement, health risks, theft
and drug use, and occurred primarily in the early 1980s (see Figure 10). ‘Bad
displacement’ is a direct test of the Ofstein hypothesis. In this frame, adolescents
are seen as wasting their money, which would be better spent on some more

Figure 10 Dystopian Wave I.

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 VIDEO GAME LIGHTNING ROD

wholesome activity: ‘A conversation with a twelve year old boy produces

unsettling information. . . . ‘‘I usually bring $20,’’ says the boy, when asked how
much money he spends, ‘‘but today I brought $40’’ ’ (Skow 1982: 52). Equally
common was children’s displacement of other worthwhile activities such as
reading, playing with friends or being outside. For example, ‘For many parents,
the problem is not what their children are doing on their Nintendo systems,
but what they are not doing while locked in Mortal Kombat - reading books,
playing outdoors, making friends’ (Elmer-DeWitt 1993b: 71). One article
lamented that video games were causing young children to turn away from
Shakespeare. When not engaged in these more acceptable pursuits, video-
game-playing children were also said to be susceptible to homosexual cruisers,
prostitution and hard liquor (Skow 1982), or gambling (‘Videogames-Fun or
Serious Threat?’ 1982). The ‘theft’ and ‘drug use’ frames also suggested that
arcades were either the locus of problems or that games drove players to steal
or traffic drugs to support their gaming habits. Often this frame came from
the actions or speeches of small-town mayors who had banned arcades because
they had heard of or seen deviant behaviour in them – but never in their towns.

H2 , the Fear Order hypothesis was that news frames involving children would
occur in the following order: fears of destructive displacement of worthwhile
activities, as illustrated in the first wave, then fears of negative health effects;
and then, fears about the effects of content on values, attitudes and behaviour.
The early ‘health risk’ frame suggested by Wartella and Reeves (1983, 1985)
was found, nearly simultaneous to the negative displacement frame. Concerns
revolved primarily around skeletomuscular ailments such as ‘Pac Man elbow’
(Skow 1982), ‘video wrist’ (‘Donkey Kong Goes to Harvard’ 1983), ‘Nintendi-
nitis’ (Adler et al. 1989), and ‘Space Invaders wrist’ (Zoglin 1989), but also
epileptic seizures (Leerhsen et al. 1983).
To support further the second hypothesis, the second wave of dystopian
frames included the bulk of social risks and fears that Wartella and Reeves
suggested would occur next (see Figure 11). This second wave took place
largely in the late 1980s and the 1990s. It highlighted fears of video games’
effects on values, attitudes and behaviour and a rise in the language of addiction
in game use. This wave might have been short lived were it not for two things.
The first was the highly publicized controversy surrounding the realistic (for
its time) and violent game Mortal Kombat. The second was the 1999 massacre
at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, USA. Both served as catalysts
for fears about the social risks of video-game players, specifically in how games
might make players more violent.
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Figure 11 Dystopian Wave II.

The study captured a significant volume of fears about the addictive potential
of video games. Although the players often jokingly referred to their play as
‘habits’ or ‘addictions’, the sheer volume of words most often associated with
drugs and alcohol was striking. Writers often relied on the language of pathology
to describe game players, frequently using terms such as ‘junkies’, ‘mania’,
‘infected’, ‘pathological preoccupation’ and ‘madness’.
The ‘other social risks’ frame included the inability of children to distinguish
between fantasy and reality, over-commercialization, mindless passivity in
gameplay and the promotion of low culture. A cohort effect was evident in the
suspicion that Baby Boomers still have for their now-grown progeny. One
headline joked insultingly ‘Just Don’t Shoot the Client. How Do You Train
Nintendo-Generation Workers?’ and suggested that those ‘Nintendo-genera-
tion workers’ need more stimuli than previous generations, and have shorter
attention spans (Meyer 1998).
Lastly, ‘games as promoting violence’ was consistently tied to adolescent
males, and the hypodermic media-effects model predominated the frame.
Young male players were said to have become ‘inured to violence’ (Thomas
1998: 76), and games gave ‘kids a lack of respect for life’ (Taylor 1999a:
50). The Columbine incident initiated a resuscitation of this frame: ‘Did the
sensibilities created by the modern video kill games play a role in the Littleton
massacre? Apparently so’ (Leo 1999: 14). But video games were not necessarily
framed as the main culprit in all of the articles. This is not to say that new
media technologies do not serve as sites of anxiety for social problems – in fact
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the new ones still do. It is perhaps not surprising that in many other articles
about the incident, a suspicious and shadowy newer medium was blamed for
Columbine: the Internet.

