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Purpose – In this chapter we consider how two apparently disconnected practices – one very human (loving relationships), another the apparently alienating outcome of consumer technology (videogame play) – may turn out to be linked in very intimate and perhaps surprising ways. In making this connection we hope to comment on how consumer practices may be understood in the context of dynamic human relationships and cultural ideals.

Methodology – We conducted 36 phenomenological interviews with adult videogame players in order to elicit everyday experiences of videogame play in the context of the individual's lifeworld. This chapter deals with aspects of data that explore relationships with partners and children.

Findings – We illustrate that consumer practices, ideals, and even couples are not stable things, but are subject to routine reconfiguration throughout life. We suggest the possibility of a triadic theory of human relationships that consists of the people themselves, their consumer practices, and ideas about what love means.

Originality/value of paper – Previous questions about the value of videogame consumption have tended to ask about violence or the normalcy of how we might spend our time. In this chapter we have attempted to shift the focus to questions about human relationships and how they might be enacted with consumer technologies. By understanding the interactions between human actors, their consumer practices and their ideals we are able to comment on existing critiques and celebrations of the impact of consumer culture on human relationships.

This study aims to propose a model for predicting consumers’ esports videogame engagement on their ensuing consumption behaviors, which remains nebulous to date.

After approaching esports consumers in different gaming zones in Pakistan, this paper collected data from 364 videogame-based esports consumers. This paper deployed SmartPLS 3.2.8 software to perform the partial least squares-structural equation modeling-based analyzes.

The structural model results show that consumers’ affective and behavioral esports videogame engagement positively affects their consumption behavior, including heightened community engagement, purchase intent, coproduction, word-of-mouth and new player recruitment. However, while consumers’ cognitive esports engagement was found to positively impact community engagement, new player recruitment and coproduction, it failed to predict consumers’ esports-related purchase intent or word-of-mouth behaviors.

The findings reveal that a strategic focus on consumers’ esports game engagement will enable practitioners to nurture desirable consumer behaviors, including enhanced purchase intent, coproduction, word-of-mouth and new player recruitment behaviors, thus warranting consumer engagement’s strategic value as a key esports gaming metric.

Empirical research into the role of consumers’ esports videogame engagement on their ensuing consumption behaviors remains scant to date. Based on this gap, this study offers a timely contribution by exploring and validating a model that gauges the effect of consumers’ cognitive, emotional and behavioral esports videogame engagement on their community engagement, purchase intention, coproduction, word-of-mouth and new player recruitment. It, thus, offers important insight into the rapidly advancing field of digital esports games.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss an assignment using videogames to demonstrate theories from in-class readings. Game-like learning principles (Gee, 2007), collaborative learning in games (Echeverria et al., 2011) and gamification (Sheldon, 2012) are just a few examples of the discussion areas in videogames and education research. But as Rice (2014) finds, there are few available lesson-plans and examples of everyday classroom use of popular videogames.

In response to this need, this paper discusses classroom use of free popular videogames as cultural artifact examples for course content discussions in a Videogames and Literacies Junior Writing Course offered within an English department.

This paper describes the assignment and learning goals, specifically discussing the first iteration and subsequent changes made to aid students in their presentations and learning. Included in this paper are discussions of technology affordances within the classroom space, student reactions and student successes and failures with games. This assignment asks students to find a videogame example to use as demonstrations of the course material as they lead class discussion.

Asking students to use videogames and game play to engage course content also engages students in higher-order cognitive thinking about play and game mechanics, helps students analyze course material and develops presentation skills using videogames to discuss course material. In examining videogames as more than just entertainment, students see games as learning tools with ways of teaching culture, teaching learning and testing learning.

Proposes to look at how many designers and researchers have become interested in how videogames can serve as forms of cultural expression beyond entertainment alone.

The study is based on views from the videogame industry and the educational system.

This article suggests that both the videogame industry and the compulsory educational system are engaged in commensurate crises. The videogame industry is creatively rich but risk‐averse, motivated primarily by wealth and reinforced by its own success. The education establishment is bureaucratic and self‐effacing, endorsing the production of complacency over challenge. With videogames and education caught in similar ruts, to support change in one means endorsing a revolution in the other.

Compares the videogame industry with the educational establishment and suggests ways in which the videogame industry can assist education.

Videogame play is more popular among young males compared with young females. The present study aims to investigate spatial visualization ability as an explanation for this gender gap. The premise is based on a well‐documented gender difference in spatial ability favoring males and assumes that spatial ability would be an advantage in playing videogames. Also, reports in the literature indicate improvement in spatial ability following videogame play, suggesting that play may specifically task spatial ability.

A convenience sample of 114 university students aged 18 to 24 answered questions on attitudes and videogame behavior and completed a psychometric test of spatial visualization ability.

Regression analysis indicated that interest in videogame play is significantly predicted by gender, interest in science fiction, and number of semesters of foreign language completed (with the latter having a negative influence). Mediation analysis suggested that neither of the latter two variables mediates the gender effect. Although spatial visualization ability was significantly correlated with videogame interest, this was found to be a spurious (non‐causal) association, due to both variables being influenced by gender.

Limitations include the narrow age range of subjects (18‐24) and the focus of the study on spatial visualization ability and a limited number of other variables.

The finding that semesters of foreign language completed and interest in science fiction significantly predict videogame interest is apparently novel. The former variable may be a proxy for preference for verbal (semantic) information processing over visual information processing, and this may explain the significant negative correlation between semesters of foreign language completed and videogame interest.

The aim of this paper is to describe the potential of the videogame as a mass communication medium and to propose a videogame‐based public outreach strategy for education and inspiration to space science and space activities.

The objective was achieved by means of a semiotic approach to the medium under discussion. The subject scope of the paper was further developed and supported by an overview of existing case studies related to the topic. Based on the aforementioned analysis and on original ideas, new concepts and strategies on the subject are proposed.

The videogame medium has excellent potential for promotion, marketing and educational applications. Moreover, spin‐off applications in the field of simulation‐based research can also be envisioned. The proposed concepts, although specifically referring to the space sector, are applicable to many other industrial and non‐industrial fields, including libraries.

The paper hints at many possible spin‐off applications for videogames in the field of communication, marketing and simulation‐based research.

The concepts proposed in the paper outline novel marketing and outreach strategies (together with other spin‐off applications) based on a rather underestimated medium, i.e. the videogame, which has yet to receive proper attention from scholars.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the sociocultural underpinnings of wiki-based knowledge production in the videogame domain, and to elucidate how these underpinnings relate to the formation of wikis as resources of videogame documentation.

The paper is based on a three-month ethnographic investigation of knowledge practices on the Dark Souls Wiki (DSW). In focus of the analysis were the boundaries and knowledge aims of the DSW, together with how its contributors organized inquiries and used various sources, methods of investigation, and ways of warranting knowledge claims.

The principal result of the paper is an empirical account of how the DSW functions as a culture of knowledge production, and how the content and structure of the wiki connects to the knowledge practices of its contributors. Four major factors that influenced knowledge practices on the wiki were identified: the structures and practices established by the community’s earlier wiki efforts; principles and priorities that informed wiki knowledge practices; the characteristics of the videogame in focus of the site’s knowledge-building work; the extent and types of relevant documentation provided by videogame industry, the videogaming press included.

Previous research has shown interest in investigating the mechanisms by which community-created knowledge and online resources of documentation emerge, and how these are utilized in play. There is, however, little research seeking to elucidate the sociocultural structures and practices that determine and sustain collaborative online videogame knowledge production.