Video game

A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device such as a TV screen or computer monitor. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device, but it now implies any type of display device that can produce two- or three-dimensional images.


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A

 * It ... appears that there is no antisocial theme too base for some in the video-game industry to exploit.
 * Samuel Alito,  (2011)


 * In my opinion, RapeLay's storyline went too far. However, if a game creator wants to express something and create content out of it, a government or public entity shouldn't have the power to restrain it.
 * Anonymous member of Institute of Contents Culture in "'RapeLay' video game goes viral amid outrage" by Kyung Lah, CNN, (March 31, 2010).

B

 * The combination of low culture and high technology is one of the most fascinating social features of the video game phenomenon. Computers were invented as super drones to do tasks no human in her or his right mind (much less left brain) would have the patience, or the perseverance, to manage. [...] Now our robot drones, the ones designed to take all the boring jobs, become the instrument for libidinal extravaganzas devoid of any socially productive component. Video games are computers neutered of purpose, liberated from functionality. The idea is intoxicating; like playing with the help on their night off.
 * Charles Bernstein, Play It Again, Pac-Man, Postmodern Culture, vol. 2 no. 1, (September 1991)
 * Few good computer games have been written so far. Of the good ones, some are computer adaptations of games like Chess and Othello which existed first in another form. These games are good if they add a dimension to the play of the game that is not present in its original form, (such as the possibility of solo play), and do so in an aesthetically pleasing form. My personal opinion is that such computer adaptations will play a trivial role in the future of computer games and the best ones will be those which take unique advantage of the computer capabilities.
 * Rev. George Blank, "Writing Good Computer Games. Part One: Philosophy", SoftSide January 1979, p. 29
 * Since we’ve figured to some extent how these pieces of the brain that handle addiction are working, people have figured out how to juice them further and how to bake that information into apps.
 * Ramsay Brown, Scientist at Dopamine Labs, as interviewed on 60 Minutes, cited in "The Tech Industry’s War on Kids"
 * Someday there's going to be a genius—an absolute genius—who writes something so brilliant, so involving, so magnificent, that you'll just weep for joy.
 * Mary Ann Buckles in the documentary film Get Lamp (2010)

C

 * Dave: Hey, what's going on? What are you two doing? Larry: We're just playing this really cool computer simulation game, where you get to interact with thousands of people in a virtual world. You can earn virtual money and buy virtual property, and... Dave: Oh, yeah, yeah, I heard about this game. I heard it's so realistic that you guys can't get dates there, either
 * The family father Dave talking to his son Larry in the tv show The War at Home (2006) directed by Andy Cadiff


 * Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important.
 * John D. Carmack. Quoted in David Kushner, Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture Chapter 8, p. 120.


 * We level designers — you would come and explain what it is that the goal would be. This level should look like Piranesi, the famous architect. We’d go and look at books and try to come up with a level that looked like Piranesi. You’d come by and shake your head and we’d go back to look at books again. I used to wonder, why is Amy mad? And it wasn’t until I became a creative director myself that I understood the curse of being a creative director, which is this: you have the vision for the game. You know what it is you want to be making. You explain it to someone. If they get it instantly, you’ll never see that person again on the project, because you don’t need to communicate. The brilliant people on the project who are — realistically you’ll see them three times in the course of the game. If you have a masterful UI designer and you can explain the vision, you’re done. You spend your time almost exclusively with the people who don’t understand what you’re trying to do. That’s the load you bear. And so we just didn’t get it.
 * Mark Cerny in “Mark Cerny and Amy Hennig: A fireside chat with master game makers” by Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat, (July 8, 2018).


 * We need to treat violent video games the way we treat tobacco, alcohol, and pornography.
 * Hillary Clinton as quoted in Senator Clinton on Violent Video Games, CBS, (Aug 2, 2005) YouTube


 * There have been four decades of research on the effect of media violence on our kids and it all points to the same conclusion -- media violence leads to more aggression, anti-social behavior, and it desensitizes kids to violence. The American Academy of Pediatrics summed up this point in a report entitled Media Exposure Feeding Children's Violent Acts. "Playing violent video games is to an adolescent's violent behavior what smoking tobacco is to lung cancer," it said. This isn't about offending our sensibilities -- it is about protecting our children.
 * Hillary Clinton as quoted in Senator Clinton on Violent Video Games, CBS, (Aug 2, 2005) YouTube


 * We know that violent video games have an impact on children. Just recently there was cutting edge research conducted at Indiana University School of Medicine, which concluded that adolescents with more exposure to violent media were less able to control and to direct their thoughts and behavior, to stay focused on a task, to plan, to screen out distractions, and to use experience to guide inhibitions.
 * Hillary Clinton as quoted in Senator Clinton on Violent Video Games, CBS, (Aug 2, 2005) YouTube


 * Art is subjective; it’s in the eye of the beholder. I think video games can be fun. They can teach eye-hand coordination and strategy and they can introduce children to computer technology. And there is no doubt they are intricate and sophisticated technologically. I’m not in any way trying to do away with video games. I’m strictly concerned with a small subset of games that are harmful to children — those that are excessively violent and sexually explicit. I want to make sure children can’t obtain these games without their parents’ consent.
 * Hillary Clinton as quoted in Senator Clinton on Violent Video Games, CBS, (Aug 2, 2005) YouTube


 * It's almost entirely women being threatened in.
 * Stephen Colbert, as quoted by Rich McCormick, (October 30, 2014). "Stephen Colbert takes on Gamergate with Anita Sarkeesian". The Verge. Archived from the original on November 17, 2014. Retrieved November 18, 2014.


