Players escaped from this unsatisfying reality into video game worlds, searching for a new normality that could compensate for the unpredict-ability and dangerousness of the pandemic life, as well as seeking uncertainty in the game environments to balance the flatness of the lockdown everydayness. We found that the COVID-19 pandemic altered the participants' sense of time and space, reshaped both their intimate and wider social interactions, and elicited a wide spectrum of disturbing emotions. We administered a qualitative online survey to 330 video game players who were living in Italy during the lockdown measures. In this article, we describe how video game play impacted the life transformations engendered by the pandemic. However, commercial video games received minor attention. The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community widely investigated technology use during crises. The COVID-19 pandemic led to dramatic changes in people's lives. It will also be useful for those interested in the wider role of culture, technology, and consumption in the transformation of society, identities, and communities. This book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such Video Games, Sociology, and Media and Cultural Studies. Drawing on new and original empirical data – including interviews with gamers, as well as key representatives from the video game industry, media, education, and cultural sector – Video Games as Culture not only considers contemporary video game culture, but also explores how video games provide important insights into the modern nature of digital and participatory culture, patterns of consumption and identity formation, late modernity, and contemporary political rationalities. Video games are becoming an increasingly central part of our cultural lives, impacting on various aspects of everyday life such as our consumption, communities, and identity formation.
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But what does their popularity say about our contemporary society? This book explores video game culture, but in doing so, utilizes video games as a lens through which to understand contemporary social life.
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Video games are becoming culturally dominant.