Lecture 6 - Study of Video Games

Today’s lecture was about video games. Marshall McLuhan stated that games are collective social reactions which can be view as popular art. The study of video games ranges from arcade games to MMOGs (Mass Multi Online Games). Videogames, like a lot of technology, can thank the military for its initial development. Some, like Steven Poole's "Trigger Happy" (2002), claim the world’s first videogame was created in 1958, at a U.S. government nuclear research facility, the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Wikepedia states that the earliest example is from 1947—a "Cathode ray tube Amusement Device" was filed for a patent on January 25, 1947 by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on December 14, 1948 as U.S. Patent 2455992. This consisted of an analog device that allowed a user to control a vector-drawn dot on the screen to simulate a missile being fired at targets, which were drawings fixed to the screen. Despite these variances in opinion, video games clearly began in a military context.

In the late 90’s video games began to grow in popularity. In 1996, I first began to play the game Duke Nukem and was introduced to the concept of ‘networked games’ which became something of an obsession for a time. The violent content of these games prompted academics and psychologists to begin to question the nature of these games and their effects. ‘Plato allows something to be a game as long as it is not “harmful” and has no “utility.” There is an increasingly vocal charge from some sections of society that videogames are in fact morally harmful. But do they have positive effects—do they have “utility?” Squabbles between psychologists as to whether videogames enhance spatio-visual and motor skills are largely unresolved’ (Poole 2002).

Two concepts involved in the academic study of video games are Narratology and Ludology. Narratology studies the narratives of video games and what these tell\reveal to us. Ludology is the general study of games such as the play aspects, the game aspects and what attracts us to video games. These are actually existing theories that can be applied to the study of video games as a new cultural form.

There is also study in the area of ‘Virtual Philosophy’, some of which relates back to Plato’s cave concept. In which people living in a cave begin to ascribe forms to the shadows on the cave walls; they see these shadows as reality. This leads to the question of what is real and what is virtual.

Personally as someone who used to play a lot of games, mainly network games, I believe that they have value in our society. I think a child playing Playstation or whatever is at least using their bodies and minds as opposed to the mainly passive act of watching TV.