 * In-depth research into the behaviour of about 100 13- and 14-year-olds found over-exposure to violent games weakened empathy for others.
 * Sean Coughlan, "Violent video games leave teens 'morally immature'", BBC News, (6 February 2014)


 * Many teenagers could play these games without any evidence of a change in attitude. And non-violent games seemed to have no adverse effects on "moral reasoning", regardless of time spent. But the problems arose with teenagers who spent more than three hours every day in front of a screen, continuously playing these violent games without any other real-life interaction.
 * Sean Coughlan, "Violent video games leave teens 'morally immature'", BBC News, (6 February 2014)


 * For these screen-obsessed teenagers, the researchers say that parents should try to put them in social situations where they have to see other people's perspectives or needs, such as charity work.
 * Sean Coughlan, "Violent video games leave teens 'morally immature'", BBC News, (6 February 2014)


 * What quickly becomes obvious is that The Witcher is very much a PC-exclusive game, which are typically designed to be as complex and unintuitive as possible so that those dirty console-playing peasants don't ruin it for the glorious PC-gaming master race.
 * (January 23, 2008). "The Witcher". The Escapist. Defy Media. Retrieved September 6, 2014. ... Those dirty console playing peasants don't ruin it for the glorious PC gaming master race ...


 * It was intended to be ironic, to illustrate what I perceived at the time to be an elitist attitude among a certain kind of PC gamer. People who invest in expensive gaming PCs and continually spend money to make sure the tech in their brightly-lit tower cases is up to date. Who actually prefer games that are temperamental to get running and that have complicated keyboard interfaces, just because it discourages new or 'casual' players who will in some way taint the entire community with their presence. I meant it as a dig.
 * Ben Croshaw, (May 28, 2013). "The Glorious PC Gaming Master Race". The Escapist. Defy Media. Retrieved September 6, 2014.


 * Much of the conversation—if I can even call it that—has been a toxic sludge of rumor, invective, and gender bias. The irony comes from people who claim to be challenging the ethics of game journalists through patently unethical behavior.
 * Kathleen Bartzen Culver, (January 3, 2015). "A Magical Putter and the Year in Media Ethics". Center for Journalism Ethics. University of Wisconsin–Madison. Archived from the original on January 14, 2015.

E

 * That Ender could be tricked into believing a real battle scenario was a game-like video simulation is one of the most believable post-modern twists in modern science fiction, particularly considering how often the difference between our digital and "real" lives is debated and conflated. Ender becomes a "hero" in a supposed video game, something that embodies and magnifies fears about video games, both in 1985 when the book was published and today.
 * Rachel Eddin, "Ender's Games: What Child Soldiers in Dystopian Fiction Teach Us About Ourselves", WIRED, (10/30/13).


 * Gaming culture has been pretty misogynistic for a long time now. There's ample evidence of that over and over again... What we're finally seeing is that it became so egregious that now companies are starting to wake up and say, "We need to stop this. This has got to change.
 * Kate Edwards as quoted by Susan Kelleher, (August 13, 2015). "'This has got to change': Women game developers fight sexism in industry". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on August 13, 2015. Retrieved August 14, 2015.

F

 * Making political statements are [sic] for other people to do. We want people to smile and have fun when they play our games.
 * Reggie Fils-Aimé, CBC News The National, June 15, 2017.


 * It's true that Americans spend billions of dollars on video games every year and that the United States has the highest firearm murder rate in the developed world. But other countries where video games are popular have much lower firearm-related murder rates. In fact, countries where video game consumption is highest tend to be some of the safest countries in the world, likely a product of the fact that developed or rich countries, where consumers can afford expensive games, have on average much less violent crime.
 * Max Fisher "Ten-country comparison suggests there’s little or no link between video games and gun murders", The Washington Post, (December 17, 2012). as qtd. in Esther Zuckerman, "Why Video Games Don't Correlate to Gun Violence", The Atlantic, (Dec 17, 2012).


 * Unlike print, radio, television, or movies, video games are an interactive format that allows them to affect people differently than more traditional forms of broadcast media. Ian Bogost, a professor of media studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has argued that the interactive nature of video games makes them an inherently persuasive medium—a system of “procedural rhetoric” that encourages players to create abstract mental models for how systems work and to form judgments about those systems through the act of playing. The design of a game’s models and systems of interactions are intentional choices by the designers, and they set the terms for how a person encounters the game. One video game designer called this effort to induce a certain type of player reaction “emotion engineering” in the design process.
 * Joshua Foust, “Video games are the new contested space for public policy “, Brookings Institution, (March 25, 2021)


 * Research has demonstrated that some game design choices improve the way people focus and increase feelings of well-being. Other design choices can trigger addictive behavior. While research is ongoing, experimental studies have shown that some military FPS games can cause players to become measurably more militarist in outlook. In a “realistic” military FPS game, the presence or absence of rules of engagement, for example, will dramatically change how the player approaches a mission. When the military itself consults on the design of such a game, this leads to a number of uncomfortable questions about why those choices were made.
 * Joshua Foust, “Video games are the new contested space for public policy “, Brookings Institution, (March 25, 2021)


