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This study provides empirical support for a link between video game play and likelihood to major in a STEM field.

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), this study investigates whether adolescents who play video games are more likely than those who do not to choose a STEM field major in college, and if other characteristics explain this relationship.

Results from a nested series of logistic regression models show that – compared to those who do not play video games in adolescence – teens who play video games are 70% more likely to major in a STEM field when they attend college.

The Add Health dataset allows for empirical verification of the link between video game play and STEM major choice, but it is dated. Future research should use more recent data. Factors such as gaming platform and game genre are likely to be key variables in future research.

This finding lends support for including video game play as a potential factor in future studies on college major choice, and offers further empirical support for utilizing video games as a potential gateway into STEM.

Going beyond previous research, this study finds that playing commercial video games may be one entry point to STEM fields, and implies that it is important to understand the impact of games that millions of young people play.

In this chapter, I utilize insights from symbolic interaction to analyze the identity work processes of larp subculture participants to construct and perform their in-game identities. I extend the research on larp subcultures in two ways. First, I place larping within the larger context of leisure subcultures and society by arguing that larping is representative of changes in leisure and subcultures in postmodern society. Second, I draw upon ethnographic data collected among the New England Role-playing Organization (NERO) to analyze larpers character identity performances. RPG and Larp researchers have developed several theories about the relationship between larp participants and their character performances. While these concepts provide a helpful framework for understanding the participant-character relationship, they undertheorize the in-game constructed performance of identity. Using symbolic interaction theory, I analyze the identity work processes larpers use to construct and perform their larp identities extending our understanding of the similarities between everyday identity and larpers' character identity performances.

Digital gaming has become one of the largest entertainment sectors worldwide, increasingly turning the medium into an attractive vehicle for the communication of advertising messages. As a result, the incorporation of products or brands in digital games or in-game advertising (IGA) is expected to grow steadily over the course of the following years. However, much work is still needed to determine and optimize the effectiveness of IGA. The goal of the chapter is to advance IGA effectiveness research by investigating the influence of three aspects of the context in which a game is played and the player’s involvement in response to this context on brand awareness.

To this purpose, three experiments were set up. The first experiment (between-subjects, N = 121) investigated the impact of the social setting in which a game is played, the second experiment (within-subjects, N = 31) examined the effect of the game controls that are used, and the third experiment (between-subjects, N = 62) analyzed the influence of the game story.

The findings of the experiments show that the game context can significantly influence the way in which people recall and recognize brands that are included within its environment and that examining the player’s involvement in response to this context can provide useful information regarding the processes underlying this effect.

These findings contribute to the knowledge of when, how, and in which games advertising can be incorporated in order to achieve games’ full potential as an advertising medium.

This chapter is concerned with the social relationships and communities that families engage with while playing Pokémon Go. The chapter begins by considering the release of this hybrid reality game (HRG) in the summer of 2016, and the extent to which it seemingly lends itself to communities and the development of social relationships through play. Following this, we demonstrate that while the evidence for Pokémon Go facilitating new relationships is apparent, the kind of relationships in question are not explicitly explicated through extant literature. Accordingly, we develop the theoretical framework that undergirds the exigency of the chapter. This includes Granovetter's (1973) taxonomy of social ties among people in social networks – strong, weak and latent ties – and the suggested effect these categories have on the sharing of information. Having outlined the implication of this taxonomy for comprehending social relationships forged through Pokémon Go, we introduce Gerbaudo's (2012) ‘liquid organising’ to explore how weak ties have been enhanced through social media, which raises pertinent question in the context of familial locative play. Critically, then, this chapter looks to understand what kind of social ties can be formed when the playing of Pokémon Go is itself performed in the context of the family unit, using the theoretical frameworks outlined above. This chapter is driven by the following research questions. First, what kinds of social relationships have developed for the families that play Pokémon Go together? This includes whether intergenerational players have made new friends, as well as strengthened current relationships. Second, has this HRG facilitated friendships for the children that play Pokémon Go? In other words, is a community of players still a salient feature of playing this HRG, in the same way that it was shortly after its release in the Summer 2016?

The main purpose of the paper is to reveal how a modern play influences child and predict the possibility of what the following generation will look like, because children’s play is closely interconnected with future adult activity.

