Candy Crush Parliament: video game culture in the age of multitasking

Recently, I have come across two interesting pieces of news. The first one, from December 2014, related how the conservative Amber Valley MP, Nigel Mills, was playing Candy Crush Saga on his iPad while in a parliamentary committee meeting on pension reforms. The second one described how the Deputy Speaker of the Spanish Parliament, Celia Villalobos, was also playing a game on her tablet during the 2015 State of the Nation Debate,...

The construction of a video gaming audience

A sign that video games are becoming central to understand our contemporary cultural forms is their increasing presence in the media. Not only have the specialised magazines on video games grown in numbers - particularly online, but also the traditional press already includes specific sections dedicated to video games.  Magazines have historically played an important role in the formation of early gaming culture, as it was stated by Kirkpatrick...