Author: Tim Schweizer

Due to the work for the group project as described in Week 8 I had skipped out on working on my thesis proposal for week 7 and as a result it has skipped to week 8. For this week I have spent it preparing an initial draft of my thesis proposal. It is not yet complete but this is what I have thus far:

Title: Video games as a vehicle for Anemoia: False Nostalgia and the longing for a constructured past 

Introduciton: 

Nostalgia has been a topic of discussion and research for a long time. As scholars and people we are constantly looking back into the past to inform our present and as such Nostalgia is something everyone will experience eventually as they look to their own perceived pasts and see how things were. However Nostalgia has become a more poignant topic today as cuturally and politicaly it is engaged with more and more. It can be seen that people are seeking the past today not to understand, learn or build from it but instead to return to it. For some the nostaligia that is sought is traditional in nature, one where they seeker wishes to return to their experienced past, a point previous in their life. For others though in this cultural landscape of nostalgia they are affected with a longing for a past not experienced. They experience a longing for a constructed past constructed not by their own experience but by the experiences of others conveyed to them through a variety of media. This kind of nostalgia is sometimes refered to as ‘sehnsucht’, ‘anemoia’, which is how from now this paper will refer to that kind of nostalgia as, and the purpose of this paper is to research Anemoia and see how and if video games function as a vehicle for it and why anemoia is a necessary field of study to address.  

Key Words 
Anemoia, Nostalgia, Sehnsucht, Video Games , Retroculture 

Research Design methods:  
 
This paper’s methodology will predominantly be a qualitative research focus. As the paper deals with something more abstract in nature, namely a person’s perceptions of the past and subjective feelings towards that past, a qualitative approach would make the most sense. As such this paper will focus research conducted by others scholars into several fields. Research into anemoia as that is the focus of the paper. Research into nostalgia as an experience as that will help difference it from anemoia and provide larger social context. Research into retroculture with a focus on retrogaming and specifically about how people interact with retroculture. This is important as it is specifically about cultural engagement with the past but the motivation for engagement is different for different people and provides bed for counter arugments to my topic.  

If possible and with enough forsight to develop this survey ahead of time, there would be room for quantitative data to be introduced. As stated anemoia is a topic that has not received as much attention as nostalgia proper and as a result it would be prudent to introduce a survey simply to cover that this feeling is being experienced by others and specifically, I would aim to target ‘gamers’ with it. I believe that the survey should ask for the individuals age, whether they have experienced anemoia after explaining it and what games or media at large has caused this feeling to manifest. Age is relevant as one might expect younger generations to feel anemoia specifically as they have overall less experiences to draw on and that older generations who are more likely to be the ones creating these works will instil that feeling in younger generations.  

General Outline for each chapter:  

• Literature Review – Simple, this will be a literature review where I go over the resouces I plan on using with my paper and critically engage with them 
• Intro – I will introduce my paper’s topic and why I believe that it is it a topic worth addressing. I will also set out my paper’s structure here  
• Justify Games as art – As games as an art form is still a topic of debate today it was felt by my instructor that it would be pertinent to address that topic. This chapter is dedicated to addressing the arguments for and against art though ultimately I will side with arguments for as I am enaging with games as an art form.  

• Arguments For 
• Arguments Against 

• Define Anemoia – It is important that a clear understanding of what anemoia is and how it relates to nostalgia is in place as the entire paper is about this topic. Since it isn’t a common term or one with much coloquial agreement it is important that I define it properly.  

• What is it? 
• Why relate it to nostalgia? 

• How is Anemoia carried in Video Games? (Vehicle)  – The second part of my topic. This chapter will be dedicated to how video games can function as a vehicle for anemoia and how they acheieve this.  

• Player’s Perspective 
•  Developer’s Perspective 

• Why is Anemoia Present? – Now that anemoia has been defined and video games aruged as a vehicle for them this part dives into why this might be present. Why players may experience it and why game creators may, intentionally or not, put this into their games.  
• What does this interest in it mean? – Here is where I explore the sociological reasons that this feeling is present and what the instreast in it could mean for our perecptions of the current political and cultural climate of the world.  

• Conclusion – I draw my conclusions and address counter arguments and gaps in my study.  

After my one on one with Nigel I left more confident in my thesis and what was required of me moving forward. Given how quickly the final june submission date was approaching I know now that what I need to do is move on from research and, with what I currently have, start to develop my thesis proposals. Part of that was developing the draft chapters. My current draft is like this. The next major step I need to take is develop my literature review and in that case I have been reviewing the resources given to us on writing a literature review as that was the weakest aspect of my report from the first semester.

Draft chapters:

• Literature Review
• Intro
• Justify Games as art
  • Arguments For
  • Arguments Against
• Define Anemoia
  • What is it?
  • Why relate it to nostalgia?
• How is Anemoia carried in Video Games? (Vehicle)
  • Player’s Perspective
  •  Developer’s Perspective
• Why is Anemoia Present?
• What does this interest in it mean?
• Conclusion

As we are having one on ones this week and mine is scheduled for next week I instead spent the week preparing the template for my one on one with Nigel so that I can make the most the admittedly short time that I have with him.

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.