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Videogames are accelerating the five trends reshaping mass communication and the mass media industries. They are the product of a highly concentrated industry, they are luring people from the more traditional media (audience fragmentation), they are used as and filled with advertising (hypercommercialization), they know no borders (globalization), and they are played on numerous technologies, from game consoles to personal computers to the Internet to cell phones (convergence). And even though the game industry grosses nearly twice as much as Hollywood does every year, mass communication experts are only now taking this medium seriously. After studying this chapter you should
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| 1. be familiar with the history and development of games and the gaming industry. |
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| 2. understand how the organizational and economic nature of the contemporary gaming industry shapes the content of games. |
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| 3. understand the relationship between games and their players. |
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| 4. be familiar with changes in the game industry brought about by emerging technologies. |
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| 5. be able to use your improved game-playing media literacy skills to understand and apply the industry-standard rating system. |