Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo [Paperback]

Eugene Provenzo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1991

In video arcades and family rooms across America, children wielding joysticks cluster around display screens for hours playing video games. Like computers video games are now an integral part of the educational, social and cultural experience of childhood and in this book Eugene Provenzo explores the meaning of this phenomenon. Because of its domination of the video game industry, Provenzo focuses specifically on the Japanese Nintendo Corporation. Although it is widely acknowledged that computers are radically redefining patterns of communication - as well as the organization, structure, and preservation of knowledge - relatively little serious attention has been paid to the specific role of video games within American culture. Yet this form of computer game system is rapidly becoming the predominant medium linking the culture of childhood and the culture of simulation, a medium significantly different from television and film, since it allows the player to advance from passive spectator to active participant in the rule-driven world of the video game. In reviewing the literature on the subject, Provenzo reveals a professional consensus that downplays the negative effects of video games by dismissing many studies as inconclusive or inadequately designed to assess long-term effects. The author challenges these assumptions, arguing that from a social and cultural point of view, video game technology is neither neutral not trivial - video games reflect and pass on the particular values of mainstream culture. Through content analysis of a variety of games, Provenzo elaborates recurring themes of gender stereotyping, aggression, and violence. "Video Kids" raises questions about the role of video games and their impact on the lives and values of young people. It delivers a mandate to researchers who are investigating ways in which video games can be used in the classroom. To ensure a creative educational environment for all young learners, video games must be freed of the violent and sexist messages that currently pervade the medium.

Product Details

• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (September 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674937090
• ISBN-13: 978-0674937093
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,296,413 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Simply another book about computer from a sociological view, August 28, 2000

By 

Lam, Ho Cheong (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo (Paperback)

This book looks at video game as a sociological and cultural phenomenon, which means raising the kind of questions like whether excessive playing of the video game will promote and encourage violence and aggression. This seems true but there are people actually counter-argue that playing the game will purge the desire of the players to act aggressively, thus consequently reducing the aggression of the players. Another typical question brought up in the book is about the underlying messages carried by the video game, such as the gender stereotype. The girls in the games are often portrayed as ¡§weak¡¨ and submissive victims being kidnapped; while the boys are always the one to rescue and save the girls. Though the author has put much effort on analyzing the contents of many popular Nintendo games and fitting the findings into this framework or perspective, many of the arguments put forward in the book are simply similar to other scholarly books that look at the computer from a cultural viewpoint. For example, the book "The Cultural Dimensions of Educational Computing: Understanding the Non-neutrality of Technology" by C.A. Bowers is much more widely known, and is about the kind of messages amplified by the computer. If you are familiar with this kind of works, you may not gain much insight from this book. But if you find the above examples or arguments interesting, you may have a look.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Has this guy ever PLAYED a video game?, November 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo (Paperback)

This is a critique of video games, written by a person who has never played one. His research seems to extend as far as watching others play, scanning advertising materials and frequenting the game stores with a notebook in hand.

The author gets the names of games wrong (_The Adventure of Zelda?_), and a section accusing the game _Dragon Warrior_ of sexism is especially embarrassing. He complains that the back of the game box does not name the Princess that you have to rescue. If he had bothered to OPEN the box, then he would have found her name displayed very prominently in the instructions.

He does not even stop to consider the fact that most (all?) of the games mentioned in his book come from Japan, a country with a different set of cultural assumptions than his.

This book is _very_ poorly researched.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars psyco- and sociological analysis of video games and kids, June 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo (Paperback)

Although the current industy has a wider audience than when this book was written, it does an interesting job of asking how do video games affect our culture. It reads like a psychology thesis paper... I don't nescesarily mean that in abad way. It relates many surveys and studies about games and whether they induce violence, sexism, etc. in kids. If you have any interest in these issues it can offer some solid information and teach a little about the study of sociology it is worth some time.