Should Video Games Be Considered A Literary Art Form Worthy of Academic Study

[Agoraphobic]

      So, I am working on a paper to argue that video games should be considered a literary art form worthy of academic study, as any other work of literature. This would include Gender Theory, Queer Theory, Social Class, and other forms of theory that can be applied to literary works. I would argue that one can take a game like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy and study the story, characters, narrative, and visuals to dissect it to understand its fragments and ultimately its whole.

 

      The purpose would be that professors would be able to teach classes, on an academic level, such as Video Game Character Design, Creative Writing for Video Games, or World Design. This would be on the same level as teaching programming or an arts degree with video games in mind. This would also include English classes on different levels (Victorian Literature, Colonial Literature, etc). There is a divide in the community on whether video games can even be used in an educational setting or is a gimmick. I.E: Minecraft being taught to special needs children to help them cope with the real world.

 

      Anyway, I just wanted to see what people thought so I could get a feel where to start.

[Kibbelz]

Its an interesting idea but im not sure its competant enough to support its own course. I agree that it has a place for modules inside of a game dev degree however i disagree it should have its own seperate degree. It also would be very limiting to what jobs you could obtain as oposed to a more general game dev dergee. Which is why i took computer science instead of game development as i can go into game development with a comp science degree whilst also maintaining possibilities. Not intending to knock anyone who goes for a specialist degree but i was and still am very unsure what kind of job ill even be doing 1 year or even 10 years down the line I just know it involves computers. Just my two cents anyways.

[Azurn]

So as a Computer Science student with one of my minors being in English Communication, I would simply say no to your question.

 

My detailed response, though, is essentially to echo Kibbelz to some degree. Video games have a lot of aspects that go into it with, programming, visuals, lore and story-boarding, being the primary aspects, complimented with marketing, public/trend research, public relations, and many other minor parts to the whole machine if you will. What you are essentially saying is to offer a college level course in the study of video game lore, if I understand this correctly. I would like to note that there are some classes that do teach what you've mentioned, or are polling at least, as part of their overall program. An example of that is my university, we offer up to a master's in video game development, this degree includes programming competencies, animation and art courses, literacy and writing classes and a few minor mathematical courses as well.

 

I also want to note though, that video game development should be considered an art form, as games are all works of art in their own rights and ways.

[Kibbelz]

Its also worth noting you could essentially study english literature  (or whatever applicable literature for your own language if you're not a native english speaker) and then go into story and lore writing for game dev its just a more broad degree leaving you better options than studying purely "game dev lore design"

[panda]

In all honesty I think what seems to actually be your question and your actual poll question are not the same thing, ignoring the fact that your poll question is better as two separate questions.

 

I don't think lore needs it's own degree, but it could definitely be a literature degree concentration for sure.

 

Videogames by themselves warrant an academic degree and need further study, and studying lore would be a core part of it and would overlap with a game lore concentration in a literature degree.

 

I don't think video games constitute a literary art form because it's not literary it's video. Still an art form though, but of a different class.

[Kibbelz]

39 minutes ago, panda said:

In all honesty I think what seems to actually be your question and your actual poll question are not the same thing, ignoring the fact that your poll question is better as two separate questions.

 

I don't think lore needs it's own degree, but it could definitely be a literature degree concentration for sure.

 

Videogames by themselves warrant an academic degree and need further study, and studying lore would be a core part of it and would overlap with a game lore concentration in a literature degree.

 

I don't think video games constitute a literary art form because it's not literary it's video. Still an art form though, but of a different class.

Not sure how degrees work in the states but in the UK they are constructed of modules. Some are optional others compulsory, hence my suggestion that this should be considered more like module(s) (not nessesarily compulsory).

[panda]

14 minutes ago, Kibbelz said:

Not sure how degrees work in the states but in the UK they are constructed of modules. Some are optional others compulsory, hence my suggestion that this should be considered more like module(s) (not nessesarily compulsory).

That would be the equivalent of our concentrations I believe.

[varinyc]

Yes!

Towards the original question, I definitely believe we should be exploring video game and its *sets as all completely real literary devices. Those ideas are capable of the next step of immersion in storytelling (even of the textual variety) by finally increasing its scope into perceiving a fuller 3 dimensions, paired with its value to offer SUBSTANTIAL choice (as opposed to movie scripts, sometimes spawning from 'page-based' media).

Here is an idea that I worked up on towards two facets of an Augmented Library, used as an example for this YES:

Developed over an analytics machine that converts player "history" (in the science/math context of software versioning), but also literally in the sense that players could/would build independent stories (of a videogame that takes the form of a "'season") that are chronicled through a fan-based writers guild. The second facet would be the construction of a "gate" and tandem API used as a permission system to tailor towards electronic books, and user accounts, to literally "spawn" an augmented gate in physical space, bound by user account credentials exposed to the API and any external interface for said operation. So an empty room can be tailored through 3D space to interface with an Augmented Library medium, not just the player epics, but also any other ebook library (initially by the play store with android).  *I want to keep libraries and the feel of actually BEING in one alive, I'm heavily interested in a major umbrella of gamification (not just our current view of 'video games').

Now for the metaphorical beauty of it all is the realization that if you transpose player's game history (or their metaphorical adventure) and reprint it as a literary story, you can use that as a seed to define what the next adventure would look like, through a "flow" of an evolving video game. Capable only because the dimensional immersion has increased and our brains have played with it like candy in exponential measures.

The internal mechanics and ways of communication that would form on a tool-chain to produce this environment would be scaled towards economic growth. Exposing (previously) explicitly-virtual constructs in a semi-tangible form will increase visibility to the concentrations of knowledge necessary to power the machine. In this new Umbrella CS and CE would pretty much have an interface with an API that would create little plugin spots for every perceivable shard of reality, in measurable steps labeled by relevancy. World-building, game construct evaluation, and any implement of something that needs immersion, could be given it's own professional level of understanding. If the total system got that big, I have a feeling it might.

 In this Library/Game instance, those 'plugins' would make the more classical creative outlets scale into the digital counterparts through a gamified educational matrix. Sound composition, visual art productions, more physical mediums like sculpting or modeling, architectural design would also become an available augmentation. Observable sciences like astronomy, physics, chemistry, mechanics, can all be appreciated when adding more semi-tangible and more immersive visual representation. Which can all be gamified structures used in telling stories through video-games, it's brain candy by adding realism to your perceptions while offering a broader range of immersion. All this scope is just stimulating our visual senses, but I believe it can also be used to create newer literature capable of containing more filling experiences, through it's relevancy towards it's fast growing medium of Video Games.

 

TL;DR: Read the underlined, it's there for point concentration and to anti-alias the blocks of text in meaningful proportions.

On the other hand, in regards to what you listed as being possible curriculum, no. Those ideas (structured as-is) probably won't be reasonable within a University, but some other form of school (for profit, too young, not ideal, and a bad but not failed first step) most likely. I've been in an example of that myself, and it's expensive but worth it in at least this one instance. I see this niche education positively enough to envision a future where it grows bigger and better. Right now it's barely applicable.