ABSTRACT
Videogames have not enjoyed an easy ride in the popular press which has long concerned itself with the negative influences of their representations and the consequences of play. For many commentators, if videogames are worth considering at all, they can be easily and readily dismissed as little more than inconsequential trivialities. Indeed, so pervasive is this discourse of videogaming as worthless diversion that many gamers recount the experiences to which they devote many hours of puzzling, dedication and creative effort as shameful, guilty pleasures (see Cragg et al. 2007). In what may be the apotheosis of this position, Richard Abanes (2006: 11) recounts the influential child psychologist Dr Benjamin Spock’s brief and dismissive analysis of videogames as nothing more than a ‘colossal waste of time’. Not everybody has been this sanguine in their assessment, however.
