Narodziny medium. Gry wideo w polskiej prasie hobbystycznej końca XX wieku
The Inception of a New Media. Video Games in the Polish Hobby Press at the End of 20th Century

Author(s): Dominika Staszenko-Chojnacka
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Media studies, Visual Arts, Social Informatics
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: video games; video game history; habitus; gamer identity; computerization
Summary/Abstract: This book describes the phenomenon of creating gamer’s identity in Poland and specific gamer’s habitus which started forming itself in the second half of the 1980s through the articles published in computer magazines. Until the fall of the communist regime video games in Poland had been on the sidelines. The situation began to change after 1989 when access to computers, games and software was much easier than it used to be. As a result, there was a need for magazines devoted only to games. Publication includes description of how journals from the 1990s created players discourse and what consequences it had. It contains an analysis of specific writing style and language used by editors who created terms and names of genres later used by gamers. In this context it is worth mentioning that in that time specific types of articles emerged. Among them were reviews and walkthrough, which allowed practice of ‘reading’ games, that’s why people without access to new interactive medium learned about it through magazines. The first chapter presents the methodology of the research, using the concept of habitus, field and cultural capital by Pierre Bourdieu, as well as analyzes carried out by Graeme Kirkpatrick and Jaakko Suominen, who described how British and Finnish magazines influenced the formation of a specific discourse on video games. The relationship between the content of video game magazines and their influence on the development of the broadly understood game culture was also discussed. This book also includes a commentary on the differences between the gaming press published in Western Europe and Polish magazines created during the political transformation. It also focuses on issue of stereotypes connected with games and gamers, who formed some kind of subculture.

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