 * Today, the global video game industry is one of the world’s largest culture industries. According to market research firm IDC, the global video game market topped $179 billion in revenue in 2020, making it larger than the global film industry ($100 billion) and North American professional sports (around $75 billion) combined. Video games’ cultural impact skews young: According to the Entertainment Software Association, 70% of people under the age of 18 regularly play video games. Younger players also tend to be male: According to a Pew survey, almost twice as many young men regularly play games as young women. That doesn’t mean all players are young; 64% of players are between 18 and 54 years old—prime voting age.
 * Joshua Foust, “Video games are the new contested space for public policy “, Brookings Institution, (March 25, 2021)


 * Obviously not all video game players are misogynist harassers, just as not all games are funded by the Pentagon to present tailored narratives about a controversial war. But all video games do present a worldview to the player, whether it is explicit or not, and understanding that world view can help us understand what the players themselves believe. As an inescapable part of public discourse and an enormous media market we ignore at our peril, video games are not just video games: They are the site of political contention, of negotiation over social boundaries, and of free speech itself.
 * Joshua Foust, “Video games are the new contested space for public policy “, Brookings Institution, (March 25, 2021)

H

 * So when creating a character in the fore front of my mind is that this character is linked to the game design. So, you know, unlike the character design for an anime or a film or something – when we create a character it has to tie in with the game-play. So for example, Sonic is invincible while he is jumping. He turns into a ball and has all the spikes around him. So this is a visual representation of what is happening in the game.
 * Kazuyuki Hoshino, "Interview: Sonic Team Artist/Designer Kazuyuki Hoshino", Sega Nerds 9 August 2013


 * And another thing that has influence while creating a character is when I’m creating that character – what I think is cool at the time, of you know, is going around at the time around me in my environment or the industry would have an influence on me and what I think is cool. The overall output of the character design.
 * Kazuyuki Hoshino, "Interview: Sonic Team Artist/Designer Kazuyuki Hoshino", Sega Nerds 9 August 2013


 * In the old days, there wasn’t really like a formal process, but these days when we create a character we ensure to get input from for example SEGA Europe or from the marketing department. We get input from input from various parts of the SEGA business to ensure that this character that we create is something that will be loved by many people.
 * Kazuyuki Hoshino, "Interview: Sonic Team Artist/Designer Kazuyuki Hoshino", Sega Nerds 9 August 2013


 * But having said that, you know, the premise is this character that we come up with – that we are getting input on – there is what I want to achieve with that character and there is that at the forefront. There is this sort of core thing that we are working towards – that I am driving but I get feedback from the various parts of the business to ensure that it is something that will be done by many.
 * Kazuyuki Hoshino, "Interview: Sonic Team Artist/Designer Kazuyuki Hoshino", Sega Nerds 9 August 2013


 * Initially, the work centers on the vision of the game, both in terms of the story and the artistic style. Lots of story development meetings take place, and concept artists work to flesh out the designs and environments that will become a living world by the end of development. At the same time, the engine and technology is planned, and early work on the technical design is done.
 * Casey Hudson, "Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Interview", Hilary Goldstein, IGN, (9 January 2003)


 * Once the technical and artistic vision of the game is planned, people can be brought onboard to start the main production work on the game. Artists build the environments, characters, and objects for the game world, and designers write the dialog and start making things function story-wise. The most difficult part of this stage is that everyone is working with partially complete technology, since the game programmers are also working to create the functionality of the engine and game systems. It's a careful sequencing of work that allows us to complete this stage, similar to trying to film a movie while technicians are still building your lights and cameras. Once the bulk of the work on the game is complete, the bug database starts to take over as the driving force in development. The list of remaining tasks starts to dwindle, and the team works through the enormous task of perfecting the millions of details that will make it a solid game. Quality assurance testers also take center stage, providing valuable feedback about what's fun and what's not, in addition to spotting bugs. Designers work throughout this phase to improve the balancing of the game, making it more fun and exciting with every day.
 * Casey Hudson, "Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Interview", Hilary Goldstein, IGN, (9 January 2003)


 * Once all the bugs have been squashed and the testers are having lots of fun playing the game from beginning to end, the process of submission begins. A strict process of certification must be passed, and when complete, the game is ready for duplication and distribution, on its way to a store near you!
 * Casey Hudson, "Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Interview", Hilary Goldstein, IGN, (9 January 2003)


 * What you have to keep in mind as a collaborator — that’s why we get very uncomfortable when it seems like we’re getting singled out. We as game developers. It seems trite to say so, but it’s a group effort, a team effort. So much of it is being in the right place at the right time with the right people and the right ideas. It seems wrong for any person to be elevated like you’re the author of this thing. You can’t even remember sometimes whose ideas were what, because it’s this big messy wonderful process.
 * Amy Hennig in “Mark Cerny and Amy Hennig: A fireside chat with master game makers” by Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat, (July 8, 2018).

J

 * The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games.
 * Eugene Jarvis, Supercade, MIT Press, p. 14


 * I think one of the most important attributes a designer can have is…not only the ability, but almost the unconscious constant experience of putting yourself in other people’s heads and watching them as they have an experience. Building an experience through the eyes of someone else is incredibly challenging. I think that’s what makes great designers. A bunch of my meta-points that I’ve drawn out over the last 20 years are about that, how you put yourself in other people’s shoes.
 * Jason Jones, "BUNGIE CO-FOUNDER, HALO AND DESTINY CREATOR JASON JONES BREAKS 11-YEAR SILENCE" by Ryan McCaffrey, IGN, (8 July, 2013).


