COMS 4412 Chapter n/a: September 19th Readings
22 Sep 2016
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Reading #1: playing research: methodological approaches to game analysis. The study of game aesthetics is a very recent practice, spanning less than two decades. Unlike game studies in math/social sciences, games became subject to humanistic study only after computer and video games became popular. Games are usually seen as trivial and low-brow by the aesthetic and theoretical elites who cultivate the analysis of artistic media objects: literature, the visual arts, theatre, music, etc. But this does not explain the fact that aesthetic studies of games are now possible in some academic environments, encouraged and supported with grants. Thus, they become visible and textualizable for the aesthetic observer, in a way the previous phenomena were not. This sudden visibility, also caused by the economic and cultural success of computer games, produces certain blind spots in the aesthetic observer, especially if he/she is trained in textual/visual analysis, as is usually the case.
