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Video Games

Brant Guillory*

Video gaming has expanded from a small university time-waster to a multibillion dollar industry that includes a variety of hardware and software, as well as multiple delivery and distribution models. Video games have inspired movie franchises, novels, and television shows. The opening day sales of Halo 3 for Microsoft's Xbox 360 of $170 million outpaced the opening day sales of the largest-ever weekend movie gross (SpiderMan 3) and the first-day sales of the final Harry Potter book (Zabek, 2008; Nystedt, 2007).

“Video games” as a catch-all terms includes games with a visual (and usually audio) stimulus, played through a digitally-mediated system. Video games are available as software for other digital systems ...

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