Page 107 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

GAMES (COMPUTER/VIDEO)

of the state and economy and into newareas of ownership, culture and
everyday life (although literary critics sought to do this also). In doing
so, the critical theorists presented a unique analysis of culture and the
ways in which ideologies penetrate everyday activities and concerns.
However, in breaking away from established philosophical schools, and
yet offering no clear direction or means to overcome the domination
they identified, the Frankfurt School has attracted a great deal of
hostility. Marxists have criticised the School for failing to ground their
assessment within a practical economic analysis, and for sacrificing
materialist science for metaphysics. More recently within cultural
studies, the Frankfurt School has been accused of presenting an
unsatisfactory notion of domination within the cultural industries. In
portraying mass culture as a means to a type of ‘thought control’,
Adorno and Horkheimer in particular overestimate the deliberate,
conspiratorial use of technology to shape attitudes. This approach
ignores the fact that culture is created out a complex interplay of a
range of influences and institutions and that audiences are capable of
engaging with and selecting culture rather than being merely passive
recipients.

See also: Public sphere

Further reading: Bronner and Kellner (1989); Wiggershaus (1994)

GAMES (COMPUTER/VIDEO)

Games – beginning in the 1970s as ‘video’ games, progressing to
become known as ‘computer’ games and now just as ‘games’ as they
displace analogue pastimes – are the newest ‘mass medium’ of
technological-recreational fantasy entertainment. They are played
using TV/computer screens and software and may be located
residentially or in retail arcades. Of Japanese and Korean origin
(Nintendo, Sega, Sony), they represent the first mass medium not
invented in the West. Games began with a one person vs one machine
(software) format, but are now fully interactive, with multiple players
linked over the Internet. Famous at the outset for ‘manga’-style
graphics, straightforward martial-arts violence and the promotion of
reflexive skills, games have proliferated in type, diversified their user-
base (they are nowused by girls and ‘wrinklies’ as well as adolescent
boys) and become as sophisticated as movies in the graphics and spatial
architecture department. Indeed, the movie and games industries are

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