Game On: Why study Video Games?
We study video games because the fictional and the intangible hold meaning and significance
Hyderabad: To start this week’s article, I would like to offer an apology: Game On was scheduled to review Jedi: Survivor, Redfall, and Tears of the Kingdom in back-to-back weeks. However, today’s article deviates from that schedule as I hope to share a personal perspective on video games, a dimension I hope is unique.
Despite putting aside my experience of 35 hours in Hyrule, I hope you will come back next week anyway to find out what I think of a truly fantastic game. Last Friday, I helped organize a one-day conference on video games that explored how time and nostalgia are understood, constructed, and experienced in the medium. The many strands of conversation there got me thinking: what do video games mean?
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When I pose this question, I do so on both a personal and societal level, hoping to identify new ways to think about digital games and acts of play, and to prevent stereotyping and wide generalizations of the global game making and playing communities.
The day-long event focused on how games are made, played, understood, and remembered, and how interactions of play could be extended to better understand the realities we live in. For years, I have tried to justify that there is more to the medium than its ability to engage its audience and its popularity as a site for business and profit. Despite long-winded rabbit holes of gamification, I believe the time is right for us to stop asking why we study digital games and start identifying what they have to offer.
At the risk of letting this column into an academic article, let me just say that through my experiences with video games I have been able to find friends, employment, and a means to connect and empathize with people from all walks of life with similar interests. While this aspect is not one enjoyed by video games as a medium alone, it tells us that games as artefacts matter (borrowing the phrasing from TL Taylor’s excellent piece “Games Matter”) not just to the people whom make them, distribute/promote them, or play them, but also to those who live in a society alongside these activities.
When Google shutters Stadia or Amazon buys Twitch and countries think of new policy and regulations it is our role to dialogue, care, and support. This is why we study video games – because the fictional and the intangible hold meaning and significance.
A role I hope we perform more responsibly, when others conjure schemes to swindle, like NFTs and intangible currencies. With our cumulative experience with skins, collectibles, and the fantastical how did we not see this coming? As I leave you mulling over this question, I get back to Tears of the Kingdom. Review next week, I promise.
