Abstract
In recent years, computer games have moved from the margins of popular culture to its center. In 'How to do things with videogames', Ian Bogost explores the many ways computer games are used today: documenting important historical and cultural events; educating both children and adults; promoting commercial products; and serving as platforms for art, pornography, exercise, relaxation, pranks and politics. Bogost concludes that as videogames become ever more enmeshed with contemporary life, the idea of gamers as social identities will become obsolete, giving rise to gaming by the masses. But until games are understood to have valid applications across the cultural spectrum, their true potential will remain unrealized. Ian Bogost is professor of digital media at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Highlights
In a widely-tweeted blog post, Ian Bogost recently railed against the tendency within media studies towards what is sometimes called 'aca-fandom': the manufacture of academic publications that do little more than express the author's personal taste in television programmes, videogames, and other mass media products
Bogost characterised aca-fans as television fans or hardcore gamers lucky enough to make a living out of their sub-cultural investments; the price of this good fortune, he argued, is a responsibility to write from the position of a scholar, rather than that of a gamer or fan
As in much literary criticism since the early 20th century, the point appears instead to be to present a surprising interpretation of the work revealing hitherto unsuspected potentials for valuable reader/player experiences
Summary
In a widely-tweeted blog post, Ian Bogost recently railed against the tendency within media studies towards what is sometimes called 'aca-fandom': the manufacture of academic publications that do little more than express the author's personal taste in television programmes, videogames, and other mass media products. This reflects the book's greatest strength and greatest weakness, which is its adherence to what might be called the New Critical model of media studies: digital artefacts are contemplated in terms of the experiences that they can be argued to make available to an ideal reader/player.
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