I’ve recently received word that Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, an open-access journal, will be publishing a paper of mine in a 2009 issue. The paper, “Arcadian rhythms: Gaming and interaction in social space,” is a revised and updated version of the paper I described in my post on ICA 2007. The paper describes a participant-observation study spanning several months, which saw me visiting a few different arcades to get a sense of how people play and socialize around games in a semi-public space. (UPDATE: The paper is now online.)
Part of what fascinated me about this subject was how many journalists and even some other academics described video arcades as havens of racial harmony and class equality—a development, I think, partially resulting from the fact that arcades are much more socially stratified around gaming skills and interests than any more normally recognized index of cultural belonging. The distinction between “hardcore” and “casual” players made by many in the gaming press may be an incomplete and problematic construction of who plays games, but arcade-goers appear to make similar sorts of divisions between themselves, both in terms of social organization and formal differences in the games they choose to play. (Some of this now reads like a retrospective of how the Wii has been capable of reaching new gaming audiences, but this research was first conducted before the Wii’s control scheme was even announced. Ah well—so goes the pace of academic research and publication.)
The first version I wrote of this (even before presenting it at a conference) was actually quite a bit longer because a good portion was devoted to discussion of the much-lamented “death of arcades,” which ultimately seemed better addressed in some other paper. I focused on this direction because I’m more interested in connections between gameplay and culture than in developments in the industry, but we’re probably overdue to see a paper comparing and contrasting the American and Japanese arcade scenes. In fact, it was somewhat challenging to find enough sites for this paper, as some of those I planned to visit had closed not long before I started the research. Two more of my four sites have been effectively closed since submitting the paper for publication.
“Arcadian rhythms” goes online in the fall of 2009, but please feel free to email me now (jason @ this domain) if you’d like a copy to look at in advance.
Geek Studies 
I have to ask?
many journalists and even some other academics described video arcades as havens of racial harmony and class equality
I note that you don’t mention gender or disability equity. I am continually finding people assuming that I do not like or am less experienced in games simply because I am female, or else because I am the girlfriend of a gamer. (But would a “true” gamer really date a girl who isn’t into games?) The only people who don’t make that assumption are my own friends, and my students, two categories of people who knew about me as a non-gamer before it came to their attention that I was a gamer as well.
I will admit that my gender is probably what leads to my *preferences* in games, but the frequency and my ability at the games I do choose to play is limited more by other obligations than it is by what I prefer to be doing when I do have free time.
Gender comes up in my paper, though it wasn’t something that came up as often in the journalistic/academic writing about arcades I was referring to (which was mostly from the ’80s and early ’90s).
In my observations, gender wasn’t really a good predictor for who would be an arcade regular, but it was obvious that the female regulars were more likely to be there for rhythm games like DDR than for fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I have guesses as to why this is (which kind of diverge from the cognitively-oriented theories that many game studies scholars might prefer), but I already wrote that paper once, so maybe I’ll just let you read that. 😉
“But would a “true†gamer really date a girl who isn’t into games?”
Would a “true” gamer have a girlfriend? 😀
I really want to make a Laura Croft joke here. But I’m going to show restraint.