 * There seems to be a lot of retro-game nostalgia in recent years. Perhaps it’s because so many gamers have reached that age where they want to look back, or maybe it’s because of how easy it is to tweet out ‘Hey, remember this!?'
 * Greg Johnson, "Greg Johnson on ToeJam Earl Back in the Groove", Sega Nerds, (25 February 2015).

K

 * I played the Mortal Kombat arcade game in their office for half an hour. I turned to [former Midway Games chief] Neil D. Nicastro and I said, “This is Star Wars meets Enter the Dragon. This is not just an arcade game. This is a whole phenomenon.” I said, “If you give me the rights to this, I promise you I will produce this, not just in movies, but in every medium in the world.” He looked at me and said, “You’re full of crap! It’s just an arcade game!” That began a three-month process of me trying to convince them that it was more than just an arcade game. They didn’t believe it… I finally just wore them down and they optioned the rights to me for an insanely short amount of time, which now I would never do, but it was my first deal at my company.
 * Larry Kasanoff, "Story Behind Mortal Kombat Incredible" Bloody Disgusting, 20 August 2015


 * We producers don't think that FFVIII is much harder than FFVII! However with FFVIII, we have tried to bring in a mode of play which requires more active thinking from the players. Yes, you can play it all the way through without thinking much about strategy or combination of energies but you have to move very, very slowly. However, if you become more involved with the game and think more 'actively', it's much more fun. The harder you think, the better you play. It's wrong to say simply 'easier' or 'harder'...
 * Yoshinori Kitase, Final Fantasy VIII Interview, Final Fantasy Shrine, (February, 2001).


 * I think girls tend to like RPGs, like Final Fantasy. Girls who play games like that seem to get more of a desire to work in this field. I usually don't think to make games strictly for a female audience, myself, but I think my RPGs attract a larger female audience. Violent, war-themed titles seem to attract an overwhelmingly male audience. I think if companies want to get more girls to play their games, they should keep this in mind.
 * Reiko Kodama, Interview Reiko Kodama, The-nextlevel.com.


 * As I'm a woman myself, when I make games, I try not to just have them be male fantasy figures, as people needing to be rescued. I like to make female characters people of both genders can relate to. But we are seeing more strong-willed women in games geared towards female audiences.
 * Reiko Kodama, Interview Reiko Kodama, The-nextlevel.com.


 * Back in the day, Sega said we couldn't show our real names, thus everyone went under nicknames in the game credits.
 * Reiko Kodama, Interview Reiko Kodama, The-nextlevel.com.


 * The concern that violent video games may promote aggression or reduce empathy in its players is pervasive and given the popularity of these games their psychological impact is an urgent issue for society at large. Contrary to the custom, this topic has also been passionately debated in the scientific literature. One research camp has strongly argued that violent video games increase aggression in its players, whereas the other camp repeatedly concluded that the effects are minimal at best, if not absent. Importantly, it appears that these fundamental inconsistencies cannot be attributed to differences in research methodology since even meta-analyses, with the goal to integrate the results of all prior studies on the topic of aggression caused by video games led to disparate conclusions. These meta-analyses had a strong focus on children, and one of them reported a marginal age effect suggesting that children might be even more susceptible to violent video game effects. At present, almost all experimental studies targeting the effects of violent video games on aggression and/or empathy focussed on the effects of short-term video gameplay. In these studies the duration for which participants were instructed to play the games ranged from 4 min to maximally 2 h (mean = 22 min, median = 15 min, when considering all experimental studies reviewed in two of the recent major meta-analyses in the field) and most frequently the effects of video gaming have been tested directly after gameplay.
 * Simone Kühn, Dimitrij Tycho Kugler, Katharina Schmalen, Markus Weichenberger, Charlotte Witt, Jürgen Gallinat, “Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study”, Molecular Psychiatryvolume 24, pages1220–1234 (2019)


 * Taken together, the findings of the present study show that an extensive game intervention over the course of 2 months did not reveal any specific changes in aggression, empathy, interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs, depressivity, anxiety or executive control functions; neither in comparison to an active control group that played a non-violent video game nor to a passive control group. We observed no effects when comparing a baseline and a post-training assessment, nor when focussing on more long-term effects between baseline and a follow-up interval 2 months after the participants stopped training. To our knowledge, the present study employed the most comprehensive test battery spanning a multitude of domains in which changes due to violent video games may have been expected. Therefore the present results provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games. This debate has mostly been informed by studies showing short-term effects of violent video games when tests were administered immediately after a short playtime of a few minutes; effects that may in large be caused by short-lived priming effects that vanish after minutes. The presented results will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective of the real-life effects of violent video gaming. However, future research is needed to demonstrate the absence of effects of violent video gameplay in children.
 * Simone Kühn, Dimitrij Tycho Kugler, Katharina Schmalen, Markus Weichenberger, Charlotte Witt, Jürgen Gallinat, “Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study”, Molecular Psychiatryvolume 24, pages1220–1234 (2019)

L

 * We always think of the road not taken, of something in the past. 'Wow, what would have happened if I married so and so, or took that job in San Diego…' But you rarely think that each and every second that goes by is one of those moments. Like this second that just happened. And that one. And the one that's going to happen in a second." Potentially, each of these seconds could alter a game in a profound way. Just as they can in life. The easiest thing for us to imagine is that our lives, and the story we are playing, are pre-designed, solid. But neither gaming nor life has to be like that. In both, we can alter and decide in a way that is surprising, ultimately freeing.
 * Ken Levine, Ken Levine Bioshok Interview, The Guardian, 14 January 2014

