Rethinking Game Studies: A case study approach to video game play and identification

The video game play of individuals, in particular those who game alone, is rarely studied outside of effects based research or autoethnographic explorations. Rather than focus on gaming groups and gaming fans, this study situates the analysis of video game play with the individual, solitary player. There were three main goals in this project. The first was to see how video game play fits within the lives and media diets of those who do not identify as hardcore video game fans. The second was to interrogate the hardcore/casual and social/solitary gaming divides that define much popular understanding of video game play. The final goal was to investigate the process of identification in video games in a qualitative manner. While a small-scale pilot study, the methodology discussed herein should be useful in future research on video game audiences and identification.