Consuming Video Games examines video games as key sites for understanding contemporary consumer culture. Moving beyond approaches that treat games simply as entertainment or technology, it positions them as cultural commodities through which wider social, economic, and political transformations are organized and experienced.
The book traces how video game consumption has evolved from the emergence of games as consumer goods to their current status as ongoing systems of participation, experience, and value production. It explores the historical construction of the video game consumer, the social organization of 'fun' as experience, the rise of esports and performance-based consumption, the management of risk and unpredictability in gameplay, and the positioning of players as creative contributors. Grounded in five interconnected concepts – changes in the nature of consumer society, shifts towards an experience economy, the increase in participatory culture, the rise of digital culture, and movements towards a new playful (ludic) society – this book offers a sociological account that foregrounds game consumption as a social force structuring identities, pleasures, and social relations.
It will appeal to students and scholars of sociology,(video) game studies, cultural studies, leisure studies, media and communication studies, science and technology studies, and internet studies.