N

 * Isn't it scary to think about the impact a game can have on people's lives? That said, I really admire them for the time, energy and money that they spend on their costumes...
 * Yusuke Naora, FFshrine.org "Final Fantasy VIII Kitase, Nojima, Naora and Nomura Interview", Final Fantasy Shrine


 * That may be possible, but if there is no script, I will be out of a job! It will not be in the very far future that one character in a story will have full artificial intelligence, but I think it is pretty difficult to make all the characters with AI. That's in the very far future...
 * Kazushige Nojima, Final Fantasy VIII Kitase, Nojima, Naora and Nomura Interview, Final Fantasy Shrine

O

 * It's tough to "buy American" when a video game sold by a U.S. company has been developed by Japanese software engineers and packaged in Mexico.
 * Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, P.175


 * We know that women gamers face harassment and stalking and threats of violence from other players. When they speak out about their experiences, they're attacked on Twitter and other social media outlets, even threatened in their homes. And what's brought these issues to light is that there are a lot of women out there, especially young women, who are speaking out bravely about their experiences, even when they know they'll be attacked for it.
 * Barack Obama, (March 16, 2016). Remarks by the President at Reception in Honor of Women's History Month (Speech). Washington, DC. Archived from the original on March 18, 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2016.

P

 * We said we’d never make a video game unless we really did it hands-on. We’re both gamers, we both grew up as gamers and we both respect gaming as an art form, just like musical theatre so to us it wasn’t just ‘oh go and do something like that’. Once we’d finished Book of Mormon, South Park: The Stick of Truth really was our other big project, and right now it’s this.
 * Trey Parker, "‘South Park’ Creators Matt Stone And Trey Parker Chat ‘Fractured But Whole’, Superhero-Bashing And Shopping Channels", Huffington Post, (22 June 2015).


 * ... if playing ultraviolent video games is one of your great pleasures in life, then virtual mayhem can become even more enjoyable in the wake of a biohappiness revolution – if you so desire. That said, as an embarrassed player of first-person shooters myself, I hope posthumans will do something more edifying.
 * David Pearce, an interview to Plausible Futures (March 2021)

Q

 * I used to go to game events and feel like I was going home ... Now it's just like... are any of the people I'm currently in the room with ones that said they wanted to beat me to death?
 * (October 29, 2014). "Zoe Quinn: GamerGate must be condemned" (Interview). Interview with Dave Lee. BBC News. Archived from the original on October 30, 2014. Retrieved October 31, 2014.

R

 * This underrepresentation of women even pervades television commercials, where women not only appear less, but are also more likely to be portrayed as secondary characters supporting a male character when they are present (Ganahl, Prinsen, & Netzley, 2003). The same trend holds true for video games, where female characters are less likely to be heroes or main characters and, when they are included, they tend to dress in a manner consistent with stereotypes (Dietz, 1998). Female (vs. male) video game characters are also more likely to be sexualized and scantily dressed, while male characters tend to be hypermasculine and violent (Dill & Thill, 2007). And, consistent with research on other media effects, sexist content does affect consumers in a content-consistent manner. For example, media consumption in general (Swami et al., 2010) and frequency of playing sexist video games specifically are both associated with greater benevolent sexism (Stermer & Burkley, 2015). In another study, greater video game playing over one's lifetime was found to correlate with hostile sexism (Fox & Potocki, 2016). Together, the research shows that the way gender roles are portrayed in media can influence consumers’ own attitudes.
 * Stephen Reysen, Iva Katzarska-Miller, Courtney N. Plante, Sharon E. Roberts, Kathleen C. Gerbasi, "Examination of Anime Content and Associations between Anime Consumption, Genre Preferences, and Ambivalent Sexism", The Phoenix Papers, Vol. 3, No. 1, (August 2017).


 * GamesBeat: What do you think of the first-person shooter genre today?
 * Romero: Well, it looks better than ever. [Laughs] I don’t like the linearity of gameplay that we’ve come to. There’s a balance between how much you spend on art production versus how much you spend on level design and QA. The more you have to explore, the more you have to draw and model, and the more you have to test. Someone at EA or Activision did some analysis – when a space gets this big, the costs go up by this many millions, so it’s a lot easier if you have a corridor with some big collision brushes that the player just goes down. It’s much easier for QA to worry about the look of those areas that you can’t get into. The economics of how much shooters cost is what’s dictated the linearity of design. Then everyone’s trying to figure out how to make it so the player feels like they have agency and exploration ability, even though they really don’t.
 * John Romero, "After 20 years, Doom co-creator John Romero looks back on the impact of a seminal (and Satanic) game (interview)" by Dean Takahashi, Venturebeat.com (December 11, 2013)


 * GamesBeat: Do you like an open world better than a more story-based game? What do you think of those different directions?
 * Romero: Games are all about mechanics. That’s what games are, at the heart. You can put a story on top of any mechanics, to string something together, but the game is about the mechanics. To me, one of the most powerful things about games is the story the player can put into the game. The more story you put into a game, the less ownership of the story you give to the player. The less story you put in a game, the more the player feels they can create their own story. When you play deathmatch, you’re creating a whole story that you can talk about when you’re done, as opposed to something like—You play The Last of Us and you’re told the whole thing through the scripting. You know the outcome because you can go to the next segment of the game when you’ve finished the interactive portion. I’m not a fan of games that are really just stories with some limited interactive sequences in them. I’m about pure mechanics with a story stringing it together. That’s the essence of the medium.
 * John Romero, "After 20 years, Doom co-creator John Romero looks back on the impact of a seminal (and Satanic) game (interview)" by Dean Takahashi, Venturebeat.com (December 11, 2013)


