Lesetipp „ACROSS WORLDS AND BODIES: CRITICISM IN THE AGE OF VIDEO GAMES“ (Brendan Keogh)

„The original Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo) was released in 1985, twenty-nine years ago. Many of the next generation of Western cultural theorists currently emerging from postgraduate programs have grown up in a world where playing videogames at home is as common place as watching TV or reading literature. For these younger theorists (among which I include myself), videogames are not new, foreign things that we must understand, but cultural artefacts as ubiquitous as television shows or pop songs, no more or less worthy of the critic’s attention. For the next generation of cultural theorists, the uniqueness or significance of videogames is not something that will have to be argued, and narrow discussions of formal definitions will appear unconstructive and unnecessary to these critics who have a lifelong experience of engaging with a myriad of videogame forms. Instead, these theorists will be less concerned with discussing “Videogames” as a concept, and more in a discourse grounded in the appreciation and evaluation of individual videogame works on their own merits, and their contextualisation within broader culture.“

Dieser Absatz stammt aus der Conclusio des Autors Keogh in seinem Artikel „Across worlds and bodies: Criticism in the age of video games„, in dem er auf einem hohen Niveau und doch gleichzeitig ganz lässig ein neuen Weg der Spieleforschung einführen möchte. Ich bin…fasziniert.