A literature review of the problem is presented along with the following empirical methods: the questionnaire survey of parents; visually narrative approach, the main sense of which is to combine the use of pictures, graphic representations, and so on with the comments of authors to them; interviews with children according to the cards with the images of the different types of games; and the method of involved observation and direct-vision method.

Dominant type of games, intergenerational relationships, relationships of children with other children, the role of imaginative play, computer games, and toys are the questions the answers on which the research helped to receive.

At the conclusion, it was also found out how familization, institutionalization, individuation, and commercialization are reflected in the play and games of children.

The research was conducted in Russia and the cultural specificity of the country was taken into account.

The paper brings the issue of play to the forefront in an effort to involve parents, educators, and administrative workers.

The results of the research can be interesting for the scientists and practical workers in different countries, since in the century of globalization it is possible to observe the spreading and interosculation of play and games culture.

All conclusions are based on the answers of the children who are 4–7 years old.

Purpose – This chapter examines disputes produced by two young children during computer game playing and considers how the disputes were related to the children's ongoing activity.

Methodology/approach – The study is framed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Sequential analysis of recorded data details the mutual production of disputes during talk and interaction.

Findings – The analysis establishes how the children made each other accountable to the agreed-upon way of playing the game after one child offered to show the other how to play. Conflict developed during the game and disputes built upon previous disputes, especially in relation to claims made about knowing how to play.

Research implications – The disputes here are best understood in relation to how disagreement was avoided initially but then emerged as the gaming progressed. Examining disputes in the course of computer activity shows how the children turn agreement into disagreement over time.

Social implications – This study establishes some of the ways that disputes arise out of young children's social interactions during computer game playing and how disputes are related, or not, to shared understandings of what is going on moment by moment in the game.

Originality – Overall, this chapter provides a detailed sequential analysis across computer activity and establishes how the children's disputes challenge the order of game playing as the game progresses.

This chapter reports from a qualitative study on how identity categories, including gender and ethnicity, are experienced and constructed through video gaming among immigrant youth in Norway. The aim here is to explore the manifestations and contestations of gendered power and hegemonic practices among the young immigrant girls and boys. This chapter builds on research about everyday media use especially video games, and our analysis is based on theories of hegemony, power, gender, and ethnicity. Three key findings are observed from the study: (a) video games acting as a bridge between ethnic minority boys (not so much with the girls) and ethnic Norwegians, (b) hegemonic gendered practices, emphasizing the “otherness,” in particular for girls adhering to the category of gamer, and finally, to a lesser degree, (c) marginalization within video games on the basis of being a non-Western youth in a Western context. As such the study simultaneously not only confirms but also challenges dominant discourses on video games by suggesting that, although some positive strides have been made, the claims of a post-gender neutral online world, or celebrations of an inclusive and democratic online media culture, especially video gaming, are still premature.

David Buckingham (1998, 2000) has recently argued against rigid dichotomies in the contemporary study of commercial artefacts and childhood culture. On the one hand, children are seen as easy victims of commercial exploitation from big companies, and on the other, they are seen as highly competent agents, immune to any outside influence. Both views feature different types of romanticism. The view of children as victims is partly created around Victorian ideas of childhood innocence, whereas the romantic view of the active child sees children as open, creative, and competent learners, who effortlessly acquire new literacies, including media literacies. Such a view is partly implicitly inscribed into the Swedish School Curriculum (1998) (Läroplan för det obligatoriska skolväsendet, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet. Lpo 94. [Curriculum for the compulsory school, the pre-school class and the after-school centre. Lpo 94]). In his criticism of the passive-active dichotomy, Buckingham argues in favour of studies of actual practices, that is, what young people actually do with artefacts and media, instead of empty speculations, far away from children’s play arenas. Buckingham’s own studies are mainly based on group interviews with children in the U.K., where he has analysed what was said on a micro level. A fundamental principle in his research is that children’s agency can be seen in their language use. Also, he advocates that we contextualize children’s activities by analysing the social processes of which they form a part. One way of doing this is to relate a study of children’s everyday interactions to media debates and to changes in our views of children as social agents (Buckingham, 1994).