Wii play as a familiy, the rise in family-centred video gaming

Leisure Studies

ISSN: 0261-4367 (Print) 1466-4496 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlst20

‘Wii play as a family’: the rise in family-centred video gaming Deborah Chambers To cite this article: Deborah Chambers (2012) ‘Wii play as a family’: the rise in family-centred video gaming, Leisure Studies, 31:1, 69-82, DOI: 10.1080/02614367.2011.568065 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2011.568065

Published online: 04 Jul 2011.

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Leisure Studies Vol. 31, No. 1, January 2012, 69–82

‘Wii play as a family’: the rise in family-centred video gaming Deborah Chambers* Media and Cultural Studies, School of Arts and Cultures, Armstrong Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK (Received 3 August 2010; final version received 28 February 2011) Taylor and Francis RLST_A_568065.sgm

2011 Leisure 10.1080/02614367.2011.568065 0261-4367 Article 0Taylor 00 Professor deborah.chambers@ncl.ac.uk 000002011 &Studies Francis DeborahChambers (print)/1466-4496 (online)

The idea that video gaming is for the ‘whole family’, to be played in the communal space of the living room, has gained momentum since the release of Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation and Nintendo Wii. This article addresses the growing popularity in family-centred video gaming in the British context by examining the design, promotion, instatement and use of this new media technology in the home.

Research on the domestication of media technology is drawn on to examine the social impulses and conditions under which family-centred video gaming is introduced in the home as a domestic leisure activity. In response to parental anxieties about children’s disengagement from family life through new media use, industry-led claims that video gaming can foster family harmony are appealing.

Representations of family gaming in the Wii commercials are analysed in relation to the findings of recent independent surveys on emerging patterns of gaming between parents and children. Policy issues emerge about the potential social and educational benefits of family-centred gaming and assumptions about them made in surveys and government-commissioned reports. Important questions are raised about the family dynamics of video gaming and children’s potential to benefit from this family-centred media entertainment in diverse family contexts.

Keywords: family; video gaming; new media; Nintendo Wii; domestic media technology

Introduction A new kind of home-based entertainment targeted at the family has been established since the release of Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox and Sony Playstation. Representing a key shift in the meanings and uses of new media-based home leisure, these platforms have succeeded in signifying video gaming as sociable, respectable and ‘family centred’.

Parents make considerable investments in purchasing expensive gaming equipment.

This article explores the nature, extent and patterns of family-centred video gaming within its relatively short history and considers the implications of the trend in relation to family dynamics and future policy on children’s engagement with new media.

The article traces the launch and establishment of family-centred video gaming by focusing on Nintendo Wii as market-leader from 2006. The aim is to enquire into the origins and social consequences of the success by consumer electronic giants in cultivating family-orientated video gaming. The ways that families and young people are being addressed within this process are examined in the British context. A sociological and cultural approach is used in addressing relations between family and new media, *Email: deborah.chambers@ncl.ac.uk ISSN 0261-4367 print/ISSN 1466-4496 online © 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2011.568065 http://www.tandfonline.com

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informed by research and debates on the domestication of media technology (Berker, Hartmann, Punie, & Ward, 2006; Livingstone, 1992; Silverstone & Hirsch, 1992; Silverstone, Hirsch, & Morley, 1992). How the video game console is designed, marketed and instated in the home are explored as part of an enquiry about how far and under what conditions video gaming is being promoted as a family-based, educational domestic leisure activity. In response to parental anxieties about the disconnection of youth from family life, new media technologies such as Nintendo Wii have been encoded as familycentred devices to extend their markets beyond former perceptions of the standard male user. Images of families playing in Nintendo Wii commercials are analysed in relation to recent survey findings on patterns of video gaming between parents and children.

