One of the topics from class, domesticity, brought up some interesting points in regards to video games. “Domestication also refers more literally to the integration of the novel object into the home.” Videogames were slowly domesticated and transferred into the home and our lives. The first main consoles like the Atari infiltrated the home with their basic games that had no real niche audience. They were very abstract. This domestication happened during a point where games weren’t created completely with the gender in mind, but also it was quite difficult to make a game to fit gender with the few pixels they had. As stated in HTPVG, the ball and paddle games were meant to bring the family together, that was their marketing strategy, the family. Specifically, both genders were advertised to and this was a time period, where games had equality and more representation for women compared to the following years. Now games don’t have to worry about what specific audience as much as they worry about trying to appeal to every audience. It may be impossible to appease everyone, but it is very apparent that companies will try to incorporate as large of an audience as possible.

In the same way that domestication occurred with the ball and paddle games, we can see a similarity as casual and mobile games attempt to integrate themselves into a broad audience, that will spread gaming as a whole, versus the setting of the home and family. Domestication is similar to ludification. “The focus of ludification is on the spread of play as a practice, playfulness as an attitude and the supposedly growing role of playful designs in our everyday reality.” Mobile games have been at the bottom of the “hardcore” gaming caste system. However, the creation of games like Pokemon Go have allowed more hardcore gamers, previous lovers of Pokemon, and casual gamers to join together. There are elements within Pokemon Go that could be deemed hardcore. Elements like grinding can be considered hardcore and Pokemon Go definitely takes long hours and time to become a high level and obtain good pokemon. However, the easy accessibility and playability of it confirms Pokemon Go as a mobile or casual game. There are four elements of a mobile game that makes it what it is and those are “gameplay accessibility, software accessibility, everyday ubiquity, and variable monetization.” A phone is quite accessible already, but Pokemon Go is free, a simple download, has an easy interface and is overall basic for anyone to start playing.

Overall, the process of ludification and domestication both are an integration of games into an audience. Although, ludification is on a much larger scale. It is the push for gaming in everyday life. One could say that ludification is negative. Games shouldn’t consume our everyday life or else we would jeopardize productivity, which is true in many scenarios. With the addition of social distancing, people can end up forgetting their daily duties and hope to just stick to the luxuries of homelife.

Works Cited

Mäyrä, Frans. “Pokémon GO: Entering the Ludic Society.” Mobile Media & Communication, vol. 5, no. 1, 2016, pp. 47–50., doi:10.1177/2050157916678270.

Payne, Matthew Thomas, and Nina Huntemann. How to Play Video Games. New York University Press, 2019.