ABSTRACT
In this chapter I want to consider videogames as a practice informed by consumer “ways of seeing.” This produces a possible critique of videogames that far from being “interactive,” they are a form of pleasurable but pacifying consumer leisure. Although I’m not suggesting that this is all they are or can be, this complaint may stand in contrast to both criticisms that games produce violence or isolation and celebrations of new freedoms found through Digital Virtual Consumption (DVC). I’m going to argue that videogame players may enact the performance of familiar consumer scripts but do so in spectacular virtual environments that “re-enchant” the consumption experience. However, in reproducing consumer acts, videogames are open to criticism that just like other consumer spectacles may depoliticize and alienate the consumer.
