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[FK in the Coffee]

It seems that, on the whole, games criticism is relegated to the realm of blogs and Youtube personalities these days. I can find plenty of books and academic journals dedicated to film, theatre, literary, music, and art criticism in the average university library, but serious games criticism has yet to breach academia in a big way. And then, what is games criticism exactly, as distinct from game reviews? The aforementioned media have plenty of reading material concerned with how to look at a piece critically, but how do you approach games critically, and what exactly makes criticizing games as works of art distinct from criticizing the elements they're composed of? You can criticize a game's narrative, its sound, its music, its art; you can criticize the way each element works together, but isn't that just borrowing critical terms from those respective media?

You can find entire dictionaries full of critical terms in other media, of established movements and theories in each, but ludology (which Chrome underlines with a red squiggle) has scarcely any field-unique terms, save for "ludology," and perhaps "ludonarrative" and "ludonarrative dissonance." I believe strongly in games as art, but have we codified a way to analyze them as such, in a way distinct from other forms of art?

Idk if these are dum questions or anything, but as games become more validated as works of personal expression, I just wonder how the critical atmosphere is going to change, and how ludology as a field will develop.

[Dragonmaw]

It's already in academia.

[s0]

yes but its still in its babby steps phase

i think the vocabulary will develop over time as more as more people start taking games seriously. really tho, i don't think it's super important for videogames to be widely accepted in academia. it would be kind of neat, sure, but what's important beyond that is for different perspectives outside of traditional "gamer culture" values to develop. those don't necessarily have to come from academia.

oh also you don't really need theory to write good criticism, you just need to be familiar with the subject matter and be able to provide some insight about your object of criticism. there are several great music critics who don't know any music theory for instance.

[MeshGearFox]

No, also academia is dumb.

[JWK5]

I think academia is more likely (and more often) to be adapted to video games than video games adapted to academia.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2014/10/29/heres-how-gamer-teachers-use-video-games-in-the-classroom/

[DireLogomachist]

I think the process has already started.  Just just like writers retire to academia to teach writing, the same thing is starting to happen with games.

The best example is probably this: http://news.ucsc.edu/2013/09/gpm-directors.html

[jamesprimate]

http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/ ?

[starsrift]

If you take the approach that games are art, then they tend to become immune to criticism because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And like with art, you can talk about the differences of cubism and impressionism and whatnot, and you can talk about the differences of pixel art and cel-shading and whatnot, you eventually reach a very unacademic impasse of 'this is my opinion'.  You can also talk about philosophy of games and thus use your moral standards as judgements of 'good' and 'bad' games, but at that point you're not talking about the game, you're talking about the statement(s) of the game, though it certainly feels academic.

If you take a ludological point of view instead of 'games are art', you can suddenly open up new things like Skinner-box design, concrete ways to utilize player psychology, why a level design is 'good' (often referring to the psychology of it), you can map statistical player paths and choices, find out why they are, and so on. However, this leaves a lot of people with 'native' (or subconscious) talent left behind as they can't communicate in the field. A lot of game developers can tell you if something is good or bad but lack the ludology to explain it, and instead want to pass everything off as 'games are art'. They're not. You can map, diagram, and design everything. Sure, some folks are outliers who will want to break your design or seek the edge cases, but you can find it all mechanically, and mathematically.
Again, this requires a background in the jargon and philosophies, and ludology will rarely be in reviews or consumer critiques.

And this 'academic' conversation is happening. But it's happening in the field, not in academia. Blizzard, Valve, and Zynga, to name a few - all have some very dedicated people who are sciencing the shit out of game design. If you're interesting in joining the conversation, Gamasutra might be a good start.

[s0]

If you take the approach that games are art, then they tend to become immune to criticism because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And like with art, you can talk about the differences of cubism and impressionism and whatnot, and you can talk about the differences of pixel art and cel-shading and whatnot, you eventually reach a very unacademic impasse of 'this is my opinion'.

you do realize that art criticism is a thing and that "beauty" only plays a minor role in contemporary art discourse, right?

You can also talk about philosophy of games and thus use your moral standards as judgements of 'good' and 'bad' games, but at that point you're not talking about the game, you're talking about the statement(s) of the game, though it certainly feels academic.

??

[Pfotegeist]

I'm guessing you mean video games, so what I say implies video games.

one miniscule problem is we're repeatedly introducing systems that relegate other media in attempts to quickly codify a practical rank and rail for each individual scenario and dismiss any unpopular criticism. Giving thumbs, and ranks, and paying reviewers for hype, to shovel out the next thing.

another problem that compounds the first problem is nobody will be qualified to actually give criticism about the efforts made, other than successful game developers.

The current problem that is possibly solvable is along the lines of 'how do we talk about games?'

Computers are still a new medium, after centuries of paper. The medium has been a success without royal or religious doctrine, and it seemed innocently linear. Video games sprung out from the former, and they're not so linear.

Also I'll end this with a chess joke. So I sat down and asked "how do you play this" and after a lengthy explanation about moving the pieces around I flipped over the board. "Why did you do that?" they asked and I said "there was a bug. I took advantage of it."

