From the Introduction:

'The growth of this new play culture has not been publically acknowledged. Comparing it with the more glamourized internet technology Stiles (1995), notes that this industries astounding success is due to the manufacturers' constant innovations in technology and programming. The current home consoles (sold for under $200 in Canada) pack as much processing capacity as thousands of those original PDP's and 10 times that of the latest Pentium PC's. Moreover, recent advances in 3D graphics means kids are playing the latest versions of Doom, Mortal Kombat, and Final Fantasy on extremely advanced 10 MIP consoles with computational speeds and graphics display chips exceeding those of most engineering workstations. In his book Being Digital (1995), Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT media lab similarly claims that the growth of video gaming is just another indication of the way computers are increasingly transforming so many aspects of human communication. "We are not waiting on any invention. It is here. It is now. It is almost genetic in its nature, in that each generation will become more digital than the proceeding one. The control bits of that digital future are more than ever before in the hands of the young. Nothing could make me happier."'