Abstract

Today increasing technological development and deepening digitalization, particularly in developed countries, are widening human imagination and creativity. Digital games, in both their technological and art form, represent the best example of this process and play a leading role on the frontier of entertainment and popular culture. The steadily growing number of people who regularly play digital games in the leading techno-regions (such as North America and East Asia), as well as in some developing countries (such as China and Brazil) chasing after them, demonstrate how the variety and multiplicity of digital games and networked gaming are fostering a new consumption power and audience culture. The diversity that the virtual world is producing and the capacity of games to be played in multiple ways, through multiple platforms (PC, console, handheld, mobile phones, etc.) have become so extraordinary that, many believe, they are eating up the share of ‘traditional’ media industries like TV and fi lm. As a response to this rapidly changing mediascape – where ‘playing/doing something’ is slowly overtaking ‘watching/staring at something’ – and in an era of more physical/sensory reactions and interactive mediation experience, more than ever have we seen contemporary media and communication analysts shifting their focus from traditional media to the rising star of this new medium.

How to Cite:

Lin, P., (2017) “Editorial”, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 9(1), 1-3. doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.144