Changing families, homes and domestic technologies Changes in family relationships and spatial configurations in the western home have corresponded with the introduction of domestic media technologies since the early twentieth century (Morley, 2007; Silverstone, 1991, 1994; Spigel, 1992). Highlighting the complex roles and uses of technology in the home, the idea of ‘domestication’ and notion of a ‘moral economy’ were developed in the 1990s to analyse household negotiations of media technology and the meanings associated with new information and communication technology (ICT) use in families (Haddon, 2004; Holloway & Valentine, 2003; Silverstone, 2006; Silverstone & Hirsch, 1992). By tracing the social conditions surrounding the instatement of domestic media technologies, significant parallels and differences between earlier and recent technologies can be identified to provide insights into the ways video gaming is being integrated into family relations.

For example, during its period of inception from the late 1930s to the 1950s, television was promoted as a domestic technology that fostered family harmony. In the post-war period, popular media images of 1950s nuclear families gathered around TV sets to watch programmes together were powerful symbols of domestic stability after the turbulences of World War II (Spigel, 1992).

By contrast, transformations in communication technology from the 1960s, marked by the transistorisation and miniaturisation of domestic media, corresponded with a fragmentation of family-centred domestic leisure. These innovations allowed mobile media technologies such as portable TV, radio and hi-fi to be freed from living room settings and repositioned around the home in the privatised and centrally heated spaces of bedrooms. The arrival of the second TV set often changed viewing experiences by reducing communal TV watching and hence ‘family time together’ (Haddon, 2006, p. 117). The shift from communal, family-centred leisure to more privatised, individuated home-based entertainment was accelerated by the late twentieth century growth in personalised and digitalised domestic media. This trend coincided with the rise of youth-centred media and a screen-rich ‘bedroom culture’ (Bovill & Livingstone, 2001; Lincoln 2004; Livingstone 2009).

By the 1990s, young people were engaging in solitary modes of media entertainment in the often unsupervised space of their bedrooms (Silverstone & Hirsch, 1992).

In this private space, children were more likely to be in communication with a virtual and outside world, through the Internet, than with adult members of their own household. The solitary use of media gadgets by children and teenagers marked an individualisation of media use and fragmentation of domestic leisure (Flichy, 1995; Livingstone, 2002; Mackay, 1997; Silverstone & Hirsch, 1992; Spigel, 1992). A ‘compartmentalisation of family life’ (van Rompaey & Roe, 2001) corresponded with

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new patterns of family associations, described as ‘living together but separately’ (Flichy, 1995). New media-related innovations prompted new and differing forms of household negotiations. Emergent types of interaction and regulation in households were being created by parents who restricted the extent to which their children used phones, computers, the Internet, video games, etc. (Haddon, 2004; Hirsch,1992; Livingstone, 1992; Silverstone & Haddon, 1996).

The continual innovation of new media gadgets for home-based use has coincided with transformations in family arrangements in a ‘post-traditional’ society (Giddens, 1993) characterised by rising divorce rates, post-divorce and ‘new’ families. Public anxieties about a crisis in family values have been associated with concerns about media-obsessed, atomised and self-absorbed youth. A striking feature of today’s home video console such as Nintendo’s Wii is that this new media technology is designed and marketed for communal use in a living room context. Against the backdrop of public anxiety, these machines contradict the trend of individualisation and fragmentation of domestic, media-based leisure by apparently offering a number of benefits that foster family harmony.

Parental anxieties about young people’s engagement with new media Parents are understandably keen to create a media-rich environment for their children through the purchase of ICTs, believing that they will have educational value. Indeed, today’s adolescents are perceived to be at the forefront of the global revolution in technology and culture (Buckingham, 2000, 2007; Livingstone, 2009). However, with a growing number of new media items in children’s bedrooms at younger ages, traditional public fears about children and media are perpetuated (Critcher, 2008; Livingstone, 2009). Media panics persist about socially disengaged young people replacing human contact with virtual contact. They correspond with concerns that ‘youth’ is increasingly disconnected from family life. These fears are acknowledged in government reports including ‘Safer Children in A Digital World’ for the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) (Byron, 2008). The report states: New media are often met by public concern about their impact on society and anxiety and polarisation of the debate can lead to emotive calls for action. Indeed, children’s use of the Internet and video games has been seen by some as directly linked to violent and destructive behaviour in the young. There are also concerns about excessive use of these technologies by children at the expense of other activities and family interaction. As we increasingly keep our children at home because of fears for their safety outside – in what some see as a ‘risk-averse culture’ – they will play out their developmental drives to socialize and take risks in the digital world. (Byron Review, 2008, p. 2)

The idea of a risk-averse culture is fuelled by negative research findings. Adolescents spend considerable amounts of leisure time at home in the privacy of bedrooms rather than in communal family spaces through a solitary use of new media (Bovill & Livingstone, 2001; Livingstone, 2002). Extensive use of ICTs by young people has been associated with poor health, the decline of face-to-face communication, social isolation, low self-esteem and social incompetence (Gentile, Lynch, Linder, & Walsh, 2004; Strasbourg & Wilson, 2002; Vandebosch & Van Cleemput, 2009). However, positive research findings include greater teen autonomy, greater teen choice and enhancement of peer group relations (Buckingham, 2007; Cheong, 2008; Livingstone, 2009; Patchin & Hinduja, 2010).

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Nevertheless, tensions between parents and children over young people’s uses of new media are accelerating. Given that parental ICT skills are often surpassed by children’s skills, parents are worried about losing control over children’s lives and being unable to protect them against problems such as cyberbullying and game violence. Despite their concerns, parents are poorly informed about their children’s activities and often fail to monitor them effectively (Offcom, 2009a; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008; Ulicsak & Cranmer, 2010). Parental control is declining as the technology becomes more complicated and unfamiliar (Livingstone, 2009). Previous research showed how the entry of new ICTs into the home affects people’s relationships with existing media technologies. Linking games consoles to the main family TV set often generated disagreements between parents and children (Haddon, 2006, p. 116). Video gaming frequently led to the take-over of the family living room by children, especially among younger children aged 6–10 (Aarsand & Aronsson, 2009; BBC, 2005). However, other evidence suggests that games consoles gravitate into the private space of children’s bedrooms with 69% of 5–16-year-olds having games consoles, radios and DVD players in their bedrooms (ChildWise, 2009).

Parents feel pressured to strike deals with their children about when and where they can play video and computer games, such as after completion of school homework (Haddon & Silverstone, 1995; Silverstone, 2006). The challenge for parents is to ensure children’s physical and psychological safety as well as providing opportunities for them to explore, interact, experiment and enhance their social and personal development (Livingstone, 2009; Ulicsak & Cranmer, 2010). Against the backdrop of parental anxieties, the launch of family-orientated gaming has been a market triumph. This mode of home-based gaming appears to offer positive ways of recuperating ‘youth’ within a familial entertainment discourse by promoting the idea that parents can supervise their children’s use of new media. Recommendations are being made that parents keep the console in a shared space so that they can monitor children’s activities (Ulicsak & Cranmer 2010). Parent–child collaborative play is now regarded as a major mediating strategy for parents (Nikken, Jansz, & Schouwstra, 2007).

The launch of a family-centred form of gaming In this section, the concept, design, launch and promotion of Nintendo Wii in 2006 is examined as an exemplar. During the mid-1990s, the Sony PlayStation console was perceived as the preserve of teenage boys and men in their twenties with spare income and loose family ties. Gaming narratives tended to have masculine appeal, reflected by the gender-specific characters and content of games (Jansz, Avis, & Vosmeer, 2010). While the 1990s video game was typically found in a teenage bedroom (BBC, 2005; Bovill & Livingstone, 2001; Livingstone, 2009), from 2005 the industry began to target a new space: the living room. The successful promotion of video games as family gaming entailed the design of more socially acceptable games. With the first UK commercials introduced in November 2006, Wii advertised a family system (Nintendo, 2009). Other platforms followed in promoting family-friendly games including Sony PlayStation 3’s LittleBigPlanet (2007), Rock Band (MTV Games and Electronic Arts 2007) and its cross-platform Guitar Hero (Activision 2005) (Ulicsak, Wright, & Cranmer, 2009, p. 8). The market in the UK expanded by 26% in 2008 (Riley, 2008). Games console ownership continues to increase with an average of 2.4 consoles per UK household in 2009 (Ofcom, 2009b).

