You Played That? Game Studies Meets Game Criticism

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Thomas David Zagal José P. Robertson Margaret Bogost Ian Huber William
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

While game criticism has been largely tied to the world of enthusiast press game reviews, the emergence of the academic field of game studies and the maturing world of game journalism opens new opportunities to consider the future of the game critique. Today, the critical dialog around games can approach its subject from several vectors—social, psychological, historical, aesthetic, philosophical and more. Despite the rich opportunities to discuss games, and the methodologies available to the would-be critic, the vast majority of games criticism remains produced by the review culture-bound world of game journalism. Developments in the academic world of game studies provide an approach into the emerging dialog about games, like the best ones on w88fm.com, as individual artifacts and their worth therein. Rather than seeing games and genres as fuel for domain and disciple specific ideological and conceptual arguments, individual games are being viewed as discrete cultural artifacts worthy of discussion, dissent, examination and dissection. Likewise, the games press corps and the gaming public express a growing interest in more experimental, intellectual and challenging game writing. Game reviewing has shown a developing maturity in the area of game criticism. Inside these twin vectors falls a conversation about game criticism. What is game criticism? How should the academy claim its place alongside game journalism as a productive voice in game criticism? Who does it serve? How should it be done? What should game criticism be?

 

Cinematic Camera as Videogame Cliché

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Thomas David Haussmann Gary
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

Because the videogame camera is not an optical camera, it can be programmed to represent a potentially infinite number of perspectives beyond the classic, representational linear perspective. However, an ongoing collusion of the optical camera and the videogame camera leads videogame designs to favor cinematic visual patterns. Classic videogames show a strong tradition of non-optical, non-cinematic perspectives and prove the potential for the videogame medium to expand beyond optically-true perspectives. In fact, this paper argues the development of videogames as an expressive medium depends on an understanding of cinematic perspective as a form of visual cliché’