Real games: What’s legitimate and what’s not in contemporary videogames

Real games: What’s legitimate and what’s not in contemporary videogames

Mia Consalvo and Christopher A. Paul

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2019

ISBN: 978-0262042604

In the same way that philosophers have returned to the same questions repeatedly since before Socrates, it seems as if there is a question at the heart of games studies will never really be answered – what is a game? This question is present in pretty much all of the texts that form the ‘canon’ of games studies, and is often answered, like many definitional questions, in terms of the necessary and sufficient conditions required for something to be a game.

In the refreshing Real Games, Mia Consalvo and Christopher A. Paul deflate this question working from the understanding that 'the definition of what counts as a game is (and always has been) historically and culturally contingent…' (p. xxxiv). Instead, they examine the idea of a ‘real game’ using the lens of prototype theory, through which definitions are negotiated from both norms and exceptions to norms. The use of the word ‘real’ here seems to tell us much more than the use of the word ‘game’.

Taking this approach allows them to acknowledge that ‘categorisation is a cultural act’ (p. xxxii) and they examine the cultural process that leads to games being categorised as ‘not real’ by focusing on online discourse around free-to-play and casual games. From this it is clear that games are defined not by their features, but by who makes and plays them, how they are distributed and paid for, and how they are talked about by players (and non-players). This discussion lays bare many of the cultural assumptions at work behind this process of categorisation, in particular where these are hypocritical or inconsistent.

Consalvo and Paul present their argument as a developing story, with each chapter moving forward a few years chronologically in the period from 2010 to 2018, and focusing on the games that were at the heart of discussions at each point to draw out specific cultural themes. This vaguely historical approach, moving from Farmville to Flappy Bird, clearly lays out the development of current attitudes towards real and unreal games. I did occasionally find myself keen to make connections to more recent games that have become the subject of similar debates. However, this would be the case whenever the cut-off point for the book was, and the concluding chapter does a good job of tying the chapters together.

The book ends with something of a twist, in that the authors switch discussion over to another genre of game, the ‘walking simulator’. This is a masterstroke as it moves all of their arguments about casual games (a genre that tends to be ignored in books like this) towards a genre that is largely beloved by critics and academics writing about games. This places the implied audience of the book at the centre of critique, and makes us complicit in discussions that might otherwise be seen as belonging to other people. Their key conclusion is that discussions about what counts as ‘real’ often contribute directly to the toxicity that dominates discussions of games.

Consalvo and Paul’s essential argument is that we all need to be more inclusive of what constitutes ‘real’ when talking about games. Earlier they acknowledge that "Overwatch is the subject of multiple conference papers, while Gymnastics Superstar deserves barely a second glance" (p26). Distinctions like this in academia reflect the idea that we still need to take seriously the games that others’ might value in order to transform definitions and detoxify conversations. Answering the question of what ‘counts’ as a real game is not a mere theoretical exercise, but has implications far beyond the field of academic games studies. For this reason alone, this book is worth reading.