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Numerous communities organized against arcades, fighting the opening of arcades through zoning ordinances, code enforcement, and other restrictions. Although in many cases these efforts reflect ongoing efforts to curtail the operations of the coin-op industry, which had long been associated, fairly or otherwise, with organized criminal activity, the industry saw a revival of animosity as video games increased in visibility. At the same time, the industry sought to use the appeal of video games to middle-class youth and the rise of “family fun centers” and other family-oriented outlets as a way to elevate the industry’s image. The tension between these efforts provides insight into the perceived risks and values of video games as public entertainment. Chapter 4 analyzes court cases, regional and local newspaper coverage, and coin-op industry trade journal coverage. Throughout, the chapter notes how the ills ascribed to video game arcades simultaneously reflect older anxieties about the coin-op industry and newer anxieties about technological, cultural, and economic changes happening at the national level. Drawing from U.S. Supreme Court decisions on arcade restrictions,Kocurek argues that the arcade presents a critical moment in the configuration of youth civil rights as consumer civil rights.

The establishment of violence as a key theme of video gaming ties video gaming to other areas of culture historically dominated by men, such as military culture and sports competition. Chapter 3 examines video gaming’s first moral panic, which erupted in response to Exidy’s Death Race in 1976. The game’s broader context, including the infamy of the Death Race 2000 film, and the game’s cabinet graphics, which feature drag racing ghouls wearing hoods, lend credence to the claim that the game is reveling in a smorgasbord of car-on-pedestrian violence. Moral guardians decried the game’s perceived violence, and the game sparked a public debate about the propriety of video gaming for young children. The public outcry over Death Race fueled sales of the game and established the Exidy brand-name. In the long run, the game set a template for future moral panics and for the process by which violent games create heavily mediated moral panics that fuel sales. By assessing the linkage of video gaming as a medium with violence, this chapter explains how popular culture can celebrate the achievements of gamers and the benefits of gaming while suggesting that gaming has a corrupting influence on culture and on players.

In the final chapter, I consider shifts in gaming culture, including the growing prevalence of gaming in the United States. Increasingly, video gaming crosses demographic boundaries of age, race, and gender. With the emergence of the medium as a mainstream cultural form and major cultural industry, the stakes of the associated cultural politics have only risen. This chapter considers the ongoing tensions around the category of the gamer and the sometimes-vitriolic debate over who rightly can claim to have a stake in gaming culture. This chapter draws on recent events and trends, including the professionalization of competitive gaming, the persistence and resistance of women gamers who find themselves marginalized or harassed, and the increasingly visible work of video game critics. In closing, Kocurek argues that historicizing game culture is essential to understanding the current problems and potential promises of gaming as a medium. This chapter argues for the power and influence of gaming and for the importance of considering gaming not as a niche medium with an eccentric historical trajectory but as a major cultural form increasingly at the center of American culture.