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Since the launch of the ‘family-friendly’ Wii in 2006, Nintendo have been ahead in the console market with Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii being the most popular platforms. The Nintendo Wii is used almost evenly by men and women in the UK. Over a six-month period during 2008, 29% of women and 32% of men played on the Wii at least once with 15% of users being between the ages of 45 and 64 (TNS, 2008).

A quarter of British homes now have a Nintendo Wii video game console (Ulicsak & Cranmer, 2010). Nintendo’s promotion of the concept of family gaming is exemplified by its successful releases of Wii Play (2006), Wii Sports (2006) and Wii Fit (2007) which are specifically designed to be easy to learn and group-orientated. To identify the Wii as family-centred, Nintendo combined body movement with character diversity to produce new kinds of interactive use. New modes of gaming were created to reduce differences in physical ability and computer dexterity. The new control systems are now designed for directed movement by the whole body, offering a range of levels of physical strength and styles of play in a format that can foster intergenerational users to compete on equal terms (Shinkle, 2008). Thus, home video games have been designed specifically to allow mixed age groups, i.e. of parents and grandparents, to compete equally with young people.

Significant gender differences in the type of games preferred also needed to be addressed in the design of family-centred gaming. Gender differences in amounts of video game playing are decreasing, but girls and boys approach computer play in different ways which are likely to be related to genre and specific elements of narrative such as character and setting (BBC, 2005; Bryce & Rutter, 2006; Krotoski, 2004).

Younger children of either sex tend to prefer puzzles and action adventure games with popular characters from film and TV such as Bob the Builder (BBC/Playstation 2002) and Toy Story 3 (Disney Interactive Studios 2010). As they age, boys often prefer first person shooters, racing and action games while girls continue with puzzles and simulations (Marsh et al., 2005). A large-scale content analysis of the gender, race and age of characters in popular video games in comparison with the US population showed a systematic over-representation of males, white and adults and a systematic underrepresentation of females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly (Williams, Martins, Consalvo, & Ivory, 2009). To overcome such exclusionary representations and encourage both sexes to participate in the same games, Nintendo Wii had to foster family-centred play by offering a varied choice of games and game characters (avatars).

Inventing the Wii family: representations of the gaming family in the Wii commercials Nintendo Wii consoles were advertised on television in Britain in the lead up to Christmas from 2006 to tap into the lucrative festive market for family games, once dominated by traditional board games. The Wii commercials revealed a striking departure from the youthful, action-packed advertisement images of hand-held devices such as the Apple iPod and iPod Touch (Jenkins, 2008). These TV commercials also differed from the early 1980s Atari ads that used famous characters such as the Morecambe and Wise comedy duo.1 These Atari advertisements highlighted party fun rather than family togetherness. And in contrast to recent commercials for masculinised video games with strong military and male hero characters, the Nintendo Wii commercials accentuate kinship bonding by showing teenagers and younger children playing sport video games with parents and grandparents in domestic settings.

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The Nintendo Wii’s commercials emphasised family camaraderie generated by a new, exciting mode of collective entertainment. The phrase, ‘the whole family’ is emphasised over and over again as a core unit. For example, in the ‘Mario Goes Multiplayer’ commercial for Super Mario Wii screened in 2009,2 a family of six made up of teenage boys and girls, younger children and two women (a mother and aunt or friend) are seated together in a spacious open plan lounge playing Super Mario on a multiplayer console. The commercial is in the style of a documentary, with the name of the narrator and his family subtitled (‘Ricky Whiting and his family from Brighton’).

In his late teens, Ricky refers to ‘family’ several times in the voice-over: Playing good classic Mario with my family is so much fun. It’s the only multiplayer game I have ever played which we all work as a team. One of my family members can hang on to me and we can fly up (shows Ricky and his mother both shaking handheld devices).