 * Past video game play in excess of 3 h/wk correlated with 37% fewer errors (P<.02) and 27% faster completion (P<.03). Overall Top Gun score (time and errors) was 33% better (P<.005) for video game players and 42% better (P<.01) if they played more than 3 h/wk. Current video game players made 32% fewer errors (P=.04), performed 24% faster (P<.04), and scored 26% better overall (time and errors) (P<.005) than their nonplaying colleagues. When comparing demonstrated video gaming skills, those in the top tertile made 47% fewer errors, performed 39% faster, and scored 41% better (P<.001 for all) on the overall Top Gun score. Regression analysis also indicated that video game skill and past video game experience are significant predictors of demonstrated laparoscopic skills.
 * Rosser JC Jr, Lynch PJ, Cuddihy L, Gentile DA, Klonsky J, Merrell R., "The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st century.", Arch Surg. 2007 Feb;142(2):181-6; discussion 186.

S

 * Many studies show the link between playing ultra-violent video games and violent behavior. We have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to protect against the effects of games that depict ultra-violent actions.
 * Arnold Schwarzenegger, GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER FILES APPEAL TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM ULTRA-VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES Ca.gov


 * This industry has some profound issues in the way it treats women.
 * Brendan Sinclair, (December 15, 2014). "GamerGate's silver lining". GamesIndustry.biz. Archived from the original on December 18, 2014. Retrieved December 18, 2014.


 * Show me your children’s games, and I will show you the next hundred years.
 * Smartbomb, by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby


 * Video games are a prevalent and increasingly expressive medium within modern society. In the forty years since the introduction of the first home video game, the field has attracted exceptional artistic talent. An amalgam of traditional art forms—painting, writing, sculpture, music, storytelling, cinematography—video games offer artists a previously unprecedented method of communicating with and engaging audiences.
 * Smithsonian, The Art of Video Games, (March 16, 2012 - September 30, 2012).


 * Of course another layer of challenge came from the fact that, like most other developers at that time, we were still feeling our way with 3D. Things like camera and character control presented a lot of interesting new challenges and required us to try out a number of approaches before we settled on solutions that seemed to work.
 * Chris Sorrell, "Behind the Classics: MediEvil", blog.us.playstation, 7 September 2012


 * Playing video games is like playing tennis or running or traveling. It’s an interest. When a couple participates in a hobby together it’s exciting. The more a couple has in common, the more validated they feel by one another.
 * Rachel Sussman, in "Couples who game together, stay together" by Jennifer Wright, New York Post, September 22, 2013


 * What’s great about games in particular is that it’s a socially acceptable way for adults to imagine. Take for example a fantasy that has you as a big, burly weapons expert. You run through buildings gunning down bad guys, saving the day and becoming a hero. “If you start telling all your coworkers that you just imagined that, they’d think you were certifiable.
 * Games can be art, and they can be significant and all the glorified things that we want them to be,” Swift said. “But if you ask a kid if their toys are important, they’ll say yes, and please don’t take them away.
 * Kim Swift, "Portal Designer Kim Swift Won’t Let You Take Her Toys Away", Wired, 21 June 2012

T

 * Unlike novels or movies, video games are an interactive medium where the player's actions drive the story forward, so I had actually wanted to allow players to manipulate the evidence themselves earlier on in the series.
 * Shu Takumi, Shu Takumi gives insight about the creation and evolution of Ace Attorney. Nintendowire. Retrieved November 17, 2017.


 * It feels like the gamers are finally in charge of our games. I like that. I trust that crowd so much just because of our Kickstarter campaign. We never approached our audience this way. Usually we make a game and it’s like we gift it to the players. But this time the players gifted us with the ability to make the game. And like all of my successes, PencilTest and the Kickstarter backers lifted the ceiling off of me. I hope I’ve done everyone right. I really want to honor the investment people have made in this game. It’s important that it succeed and it’s important that this model work for other games and developers too.
 * Doug TenNaple, "A Conversation with ‘Armikrog’/‘Earthworm Jim’ creator Doug TenNapel", Skwigly, 30 September 2015


 * Work hard. That’s the thing that most people who love games and animation may not realize about what they’re seeing. It requires an ugly amount of work. You have to dedicate your life to it, but I believe almost anyone can learn how to make games and animate at a competent level. I don’t believe in following your dreams and going into too much fairy dust about the arts. Sure, it’s fun, but there are many times it’s not fun and you still have to do it.
 * Doug TenNaple, "A Conversation with ‘Armikrog’/‘Earthworm Jim’ creator Doug TenNapel", Skwigly, 30 September 2015