DISCUSSION

Consistent with prior new media technologies, video games passed through
marked phases of vilification followed by partial redemption. Also consistent
with prior media, games served as touchstones for larger struggles within the
culture – so much so that perhaps ‘lightning rod’ is a better term. Lastly, the
two hypotheses about conservative fears around new media were supported by
the data.
Several surprising findings in the sample merit speculation. Since the game
industry and its proponents so often feel like social pariahs or are defensive
about the merits and negative effects of video games, it was surprising to see
so many positive frames. This may simply be a function of the journalistic norm
of a two-sided balance in reporting (Gans 1980). The initial utopian frames
appeared to function as defences against the sorts of fears that Wartella and
Reeves (1983, 1985) predict. Instead of games taking children’s time from
valuable activities, time was argued to be safe and well spent. The second round
of utopian frames appeared to be the hallmark of a more mature medium, and
at least partially as the result of a maturing cohort that grew up with video-
game technology: ‘The kids who fell in love with Mario when they were six,
they’re now twenty six’ (Croal 2000: 48). Both the writers, and one might
presume the readers, are now less focused on defending video games rather
than on simply accepting their presence and enjoying or disliking them as readily
as other mainstream media. This is also consistent with what we know about
the stability of attitudes over time. Most opinion change occurs through mortal-
ity and generational change, not within cohorts (Jennings and Niemi 1981).
This finding is further validated by the rise in maturation indicators. Given the
surge in leisure spending, the search for more convenient forms of entertain-
ment, and a new generation without a predisposition to the medium, the rising
popularity of video games should not be surprising.
The dystopian frames speak not only to the hypotheses generated earlier,
but to general social conditions in the USA, and to the idea that new technol-
ogies provide a telling window into the issues of the day. It is surely no
coincidence that the years 1981 and 1982 marked the start of the dystopian
frames of misspent youth, or fears of injury, drug use and the like – and that
this is precisely the period of the conservative Reagan administration’s rise to
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power. In seeking to throw off what it perceived as the general social, cultural
and moral malaise of the 1970s, the Reagan administration campaigned on a
platform that championed a return to wholesome family values. In doing so, it
especially highlighted the culpability and irresponsibility of single mothers.
Thus, children and families became a site of struggle, and frames about truancy,
latchkey children and the negative influences of electronic media of all types
played into this political agenda. Conservative pundits repeatedly castigated
video games and television as enabling irresponsible parents – mostly said to
be single mothers – to rely on an electronic babysitter instead of providing
decent parenting. Games were a convenient target, but not the primary one.
Instead, they became a means to attack a particular group.
A similar pattern emerged for issues of place. Early accounts of public
arcades tell a story of positive, inclusive space for the mixing of age, gender,
class and ethnic groups (Hertz 1997). These locations were threatening to
a conservative establishment already struggling with a rapidly changing and
increasingly diverse society. It is no wonder then that arcades earned a special
dose of ire in early 1980s coverage, and that adults frequenting these locales
were suddenly framed as deviants. And, although this essay is not arguing for
a causal link between media frames and public opinion, it is certainly notable
that, by July 1982, public opinion polls showed that 30 per cent of Americans
favoured a total ban on arcade games (Roper Report 1982).
Such fears and tensions may also have been playing a reciprocal role with
academic research, which has taken up the search for negative effects of video
games. Despite two decades of mixed and inconclusive findings (Dill and Dill
1998; Griffiths 1999; Anderson and Bushman 2001; Sherry 2001), the research
continues. Is it possible that these media frames are impacting the research
agenda? It is certain that the reverse has taken place. Media coverage over the
past thirty years has drawn incorrectly on research results, often ignoring the
null findings altogether. One column went so far as to suggest that research
has proven that games are pathologically addicting children at epidemic rates
(Garver 1990). The writer had clearly not read beyond the title (‘Pathological
preoccupation with video games’) of the short research article he cited (Keepers
1990), or he would have discovered that it was not a finding that could be
generalized, but rather a psychological case study of a single child who was
being abused by a parent.
How can we explain the biological determinism surrounding gender and
video-gameplay? The general exclusion of women from video-gaming frames
can be viewed as part of a broader power issue in gender and technoliteracy. If
games were, as many suggested, a path to technology skills, then female gamers
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would ultimately be as much of a threat to male techno-centric power as female

