After a meeting last week with Nigel he informed me that I needed to also make a decision on how I would like to approach games as a medium. Namely do I approach it as a form of art or from a purely commercial stand point. As I was dealing with the emotions of people and with this being a topic with very little hard data I can find, as the ‘brand’ of nostalgia I seek is still not properly defined in the general consciousness, I have opted to seek this out as a form of art. With that in mind Video Games ‘as art’ is still a hotly debated topic. As such I have had to go out and research for arguments and citations that could support my reading of games as an art form.
That is honestly a new experience for me. Coming off of film studies, a field that has unquestionably been integrated into an art form, I have never had to spend time justifying the medium of study as ‘art’. Though I was able to find some very useful papers to support my reading of games as art.
Their citations are:
Bourgonjon, J., Vandermeersche, G., Rutten, K. and Quinten, N., 2017. Perspectives on video games as art. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 19(4), p.1.
and
Smuts, A., 2005. Are video games art?. Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive), 3(1), p.6.
Both provide a wide range of arguments to support video games as an art form while also addressing counter-arguments. This will likely serve as the first part of my thesis after the introduction. Though I have to be careful as that question itself could be a thesis on its own.