 * I have very strong opinions on that, and it's kind of my area of expertise. The reason why I got out of video games, or am at least leaning away from video games (I just contract for them,) is really that a video game is a terrible place to tell a story. It's really because the reason we go to a game is different from the reason why we go to a more passive form of entertainment. And really a great story can be there, but it's optional. What must be there is good gameplay. And that's why at its core, I think it's inaccurate to call it some kind of sequential storytelling medium when, at its core, it's not necessary. If you get a guy who just good at drawing wacky cartoons, you've probably got in the wrong guy if your next game is going to see some Gothic horror. Yeah, I think in a way video games have gotten a really bad start with how expensive it became to develop in such a short amount of time. You know if you look at the budgets of what it cost to make a film in the first year that film was invented versus the fifth year or the 10th year the budgets didn’t go up astronomically. But if you look at video games, they went nuts and the original developers were working with this primitive technology and most games were done with under eight people in under a year for three quarters of a million dollars if you were lucky.
 * Doug TenNapel, Digging For Worms: "Why Doug Tennapel Doesn't Care What His Fans Think", Gamasutra, 6 June 2006


 * By the ’80s, the early pioneering work done by female programmers had mostly been forgotten. In contrast, Hollywood was putting out precisely the opposite image: Computers were a male domain. In hit movies like “Revenge of the Nerds,” “Weird Science,” “Tron,” “WarGames” and others, the computer nerds were nearly always young white men. Video games, a significant gateway activity that led to an interest in computers, were pitched far more often at boys, as research in 1985 by Sara Kiesler, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, found. “In the culture, it became something that guys do and are good at,” says Kiesler, who is also a program manager at the National Science Foundation. “There were all kinds of things signaling that if you don’t have the right genes, you’re not welcome.”
 * Clive Thompson, “The Secret History of Women in Coding”, The New York Times, (Feb. 13, 2019).


 * The gaming industry has come under increased scrutiny following the December 2012 shootings in Newtown, Connecticut — a tragedy that has reignited the debate surrounding gun control and violent media. Vice President Joe Biden discussed the issue with game industry leaders earlier this year, while the National Rifle Association has taken a more pointed approach, singling out video games as a driver of violent culture. After the Newtown shooting, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre described the gaming industry as "a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people."
 * Amar Toor, “EA will no longer pay gun makers for the right to depict weapons in games”, The Verge, (May 8, 2013).


 * The game company claims it has the legal right to depict branded weapons in its products, likening its games to novels and other narrative-based media. "We're telling a story and we have a point of view," Frank Gibeau, EA president of labels, said in an interview with Reuters. "A book doesn't pay for saying the word 'Colt,' for example."
 * Amar Toor, “EA will no longer pay gun makers for the right to depict weapons in games”, The Verge, (May 8, 2013).


 * Most studies on the impact of playing violent video games on mental health have focused on aggression. Relatively few studies have examined the relationship between playing violent video games and depression, especially among preadolescent youth.
 * Susan R. Tortolero, Melissa F. Peskin, Elizabeth R. Baumler, Paula M. Cuccaro, Marc N. Elliott, Susan L. Davies, Terri H. Lewis, Stephen W. Banspach, David E. Kanouse, Mark A. Schuster; “Daily Violent Video Game Playing and Depression in Preadolescent Youth”, “Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw”], 2014 Sep 1; 17(9): 609–615.


 * In the present study, we examined the association between daily violent video game playing over the past year and depression in a large, ethnically diverse preadolescent sample. We found that playing high-violence video games for ≥2 hours per day is significantly associated with having a higher number of depressive symptoms. This association was consistent across all racial/ethnic subgroups and among boys, and more important, it was observed after controlling for aggression and several violence-related variables. The magnitude of these associations was small (Cohen's d values ranged from 0.12 to 0.25). However, these effect sizes are similar to those reported for the association between playing violent video games and aggression. Overall, our findings indicate that playing violent video games for a substantial amount of time each day over an extended period is significantly associated with depression in preadolescent youth. They also suggest that this association is unique, given that the number of depressive symptoms was not associated either with playing low-violence video games or with time spent playing video games in general.
 * Susan R. Tortolero, Melissa F. Peskin, Elizabeth R. Baumler, Paula M. Cuccaro, Marc N. Elliott, Susan L. Davies, Terri H. Lewis, Stephen W. Banspach, David E. Kanouse, Mark A. Schuster; “Daily Violent Video Game Playing and Depression in Preadolescent Youth”, “Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw”], 2014 Sep 1; 17(9): 609–615.


 * In conclusion, we found that, compared with playing low-violence video games for <2 hours per day, playing high-violence video games for ≥2 hours per day was significantly associated with a higher number of depressive symptoms among preadolescent youth. However, the magnitude of the association was small and a causal relationship cannot be inferred. Nevertheless, it should be noted that even these small effect sizes can be of practical importance considering the large number of preadolescent and adolescent youth who regularly play violent video games. More studies are needed to examine the association between playing violent video games and depression in general and among boys in particular. If this association were confirmed, longitudinal studies would then be needed to investigate its causality, persistence over time, underlying mechanisms, and clinical implications.
 * Susan R. Tortolero, Melissa F. Peskin, Elizabeth R. Baumler, Paula M. Cuccaro, Marc N. Elliott, Susan L. Davies, Terri H. Lewis, Stephen W. Banspach, David E. Kanouse, Mark A. Schuster; “Daily Violent Video Game Playing and Depression in Preadolescent Youth”, “Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw”], 2014 Sep 1; 17(9): 609–615.

