ian bogost how to do things with videogames

How to Do Things with Videogames offers a fresh starting point to more fully consider games’ progress today and promise for the future. But until games are understood to have valid applications across the cultural spectrum, their true potential will remain unrealized. Ian Bogost begins How to Do Things with Videogames with a short introduc- tion that attempts to dispel dualistic notions concerning critical approaches to video games.1 Video games, he argues, are neither wholly medium, nor wholly message neither wholly gameplay, nor wholly narrative neither wholly leisure activities, nor wholly training tools. Examining these applications in a series of short, inviting, and provocative essays, he argues that together they make the medium broader, richer, and more relevant to a wider audience.īogost concludes that as videogames become ever more enmeshed with contemporary life, the idea of gamers as social identities will become obsolete, giving rise to gaming by the masses. In How to Do Things with Videogames, Ian Bogost contends that such generalizations obscure the limitless possibilities offered by the medium’s ability to create complex simulated realities.īogost, a leading scholar of videogames and an award-winning game designer, explores the many ways computer games are used today: documenting important historical and cultural events educating both children and adults promoting commercial products and serving as platforms for art, pornography, exercise, relaxation, pranks, and politics.

They are increasingly used for purposes other than entertainment, yet debates about videogames still fork along one of two paths: accusations of debasement through violence and isolation or defensive paeans to their potential as serious cultural works.

Reviews of new games and profiles of game designers now regularly appear in the New York Times and the New Yorker, and sales figures for games are reported alongside those of books, music, and movies. In recent years, computer games have moved from the margins of popular culture to its center.

Ian bogost how to do things with videogames