This is the first platform game I’ve played with my mum. She was loving it. We normally play Mario Kart, but that was playing against each other. I think it’s going to be less rowdy and more happiness in our house when we get together. (emphasis added)

The emphasis is on family bonding within a game conveyed as collaborative rather than competitive. Advertisements for Nintendo Wii consoles in online department store catalogues chime with the same message. John Lewis’s online shopping webpage for gaming products claims: ‘With a huge range of games, from adventures to self improvement titles, the whole family will love getting together to see who’s got the smoothest moves!’3 (emphasis added).

Nintendo Wii commercials share key features that signify the console’s rightful place in the communal space of the living room. The activity, whether sport or quiz game, is staged in the heart of spacious, uncluttered middle class, suburban homes.

These open plan display homes boast ample space for hand-held controls and bodies to be swung around by players and their observer-competitors. The game is performed by all members of a nuclear-style family, by parents, children and even visiting grandparents. The ‘street’ and ‘bedroom cultures’ of youth are eliminated by this new vigour of kin-based leisure interaction. These imaginary gaming families echo an earlier type: the 1950s Kellogg’s cornflake family: white, nuclear, middle class and suburban (Chambers, 2001). Children are placed centre-stage in the Nintendo Wii commercials, shown instructing or negotiating with adults in the playing of games.

Research bears out this impulse since one of the attractions of competitive games enjoyed by families is that they are designed to allow adults and children to compete equally and reduce differences in physical ability (Ulicsak & Cranmer, 2010). The commercials accentuate ‘youth’ as the vanguard of the new technology yet as firmly embedded in the heart of the family. Within this brave new family configuration, children and adolescents are merged together as a new kind of innocent, innocuous and safe ‘youth’ through interchangeable clean-cut hairstyles, clothing, and childlike exuberance. Such qualities contrast sharply with the edgy commercials for mobile new media technology such as the iPod silhouette commercials with the ‘street’ and ‘hip’ notions of youth (Jenkins, 2008). Nintendo Wii commercials avoid using the youth codes of independence, street identity, self-control and self-absorption typical of commercials for mobile media gadgets. The relocation of video gaming devices in the family living room fosters the idea that parents can resume control over youth, with a sense of reintegrating ‘youth’ within ‘family’.

The launch of family-centred video gaming during a climate of moral uncertainty and familial changes has tremendous appeal, especially since the new youth leisure

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technology market is mostly financed by parents. Children are staying at home and remaining financially dependent on parents for longer in an unprecedented period of ‘extended youth’, often generating tensions between youth dependence and independence (Livingstone, 2009). Parents see themselves as responsible for creating a cohesive family identity (Hoover & Clark, 2008). Family identities are forged through negotiation with new media in terms of parental struggles with the issues of guiding children and understanding parents in relation to peers and sources of authority such as teachers (Hoover & Clark, 2008). Family gaming seems to offer parents opportunities for both family bonding and control of children’s use of new media.

Such family practices can be viewed as ‘socially scripted behaviour’ (Gagnon & Simon, 1973, p. 262). Family members internalise scripts which reproduce the essence of familyness. Leisure is a key context in which family bonding is scripted, with gaming offering an important site for this type of activity. Janet Finch (2007) argues that the concept of ‘display’ is vital to family bonding, emphasising that families must be ‘displayed’ as well as ‘done’. Nintendo Wii games claims to foster family identities through play by offering a vital stage on which to perform ‘family togetherness’ in a progressive domestic communication technology context.

Emerging patterns and dynamics of family gaming The extent of take-up by families, the educational and social benefits of family play and the family dynamics surrounding gaming are examined in this section. Not surprisingly, strong claims are made by the consumer electronics industry that family-centred video gaming can have a positive influence on family life. Microsoft and the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) report that parents believe family video gaming is pleasurable and beneficial to families (Microsoft, 2009; Nielsen, 2008). A market survey found that 60% of parents who have played games say that social games, such as the Wii, are being enjoyed by the whole family, rising to 68% for parents with 10–15-year-olds (TNS, 2008). Independent surveys are providing important insights into the experience of video gaming as a domestic media technology.

