The Play Is the Message: The Everyday Context of Videogame Play

Game studies has devoted considerable attention to the ideology, social representations, and procedural rhetoric embedded in videogames, from violence and militarized masculinity to the portrayal of history, as in the 2014 French controversy over Assassin's Creed Unity's depiction of the Revolution. Yet ambitious empirical work on how ordinary audiences receive these messages remains scarce. This extended abstract argues that the meaning of play is built through its embedding in social forms and everyday life, not primarily through the content that critics analyze.

The argument draws on a mixed-method study of French players. A 2012 phone survey of 2,542 people aged 11 and over targeted the entire population rather than only self-identified gamers, avoiding the conventional hardcore, casual, and non-player typology. It was complemented by 30 in-depth interviews with players from varied backgrounds and by representative French Ministry of Culture surveys on cultural consumption. Analysis centers on genres played, sociability, and daily-life contexts.

Findings show that the most played games, among children, teenagers, and adults alike, are solitaire, card games, browser games, and dance or music games, not market leaders such as Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. Violent and PEGI 18+ titles account for a small share of actual use. Although interviewees raise public concerns like violence and addiction, practice appears far removed from ideological worries. Play is strongly social: nearly all under-18s had played in the previous year and over two thirds played weekly, using games to detach from parental culture and bond with peers. Among adults, play is tied to family configurations, and videogame use declines with age more sharply than board game use, so people over 40 play board games more often than videogames. Domestic space remains the main site of play, but use during transportation is growing.

The authors conclude that most French players choose games for their affordances, meaning their capacity to fit into the gaps of daily routine and serve as pastime, leisure, and socialization, rather than for their social or political messages. In this sense, the integration of play into everyday life may be videogames' principal message.