U

 * Games are still considered to be in the sub-culture category, coming under movies, coming under manga or comics or animation, especially in Japan. So, hopefully we'll be able to establish our own position that can be established as a culture.
 * Nobuo Uematsu, FFshrine.org "Final Fantasy IX "Round Table" Developers Interview: Page II", Final Fantasy Shrine


 * Even in Japan, I don't think that the game culture is established. So, probably the users are kids in school, even adults, I'm not sure up to which age they are. For example, my father will watch movies but games don't appear in his life at all, I think that that's sad. Even though we can create something really good, our parents wouldn't be able to understand what we do.
 * Nobuo Uematsu, FFshrine.org "Final Fantasy IX "Round Table" Developers Interview: Page II", Final Fantasy Shrine

V

 * Video games are taking over the world, and they're doing it in style. We're winning because we offer something better than art. We offer Experience.
 * Jeff Vogel, "No, Video Games Aren't Art. We're BETTER"


 * When I write a game, I try to make you feel like you have power. Then I try to make you feel the awesome, terrifying responsibility of having power. When I force you to make a tough decision, for a brief moment, I can reprogram your brain and take your thoughts somewhere they've never been before. This is amazing. That is, at heart, what the games we make are. They are tools we creators use to compel and rewrite your brains. We haven't begun to come to terms with the power we've unleashed with these toys, these addiction machines.
 * Jeff Vogel, "No, Video Games Aren't Art. We're BETTER"


 * Video games should not interest or impress you. We should scare you. Video games are taking over the world. You haven't even seen a fraction of what we can do.
 * Jeff Vogel, "No, Video Games Aren't Art. We're BETTER"

W

 * Videogames? In the sixties, that meant To Tell the Truth and What's My Line? Today, a lot of the apparatus we had in Batman - dressed, of course, in less imposing names - is fact. And we're lucky this is so. My present-day fascination with videogames does not derive from personal affection. I prefer working our and skiing to playing videogames. But that's a personal preference, not a value judgement. I happen to think that videogames are an ideal means to help broaden the imaginations of young people.
 * Adam West, "The Keyboard: Guest Editorials", Videogaming and Computergaming Illustrated, (July 1983), p. 6


 * Needless to say, adventure characters should be just one facet of videogaming. In the same way a painting allows us to gaze upon the faces and souls of people from another age, or a book permits us to linger on the thoughts of great figures from history and fiction, videogames can expand our awareness of the world as it is, was, or might be. The medium is still in its infancy, but read this again in a few years and see if this prediction hasn't come true: as videogaming grows, we will grow.
 * Adam West, "The Keyboard: Guest Editorials", Videogaming and Computergaming Illustrated, (July 1983), p. 6


 * Everything about the games industry sends the signal: ‘this is a space for men’. When players are repeatedly shown that women are sex symbols and damsels in distress, is it any surprise that players go on to treat women poorly in real life?. Gamergate feels like it owns the culture. Women and minorities are only welcomed if they keep their identity silent and don’t try to change the status quo. If I am a feminist, I am an outsider trying to steal their games – even if I am an avid gamer and a developer. I worry about becoming known to people outside the industry. As I gain experience in speaking, writing articles, publicising my game, I am increasing the risk of abuse. I stopped playing online games years ago. I couldn’t see why I was putting myself through the torrent of abuse, and sexual messages. Today, instead of them directing their abuse at a gamer tag, they will be contacting me directly, by email, Twitter, Facebook, and maybe anyone else that associates with me.
 * as quoted in James Batchelor, (November 10, 2014). "Games developers must fight internet abuse together". Develop. Archived from the original on November 10, 2014. Retrieved November 10, 2014.


 * The occasional awful movie can be chalked up to bad directing/acting/writing/etc., but why have traditional screen adaptations of video games been consistently terrible? I suspect a huge part is simply due to the difficulties of translating across mediums; video games are very different from a show or a movie, and turning a good game into a good show is way more difficult than it seems. Shows and movies do not require any input from the watcher outside of pressing the “Play” button, whereas games are very interactive (and a lot of times the story is also integrated into gameplay). So to turn a video game into a movie or a show requires removing essentially its core element, the “game” part, so everything else needs to be really good to make up for it, especially the writing, as there is no longer gameplay to carry the experience.
 * Edmond Wu, “Netflix’s Castlevania: An Actually Good Video Game Adaptation”, Medium, (Aug 4)

Y

 * I shrink it down by myself, actually. It's up to the schedule, so... If the artists or programmers say "no", then that's the answer. So it's kind of a mix. I always try to push a can-do attitude with them, you know?
 * Hirokazu Yasuhara, Gamasutra - Game Design Psychology: The Full Hirokazu Yasuhara Interview, Gamasutra, August 25, 2008


 * Medal of Honor's "authentic action" is a selling point for Electronic Arts. (Electronic Arts and the other companies in this story did not agree to be interviewed on tape.) To get a military man's take on the authenticity of these games, NPR spoke with Navy veteran, gun owner and war gamer Nathan Zelk. "Games today are very, very real," Zelk says. "It's the weapons; it's the story lines, you know, that people get caught up in — even the optics that are used on the guns, it says L-3 EOTech. It actually has the name of the brand on the side of it so you know which optic, you know, you could go out and buy." But Zelk says not everything in the games is based in reality. "When you get trained in the military, you're taught about [the] use of lethal force. It's a very big deal in the military — you don't draw your weapon on anybody unless there's [an] imminent threat to you, your crew, your ship that you're on, those type of things."
 * Sami Yenigun, “A Real-World Connection Between Video Games And Guns”, All Things Considered, NPR, (April 29, 2013).