‘Fun’ created an identity, but money made the ‘community’ (1990s through the end of the 20th century)

This chapter illustrates how the concept of community and the Vicious Circuit creates boundaries that enforce who is or is not a ‘gamer.’ The aftermath of changes to the American political economic and social world in the 1980s resulted in the normalization of neoliberalism and reaffirmation of whiteness at the center of US culture, imagining the ‘gamer’ as necessarily white. Race, wealth, and crime discourses further normalize white Americans, their teens, and children as the ‘gamer.’ Accordingly, competition between Sega and Nintendo during the so-called ‘Console Wars’ play into narratives of ‘Gen X’ apathy and individualism. Social dynamics arising from redlining enable a form of independent video game distribution—shareware—that arise from the social and cultural milieu.