Home-based digital forms of learning and play by children are challenging prevailing notions of school-based learning (Hull & Kenney, 2008). Computer games are acknowledged as a major alternative to standard forms of learning (Gee, 2003; Kirriemuir & McFarlane, 2004). Independent reports, such as ‘Harnessing Technology’ by Becta (2008) on technology’s role and impact on education, are recommending that families take on greater responsibility in guiding young people in their learning. The report encourages the use of communication and entertainment technology in informal settings such as the home. However, while speculation is generated about children’s use of new media at home as well as in school, research findings on the benefits to children remain inconclusive (Drotner, Siggaard Jensen, & Schroder, 2008). Faith in video gaming as a positive mode of new media educational entertainment for children and parents is striking yet may be premature or misleading. Parents are worried about the impact of home-based ICT entertainment on children’s social and educational abilities, the cost of games and associated equipment, the safety of their children, levels of violence in games and the duration and location of play (Livingstone, 2009; Livingstone & Bober, 2003; Nikken et al., 2007; Ofcom, 2009b).

Both parents and young people (aged 5–15) perceive that there are benefits to learning and playing video games as a family (Grant, 2009; Ulicsak & Cranmer, 2010). The few studies conducted on parent–child interaction in video games report that gaming

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promotes positive interactions between parents and children (Aarsand, 2007; Coyne, Padilla-Walker, Stockdale, & Day, in press; Ito et al., 2010; Siyahhan, Barab, & Downton, 2010).

Ulicsak and Cranmer (2010) found that over a third of parents had played video games with a 3–16-year-old in the last six months. Parents highlight benefits from playing video games together as a family when the games selected emphasise parental monitoring or guidance roles and skills teaching. Co-play provides children with an opportunity to review and understand the games, ensuring that children play ageappropriate games, and that parents can moderate games so that children learn social skills such as collaboration, turn taking and sporting behaviour. However, recent research findings show that parent–child bonding through gaming is largely with primary school aged children. Adolescents continue to be mainly solitary players (BBC, 2005; Ulicsak et al., 2009). Young people in general continue to play alone much more than with their parents (Dromgoole, 2009; Ulicsak & Cranmer, 2010).

Teenagers desire independence to be able to play games away from parental supervision. They often feel a strong sense of invasion of privacy if parents wander into their territory (Horst, 2008). Such attitudes among young people are likely to represent a major challenge for family gaming. The issue of disengaged youth may be a persistent problem not necessarily addressed by the increase in sales of ‘family-friendly’ homebased consoles despite the advertising hype (Ulicsak & Cranmer, 2010, p. 17).

Gender distinctions between parents, in terms of types of play with children, are marked. Mothers are more likely than fathers to play active technology and fitness games, educational games and dance/music/singing games with a child. Conversely, fathers are more likely than mothers to play fighting games and strategy games with a child (Ulicsak & Cranmer, 2010). These gender differences reflect divisions in families and wider society, indicating that gaming may be reinforcing rather than blurring traditional social distinctions (Berker et al., 2006). Family togetherness is confirmed as parents’ main aim, with video gaming itself a secondary aim. Yet family gaming is not something that families find easy. Competitive games are popular among parents and children where differences in physical ability are reduced. But if players consistently loose the game they are likely to lose interest and play less. How the family interacts around the gaming activities appears to depend on pre-existing family relationships. Activities where young people are encouraged to tutor their parents are most popular, indicating that Nintendo Wii have developed a successful formula by designing games that allow young people to display their skills. However, this impetus may be a burden on children since they sometimes find it difficult to tutor family members despite their own greater gaming knowledge (Ulicsak & Cranmer, 2010).