computer engineering students. If women were stereotyped as being
uninterested or unable to grasp technology, men would retain power in that
sphere. This is not to suggest that there was some sort of conspiracy to keep
women in place. Rather, it is evidence that the pursuit of science and technology
continues to be socially constructed as male (Jansen 1989; McQuivey 2001),
and that media coverage can play a role. Despite this rigid construction, women
are entering skill positions in technology, but computer science continues to be
perceived and experienced as hostile to women (Pearl et al. 1990), and females
accounted for only 15 per cent of engineering PhDs in 1999 – an all-time high
(National Science Foundation Survey of Earned Doctorates Summary 1999).
Lastly, in the early 1980s, there was a large gap between which genders and
age groups video games were supposedly ‘for’. But by the turn of the century,
these gaps had narrowed considerably. Women began to be seen on previously
male turf and adults re-emerged as players of adolescent-coded technology.
Drawing on the theories of Goffman, Meyrowitz (1985) has suggested that
electronic media generally have this convergent effect. Since electronic media
allow groups to view the formerly unseen behaviours of their counterparts, it
is not surprising that some may try on those roles. Youths can try out adult roles
and vice versa; similarly for men and women, and for different races (Nakamura
2001). With games no longer framed in the media as the province of white
adolescent boys, we should expect to see more diversity among new players.
There are limitations to the research method. A content analysis cannot prove
effects, and the presence of particular media frames is not proof of anything
conscious among journalists. Nor are these frames the same thing as an accurate
measure of public opinion or of individual reactions. We cannot know if the
utopian or dystopian frames resonated with readers, or if they reflect ambival-
ence. Also, with little prior work on the social history of games, the scope of
this work is necessarily broad. Future research should delve more deeply into
particular eras and provide further historical analysis. For example, who actually
did play games, when, where and why? Who was not allowed? Anecdotal evi-
dence here suggests a rich and complicated social history ready to be explored.
Still, media frames matter because they are important benchmarks for the
times. As Jameson writes:

anxiety and hope are two faces of the same collective consciousness, so that the works of
mass culture, even if their function lies in the legitimation of the existing order – or some
worse one – cannot do their job without deflecting the latter’s service the deepest and most
fundamental hopes and fantasies of the collectivity.
(Jameson 1979: 144)

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In reality, there is no gender, age, class or race inherent in media technol-

ogies, despite the repetition of those constructions in the news media’s framing.
To emphasize them again and again is to also remind the misrepresented that
they are being inaccurately portrayed.
Dmitri Williams
Department of Communication Studies
University of Michigan
USA
E-mail: dcwillia@[Link]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Marsh Center for
Journalistic Performance at the University of Michigan Department of Com-
munication Studies. Thanks go to Leon Tan and Cindy Horng for their assis-
tance, and to Susan Douglas and W. Russell Neuman for their valuable
comments on earlier drafts of this work.

NOTES

1. In the article, children were called ‘vidkids’ (Langway 1981: 90) and adults, including several
celebrities, were said to be equally ‘captivated’ (91). By contrast, girls ‘seem to shun the
arcades’ (91).
2. As a validity check on the method, articles from the New York Times and newscasts from the
major three networks stored at the Vanderbilt Television News Archive were checked against
the results here. The patterns found in those articles and newscasts match the ones found
here for news magazines.
3. There were no game-related entries for Dreamcast, Intellivision, Odyssey or Fairchild.
Coverage did not begin to approach the more detailed level of specific companies and products
until the late 70s/early 80s. Up until then the articles were usually all under ‘electronic
games’. Stories about electronic games that were not played on some kind of screen were
omitted.

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APPENDIX: INTERCODER RELIABILITY MEASURES

Variable name Scott’s pi

Fun, enjoyable play 0.755
Physical skill honed 0.856
Takes/builds intelligence 0.771
Violence as catharsis 0.957
Educational 0.813
Social: team or friendship building 0.657
Promotes use of/familiarity with technology 0.770
Good displacement: keeps players off street, etc. 0.971
Displacement: time & money taken from worthwhile activities 0.942
Health risk: physical ailments 0.928
Health risk: Pathology/addiction 0.771
Social risks: ruins values or attitudes 0.770
Leads to/facilitates anti-social behaviour: drug use 0.957
Leads to/facilitates anti-social behaviour: theft 0.986
Leads to/facilitates anti-social behaviour: promotes violence 0.813
Leads to/facilitates anti-social behaviour: other 0.799
Parents are concerned 0.813
Civic leaders/authorities are concerned 0.871
Academics are concerned 0.798
Games are for males 0.714
Games are for females 0.755
Games are for kids 0.714
Games are for adults 0.714
Kids are impacted by games 0.714
Adults are impacted by games 0.726
Game performance/system quality 0.714
Games as artistic 0.886
Auteur coverage: designers/producers 0.886
Any business angle (for total measures) 0.771
Mean 0.820
Median 0.799

550