Adults’ consumption of videogames as imaginative escape from routine

This paper considers the adult consumption of videogames as a form of escape from routine and often unsatisfactory aspects of consumers’ everyday lives. Drawing from a phenomenological study of 24 adult players, I illustrate aspects of escapism through play, specifically: nostalgia; ‘everyday’ daydreams; media-derived fantasies, and; virtual tourism. I consider these themes in light of the sociology of consumption and of play to highlight adult videogame consumption as a significant trajectory of experiential economies where the market provides commodities that allow for the actualisation of the imagination. A GROWN-UP VIDEOGAME MARKET According to Mintel (2006a) UK videogame sales were £2,626m in 2006 and growing at 17%, significantly more than other leisure activities such as pre-recorded music, cinema, live entertainment, or visiting museums and galleries. Globally a similar picture is presented. Kolodny (2006) cites PricewaterhouseCoopers data that predicts that the 2010 global market for videogames may be worth $46.5billon. The message from this data and its reporting is that we should ‘take videogames seriously’ on the basis of their considerable economic contribution. This market expansion also defies the popular view of videogames as the preoccupation of male teenagers, obsessively playing alone (see Poole, 2001). For example, the Entertainment Software Association’s (2007) claims that the average age of players is now 33 and that less than a third are under 18. In the UK over half of adults between 20 and 55 play videogames at least occasionally (Mintel, 2006a) and 17% of adults (over 18) play video games in any one week Mintel (2006b). To reinforce the ‘importance’ of adult digital play, Mintel’s (2006b) analysis of UK leisure highlights the very limited amount of time adults have for such activities. Leisure time is precious and more adults than in the past are choosing videogames to fill it. In this paper I therefore provide one account of what adults do with videogames. In doing so I note consumers’ use of the imagination-aided by the consumption of technology-to ‘escape’ the limitations of everyday life. THE CONSUMPTION OF THE IMAGINATION It is easy to dismiss escapism as idle daydreaming. Yet there is an established body of work in consumer culture that places the imaginary at the heart of our consumer society. First let’s consider imaginative play. The imagination is implicit in the most significant play theories of the 20th century. For example, it is seen in the nonmateriality of the ‘magic circle’ articulated by Huizinga (1938) who goes on to argue for play as a foundation of culture, and in Caillois’s (1958) paidia, the chaotic, ‘free-play’ that is the opposite of rulebound ludus. Other theorists such as Turner (1982) and Schechner (1984) are more explicit about the role of imaginative play as an outlet for fantasies that cannot be actualised in everyday social life. Here, aesthetic endeavours are a way to ‘deal with’ societal issues in a way that is separate from everyday life. This recognition of the significance of play of the imagination, according to Sutton-Smith (1997), has its roots in the Romantic period as a reaction against the growth of industrialisation and urban lifestyles. As thought and behaviour was increasingly ordered through work practices, a movement grew to free individuals from these constraints. And such a need to escape routine is a central focus of Cohen and Taylor’s Escape Attempts, (1992). Their account of resistance to everyday life suggests that as individuals become aware of limitations in the apparently scripted life-plans that society gives them to follow, they seek various strategies to escape them. What consumer researchers add to this is the detail of how the market now provides both the source material for this imagination, and activities that aid emancipation from routine. The call to consider the fantasy in consumption was first made 25 years ago by Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) and there is now a significant ‘playful turn’ in consumer research. For example, McCracken (1988) argues that goods may act as bridges to desired, but ‘displaced’ meanings. Individuals create idealised states of being in their imagination-a golden past, a utopian future, or a promised other land-that are then deliberately removed from the everyday context to avoid possibly that they are revealed as less than what is imagined. Commodities are then used to access these desirable daydreams. This suggests a speculative, ‘wishing’ mind, discontented with everyday arrangements, and seeking to actualise fantasy through consumption. The implication is that ‘daydreaming’ about commodities is more than simple distraction, but rather an activity for meaning making and personal transformation. Campbell’s (1987) sociology of consumption is also consistent with this discourse. He describes a ‘modern hedonism’ that has developed from a Protestant ethic that suppressed overt desires, and that flourished as indulgent imagination as a result of a Romantic influence. Consumers have therefore become dream-artists who: “employ their creative, imaginative powers to construct mental images, which they consume for the intrinsic pleasure they provide” (1987:77). This resonates with characteristics of play, especially Sutton-Smith’s (1997) ‘play of the imagination’ that is based on the same Romantic foundations. For Campbell pleasure is derived from emotional experiences created by the imagination rather than physical ones, but ‘modern hedonism’ is not, as Boden & Williams (2002) suggest, only a disembodied-mentalist experience, but one where daydreaming may result in actualisation in the form of consumption. Consumer goods allow for daydreams to come true and therefore anchor abstract thoughts to the material world. In other words, daydreams are bolted onto material objects or experiences. Although fantasy may feed from an unlimited use of the imagination–i.e. may have no grounding in material existence– such extremes are a problematic way of escaping mundane reality because they cannot transform that reality. As Belk Ger & Askegaard (2003) explain, desire requires there to be hope that the object of desire can be obtained. They also argue that desire is not attached to an object because of its intrinsic qualities, “but on the consumers’ own hopes for an altered state of being” (Belk et al, 2003:348). Cohen and Taylor express it like this: “Our sense of the specialness of our inner life, coupled with our fears about allowing it to ‘run away with us’ may lead us to attempt transformations of reality by bringing our fantasies into the real world. In other words, instead of allowing fantasies to be mere adjuncts to existing scripts, we actually set out to script our fantasies, to give some concrete expression to our imaginings. ” (1992:109) For example I may happily desire a new car (and subsequent transformed life), but to desire to be a wizard or Jedi would ‘normally’ be ‘futile’. Society therefore has established imagination ‘norms’, especially related to commodities. Yet Campbell also recognises the potential for novels, films and TV to provide Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 36) / 379 individuals with the raw material for daydreams. We might now want to add videogames to Campbell’s list of media and note that through these technologies, even the desire to do magic may be actualised. This is relatively new. The result, as has been previously argued (Molesworth & Denegri-Knott, 2007), is that there may be a continuum of imaginative labour from daydream to fantasy with varying degrees of potential for actualisation through both material and digital virtual consumption. So play is at the heart of culture and now of our consumer society and videogames represent a trajectory towards the consumption of fantasy, aided by technology.