A study of eight Swedish families by Aarsand and Aronsson (2009) shows how communal areas of the home are negotiated and appropriated as private spaces. They found that computers and game consoles were usually located in communal rather than private places in the home and used by several family members. However, gaming activities were recurrently a child-specific activity. Communal gaming spaces often involved territorial disputes between children and adults concerning who, when and for how long a specific area could be used for gaming. Both children and parents excluded the other party from gaming by taking over spaces and resisting attempts by others to control gaming. Children typically appropriated communal places, turning them into a private gaming space and ignoring bystanders and parental attempts at controlling gaming. Meanwhile, parents attempted to restrict the children’s gaming by limiting the scheduling, timing, duration of gaming; by interrupting gaming while the

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children positioned themselves as solo players; and by excluding the participation of others. Aarsand and Aronsson (2009) suggest that ICT may destabilise the boundaries between public and private spheres, and between generations.

Despite parents’ anxieties about the potential harmful effects of gaming on young people, knowledge about parental controls is remarkably limited among some parents.

Few are aware of the age ratings guidance and the meanings of content icons (Ulicsak & Cranmer, 2010). Some state they did not set up parental controls because they believed that their children would override the restrictions, others missed the instructions that came with the console. Previous research provides important insights about use of ICT in households with living arrangements that differ from the traditional nuclear family form (Haddon & Silverstone, 1995). Parental control of video gaming is challenged by the movement of children from first marriages in and out of a household, depending on which parents they are staying with. If children travel between two homes in which equipment is duplicated, they may experience different rules, regimes and regulations relating to ICT. Parents may find they have less control if the child moves to their ex-partners household and experiences more freedom to play video games that have more violent content. In one-parent households, older children may have a stronger negotiating role in household rules (Haddon & Silverstone, 1995).

However, video games may be beyond the reach of many single-parent families on low budgets. The households of poorer parents may seem technologically deprived to children who have access to a wealthier and media-rich parent, usually the father, which may lead to expressions of dissatisfaction (Haddon, 2006). The demand on space in poorer and/or smaller households for family gaming that requires sweeping body movements is also relevant. Recent research in the USA also found that children tried to subvert or curb their parents’ enforcement of rules regarding media use.

Hoover and Clark (2008) confirm that relationships of power are enacted in family circles, particularly those in which children identified with two different households due to separation, divorce or remarriage.

The compulsion by government and independent reports to place responsibility on parents to guide the development of young people’s gaming skills is generated by assumptions about the social and educational value of family gaming. Yet such reports fail to take into account the kinds of household pressures that limit effective parental monitoring of children’s gaming. Lack of parental knowledge about family gaming is now being addressed by the government (Byron, 2008).4 The British government requires changes to be made to the classification of video games in the UK, as set out in the Digital Economy Act 20105 in order to place age ratings of computer games on a statutory footing for ratings of 12 years and above. The UK Council for Child Internet Safety, which makes recommendation about video game ratings, identifies families as chiefly responsible despite the lack of effective monitoring of children’s gaming by parents (Byron, 2008). Research findings indicate that parents either do not have the time or the resources to investigate these monitoring issues.

Discussion Social gaming such as Nintendo Wii corresponds with transformations in family relations, home-based leisure and images of the digital game industry. Radical changes in family life coincide with changing forms of communication technology, social ties and spatial configurations in the home. The rise of more individualised modes of sociability mediated by digital media has generated new identities and virtual communities,

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with young people at the centre of these changes. During an era of rising moral uncertainty triggered by an apparent weakening of traditional family bonds, the need to renovate or rescue contemporary family relationships in an enlightened and media-rich domestic environment seems all the more urgent. The notion of a moral economy developed by domestic media researchers (Silverstone et al., 1992) to understand the practices and meanings of ICT use within late modern family life allows us to uncover emergent family dynamics surrounding gaming practices. A new emphasis on reciprocity in family life is being reflected through social gaming. Nintendo positions itself as redeemer of youth and saviour of gaming as inherently multigenerational, family entertainment. For the last two decades children were criticised for being antisocial. Today, family-centred video gaming is being embraced as having beneficial sociable and educational effects on children’s social and coordination skills. These assumptions chime with the publicity generated by giant consumer electronic corporations, that family gaming is inevitably ‘good’ for families.

