How Should Games Be Analyzed?

Thanks to the Electronic Book Review for its Espen Aarseth-authored article discussing what form academic analysis of videogames should take, part of a wider academic discussion on how games should be treated. Aarseth argues of the theme-ability of games: "The 'royal' theme of the traditional pieces is all but irrelevant to our understanding of chess. Likewise, the dimensions of Lara Croft's body, already analyzed to death by film theorists, are irrelevant to me as a player, because a different-looking body would not make me play differently", before concluding: "The sheer number of students trained in film and literary studies will ensure that the slanted and crude misapplication of 'narrative' theory to games will continue and probably overwhelm game scholarship for a long time to come."

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DiGRA

[smallfries]

For those interested in ludology (the study of games), check out DiGRA. Its a discussion site where academics and games creators discuss some of the topics that cross their works. Quite interesting, although probably a bit high-brow for the slashdot masses ;^)