ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on historical literature from the dawn amusement arcades’ in Victorian England. It shows that while games were viewed by commentators as a subculture to be looked down upon, they were also an arena of innovation and a manifestation of changing working and leisure conditions seen at the time. The chapter presents primary data gathered through interviews and participant observation of those who have been hands on in the construction of the histories of videogames in amusement arcades. The social, economic and political habitus of amusement arcades places them geographically and culturally underground, or in what Young specifically terms the “subterranean world of play”. Amusement arcades are historically viewed as an unflattering venue where deviancy and dereliction run as free as the youth who populate them. History suggests that the relationship between work and leisure is tightly entwined with the emergence and predominance of amusement arcades as a primary leisure activity.
