Overview
Despite the recession, video games continue to break records—and command unprecedented amounts of media coverage. The U.S. is the world’s biggest video games market and manufacturer, with a market now worth over $20 billion annually in software and hardware sales—more than quadruple its size in the mid 1990s. World of Warcraft now boasts over 11 million players worldwide, and over $1 billion per year in revenues. Gaming is flourishing as a career and a creative industry as well. 254 U.S. colleges and universities in 37 states now offer courses and degrees in computer and video game design, programming and art. Video games are increasingly for everyone: 68% of American households now play computer or video games, while the average game player is 35 years old and has been playing games for twelve years.
Against the popular image, too, 43% of online U.S. game players are female. The U.S. military alone now spends around $6 billion a year on virtual and simulated training programs, based around video games and virtual worlds. The budgets for developing the biggest games can now top the $100
million mark and are snapping up some of the biggest names in film—from Stephen Spielberg to Peter Jackson.
Editorials
Esquire [UK]
A detailed and engaging analysis on an increasingly influential medium. Even non-gamers may find themselves seduced.The Guardian
Sparklingly intelligent and nuanced... fresh and engaging.The Irish Times
A lively, thought-provoking and thoughtful read on an entertainment juggernaut many of us have failed to properly recognize. A good book, too, for parents, who might feel far more comfortably informed about a sector that can come across as—literally—an alien world their kids inhabit.Time Out London
In exploring the potential of the medium, Chatfield covers much territory, briskly and with intent ... His conclusion on what the future could hold is in equal parts daunting and lip-smacking. It should be read by gamers and non-gamers alike.The Observer [UK]
A thought-provoking read for those already won over to the delights of computer games, and an even more important introduction to them for those who remain skeptical.Independent [London]
Fun Inc. is the most elegant and comprehensive defence of the status of computer games in our culture I have read. The sheer pervasiveness of game experience—99 per cent of teenage boys and 94 per cent of teenage girls having played a video game—means that instant naffness falls upon those who express a musty disdain for the medium. In fact, as Fun Inc. elegantly explains, computer game-playing has a very strong claim to be one of the most vital test-beds for intellectual enquiry.The Dallas Morning News
While we play video games to extract ourselves from the real world, it's not really play. We learn through games, and mastering challenges becomes our focus. Strategy and tactics become increasingly important.— Jim PawlakThe Wall Street Journal
Engrossing...an ambitious overview of the videogaming industry, from its beginning in 1972 with Pong to today's immersive, multi-player, multi-billion dollar industry.Times Literary Supplement
Whether or not you share Chatfield’s optimism, Fun Inc. should help to block the fear-mongering generalization—the riffing on prejudices—that has passed for insight on this topic in broadsheet comment pages. If critics of game-playing can’t bring themselves to enter these worlds themselves, to learn first-hand what they are talking about,they should at least read this insightful book.
California Literary Review
Chatfield has a clean, compelling style and is quite reasonable throughout his analysis of both this rapidly growing industry and its profound effects on society. Open-minded, interesting and insightful.Kirkus Reviews
A treatise on the current and future state of video games.
In his debut, Prospect magazine arts and books editor Chatfield explores topics ranging from the culturally pervasive influence of video games throughout the world to the ways in which games offer unprecedented opportunities for modeling social and economic behavior. That video games have become big business—surpassing even movies in terms of total revenue—is no surprise. What is surprising is the level of depth and complexity offered by games like the massively popular World of Warcraft, in which its more than 12 million subscribers create "avatars" of themselves and explore a medieval fantasy world in a quest to improve their characters' abilities while simultaneously building real-life social networks (and facilitating many of the aforementioned behavioral studies). Chatfield spends considerable time effectively debunking commonly held conceptions that violent video games beget violence and that immersive games create addiction problems, but he introduces new issues to consider, including the complicated question of legal ownership in a virtual environment and the growing trend of buying and selling virtual goods—an industry estimated to be worth billions of dollars annually and currently unregulated (and untaxed) by any governing body. The author, an unapologetic gaming advocate, strives to inject the narrative with nuance, but it's clear that his eye is on the medium's future potential and gaming's inevitable continued growth. His insights and conclusions are sensible, though the book succeeds far better when Chatfield chronicles the effectiveness of games as educational tools or the myriad technological breakthroughs spurred by the gaming industry than when he veers off on philosophical tangents about the importance of gaming to society.
Less fun than mashing buttons, but a worthy opening salvo in what is likely to be a burgeoning field of academia.