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."

Comments

Lara's dimensions do matter!

[Attitude Adjuster]

"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"

Actually, Lara's "dimensions," especially her increase from large to Zeppelin-grade from Tomb-raider to TR2, totally put me off the whole franchise... I never bought another TR game. Frankly I view them with disgust.

They had this interesting, powerful female character, unusual in a game, and what do they do... they act like nerdy repressed 14 year olds and emphasise unrealistically, frankly off-puttingly (off-putting to me as a straight guy even - I can imagine what women think of it), large breasts. F'ing stupid.

So actually I think analysing Lara's dimensions is a pretty valid form of analysis - it tells you a lot about the psychology of game makers and players.