We study video games because the fictional and the intangible have meaning and importance
Posted Date – 12:45 AM, Mon – 5/15/23
Hyderabad: Before starting this week’s article, I would like to apologize: Games start was scheduled for review Eat: Survivor, red dropand Kingdom Tears In back-to-back weeks. However, today’s article deviates from that timeline as I wish to share a personal take on video games, which I hope has a unique dimension.
despite my 35 hours of experience Hyrule, anyway, I hope you’ll come back next week for my thoughts on a truly great game. Last Friday, I helped organize a daylong conference on video games that explored how time and nostalgia are understood, constructed, and experienced in the medium. A lot of the conversations there got me thinking: what does it mean to be a video game?
When I ask this question, I do so on a personal and societal level, hoping to find new ways to think about digital games and gaming behavior, and to prevent stereotypes and broad generalizations by the global game-making and playing community.
The one-day event focuses on how games are made, played, understood and remembered, and how the interaction of games can be extended to better understand the realities we live in. For years, I’ve tried to make the case that games are more than just this medium, more important than its ability to engage an audience and its popularity as a site for business and profit. Despite the long rabbit hole of gamification, I believe it’s time to stop asking why we study digital games and start identifying what they have to offer.
At the risk of making this column an academic one, let me just say that through my experience with video games, I’ve been able to find friends, work, and a way to connect and empathize with like-minded people from all walks of life way. While this aspect is not only enjoyed by video games as a medium, it tells us that games as artefacts are important (to borrow a phrase from TL Taylor’s excellent “Games Matter”) not just for making They, those who distribute/promote them, or perform them, also apply to those in societies that coexist with these activities.
When Google shuts down Stadia or Amazon buys Twitch and countries consider new policies and regulations, it’s our job to talk, care and support. That’s why we study video games – because fictional and intangible things have meaning and importance.
I hope we play a role more responsibly when others come up with scam schemes like NFTs and invisible currencies. With our experience with skins, collectibles, and fantasy, how did we not see this coming? When I leave you thinking about this, I return to Kingdom Tears. Review next week, I promise.
