2006/02/01 by Mia Consalvo · 142 citations
Social Sciences · #Digital Games and Media #Cultural Industries and Urban Development #Asian Culture and Media Studies #Video game #Corporation #Media industry #Style (visual arts) #Popular culture #Digital media #Sociology #Focus (optics) #Business #Process (computing) #Advertising #Marketing #Media studies #Public relations #Political science #Multimedia #Computer science #World Wide Web #Visual arts #Art
paper · doi:10.1177/1461444806059921
published in New Media & Society 8(1), 117-137 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2006/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
This article argues that the contemporary console video game industry is a hybrid encompassing a mixture of Japanese and American businesses and (more importantly) cultures to a degree unseen in other media industries, especially in regard to US popular culture. The particularities of the video game industry and culture can be recognized in the transnational corporations that contribute to its formation and development; in the global audience for its products; and in the complex mixing of format, style and content within games. As an exemplar of this process, the Japanese game publisher Square Enix is the focus of this case study, as it has been successful in contributing to global culture as well as to the digital games industry through its glocal methods. That achievement by a non-Western corporation is indicative of the hybridization of the digital games industry, and it is examined here as one indicator of the complexities and challenges, as well as future potentials, of global media culture.