[s0]

one miniscule problem is we're repeatedly introducing systems that relegate other media in attempts to quickly codify a practical rank and rail for each individual scenario and dismiss any unpopular criticism. Giving thumbs, and ranks, and paying reviewers for hype, to shovel out the next thing.

these same systems exist everywhere. this is just the state of cultural criticism & commentary on the internet in 2015. its just worse in videogames because the culture is almost exclusively internet based.

[starsrift]

you do realize that art criticism is a thing and that "beauty" only plays a minor role in contemporary art discourse, right?

Mmmhmmm.

[Jordgubben]

I'm guessing you mean video games, so what I say implies video games.

Judging by the rest of the thread, this is a valid assumption. Games as a medium is not new and games have been studied throughly the fields of history, sociology, mathematics and economics.

Chess will most likely be the first victim of over analysis. With in a generation or two it will be perfectly solved (like tic-tac-toe). It will also be considers political unacceptable due to it's patriarchal and racist nature.

[s0]

you do realize that art criticism is a thing and that "beauty" only plays a minor role in contemporary art discourse, right?

Mmmhmmm.

then how does your post even make sense

[Lauchsuppe]

Judging by the rest of the thread, this is a valid assumption. Games as a medium is not new and games have been studied throughly the fields of history, sociology, mathematics and economics.

I don't think games have been studied thoroughly in the past. With very few exceptions, they have only ever been studied from other academic disciplines; but never really had their own academic discourse (except as a byproduct within other fields like the ones you listed). For the most part they have been ignored until digital games became a thing. That's probably the reason why there still isn't as much an established academic discipline for video games as there is for other things like literature or music. Also, video games have only gotten really popular within the last 20 years or so. It will probably take one more generation to really establish an academic discipline in a similar way as other cultural practices have it. Ofc that doesn't mean there isn't a discourse today already; it's just not as canon compared to other fields.

[s0]

it's just not as canon compared to other fields.

which is actually pretty exciting if you think about it. we're in an era where videogames are still being explored and there are still big changes happening etc. other forms like literature, theater, painting or even film have pretty much settled down at this point.


i mean how cool would it have been to be around during the early "films as art" period when groundbreaking works like battleship potemkin, metropolis, nosferatu etc first came out? must have been absolutely mindblowing witnessing those films back then. i would take that over experiencing the release of citizen kane first hand any day of the week.

[starsrift]

you do realize that art criticism is a thing and that "beauty" only plays a minor role in contemporary art discourse, right?

Mmmhmmm.

then how does your post even make sense

I'm not sure how to put more simply. More elegantly, I'm pointing out that we have quantitative (ludological) criticism for games, whereas art criticism is merely qualitative.
Unless modern art criticism is rooted in mathematical analysis, in which case I am now no longer modern.

[Jordgubben]

With very few exceptions, they have only ever been studied from other academic disciplines; but never really had their own academic discourse (except as a byproduct within other fields like the ones you listed). For the most part they have been ignored until digital games became a thing.

This is a very interesting observation. Traces of both board games and written literature have been found in in the remains of the ancient Mesopotamia empire. And even though it's practically impossible to prove, it's reasonable to think that simpler physical games (tag, racing, hide and seek) are roughly as old as oral storytelling. Yet the amount of academic study is far from equal.

One explanation could be that literature requires literacy, a luxury available to only a small elite of society. Games on the other hand require only the knowledge of the ruleset of the particular game. So the aristocracy reads the Epic of Gilgamesh while the rabble plays Hnefatafl. The fact that Literature has no "meta" also means that it is somewhat easier to preserve as a whole.

But assuming the above to be true just raises another question: Why now? Why does 'video' games change this?

[Dragonmaw]

I'm not sure how to put more simply. More elegantly, I'm pointing out that we have quantitative (ludological) criticism for games, whereas art criticism is merely qualitative.
Unless modern art criticism is rooted in mathematical analysis, in which case I am now no longer modern.

Except that ludological criticism is built upon inherently subjective approaches to a game (as everyone engages in play differently).

If you're talking about metrics analysis, that's not really criticism, that's statistical analysis, and even then statistics are flexible enough that they allow you to draw a dozen conclusions from a single set of data.

So Sinclair is right, your post doesn't really make much sense. Or, more accurately, it makes sense, but you're doing an unneccessary dichotomy between "art" and "game" criticism, when they are fundamentally the same thing.

As for academic discourse: I'm personally a lecturer for a few economic simulation conferences with a focus on predicting player behavior. DiGRA does pretty extensive research and discussion of games in the academic space. Freelance critics like Lana Polansky approach being academic without being formally academia. So games are definitely a part of academia.

Could it be a larger part? Oh, for sure. I think we're just now reaching the point where certain games are held as part of "the canon" so we're right at the turning point where we might see liberal arts classes on things like game history (just like art history). But games have always had a strong root in academia; it's just never been loud or visible.

[s0]

But assuming the above to be true just raises another question: Why now? Why does 'video' games change this?

because videogames are a new multimedia form and can do things other games can't. i mean, film is not strictly speaking anything "new", it's a hybrid of theater and photography.