Representations of family interaction in the Nintendo Wii commercials convey a powerful and appealing recuperation of traditional family values in the fast-moving context of new media. The video game is tamed and domesticated as family-oriented leisure. The perceived separateness of parent/child, male/female and inter-generational leisure seems to be eroded by the Wii’s apparent ability to foster the ‘companionable family’. A new child-centred model of the family has come to the fore, and the idea of the street-wise teenager of the iPod era has been superseded. These advertisements emphasise the affirmative dimensions of family life and offer hope. The new accent on family reciprocity being displayed through social gaming reflects the late modern process of de-traditionalisation (Giddens, 1993). The democratisation of the private sphere coincides with the reconfiguration of parent–child relations through a transformation of intimacy in which children are acquiring the right to decide about and organise the conditions of their relationships. In these kinds of circumstances, parents attempt to be answerable to them and to offer them respect (Livingstone, 2009, p. 7).

Today’s ‘democratic’, negotiating family expresses reciprocity, recognition and role flexibility through leisure. Social gaming seems to convey and embody these democratic associations. By publicly displaying family gaming equipment in communal areas of the home, families are conveying that videogames are integral parts of family life. Parents display their identities as modern, innovative families and involved parents (Aarsand & Aronsson, 2009; Finch, 2007; Forsberg, 2007).The development of social gaming, exemplified by Nintendo Wii, makes a vital contribution to the fulfilment of this apparent need.

However, a disjunction between imagery and practice is detectable in preliminary findings on the use of domestic spaces for gaming which suggest that both children and parents privatise communal space to exclude the other party from gaming (Aarsand & Aronsson, 2009). Despite the advertising hype promoting family gaming, solitary play remains the most popular mode of video game play by young people.

Parental wishes to control or monitor their children’s home-based leisure conflict with young peoples’ desires for independence and are exacerbated in single parent and post-divorce families where children move between two households. If family gaming proves to be socially and educationally beneficial to children, then issues about access will be significant. Given that the household is recognised as a site of social difference and of the reproduction of difference (Livingstone, 2006), questions are raised about the home as a context in which the digital divide widens. Children in low-income families have inferior quality access and support at home than middle-class children

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(Livingstone & Helsper, 2007; Ofcom 2009a). The role of families in guiding children’s use of new technologies needs to be addressed to understand the dynamics of young people’s home digital media play in diverse domestic contexts as well as in relation to schools and educational policy. Important matters for future research include, then, whether and how family-centred video gaming enhances social and educational skills and how far it may intensify or reduce differences in family and household types, age, ethnicity and social class.

Notes 1. Atari commercial, circa 1982 is available at http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/mivana/media2.

3.

4.

5.

player.php?id=a85b0ca62fe71228137dc7ac5d403d9a&media=atari_morecambewise&typ e=mp4 (accessed November 10, 2010).

Super Mario Wii commercial is available at http://uk.wii.com/wii/en_GB/tv/ new_super_mario_bros_wii_-_tv_commercial_2510.html (accessed July 11, 2010). http://www.johnlewis.com/Electricals/Gaming/Nintendo+Wii_2c+DS+and+DSi/SubCategory.aspx (accessed July 21, 2010).

See www.dcsf.gov.uk/ukccis/index.cfm?id=home_page.

See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100511084737/http://interactive.bis.gov. uk/digitalbritain/author/admin/ (accessed July 2, 2010).

Notes on contributor Deborah Chambers is professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Newcastle University. She is author of New Social Ties: Contemporary Connections in a Fragmented Society (Palgrave/ Macmillan, 2006); Representing the Family (Sage, 2001); co-author of Women and Journalism (Routledge, 2004); and co-author of The Practice of Cultural Studies (Sage, 2004). Her current research focuses on media, home and changing family relations.

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