Once considered a defunct fad of the 1970s and 80s, video games are now a 30-year old media phenomenon that has entered the cultural mainstream. No longer thought of as only children's toys, gaming has become a significant cultural force crossing old demographic boundaries, and is now played in one form or another, online or off, by a majority of Americans (Pew, 2002; State of the industry report 2000-2001, 2001). Over 60% of Americans play some form of interactive game on a regular basis, and 32% of the game playing population is now over 35. The average player is now 29 (State of the industry report 2000-2001, 2001). Financially, games have passed the motion picture industry in sales (Williams, 2002) and the industry employs a highly skilled and expanding workforce, now numbering over 200,000 in direct and indirect employment (Economic Impacts of the Demand for Interactive Software, 2001). The explosive growth of gaming here and abroad requires attention from a wide range of scholars from many different disciplines.


The Game Research Program will focus a large part of its efforts on collaborations and improving the breadth of game research without neglecting the depth. That being said, it aims to develop research and education projects in roughly the following categories with significant interchange between them: