The study of Gaming and Gamers.

I am beginning to accept that this course reduces my comments to "I must admit I had not considered/thought of/realised etc".  I must be the most naive person on the planet when it comes to technology and any offshoots of such technology.  That something that is so pervasive could be so unnoticeable is staggering.  OR, is it that it is because it is so entrenched into my everyday world that I do not notice it?  Today is a case in point.  People have jobs that study gamers and games???  What the....I must admit that I had never thought.....here I go....that games were of any value to society other than a huge time waster for teenage boys.  Evidently not!  After listening to the lecture today, I realise that not only is the gaming industry possibly bigger than the movie industry, but is has run parallel with and influenced the development of the internet too.  Before gaming 'took off' the military were engaging people to design 'games' to train and prepare their soldiers in the 'art' of war.  The gaming industry attracts many different study approaches, such as:
- the demographics of the users (are they all really geeky teenage boys or in  fact 25-40 year olds)
- the humanities approach (what are the meanings that are made from the games?)
- the engineering approach (the actual craft of designing games).

As far back as 1903, W.H. Holmes wrote:

The popular notion that games ... are trivial in nature and of no particular significance as a subject of research soon gave way, under the well-conducted studies of Mr. Culin, to an adequate appreciation of their importance as an integral part of human culture. (p.57)

There are many more approaches, but one cannot ignore the fact that only through studying and understanding the effect of games on the gamer can we begin to accept games as drivers of technological change and advancement.

References:
The repeatedly lost art of studying games. Retrieved 25 January 2011, from: http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-review/