A Response to Brendan Keogh’s “Across Worlds and Bodies: Criticism in the Age of Video Games”
Brendan Keogh’s research paper is one of the best I have yet to read concerning the scholarly analysis of video games. He touches a bit on the words that have been published before his and does not hesitate to either complement that work or criticize it as needed.
He begins by acknowledging the prior scholarship that was done on video game studies and finds it to be lacking. The traditional forms of analysis that one might use for literature, film, or music do not seem to jive with game study. This is a different medium and we need to invent a more flexible and overarching mode of interpretation. He provides us with one of the best analogies I have yet to read, and I’m paraphrasing but essentially, game studies must be more concerned with the taste of the pudding, not the recipe. What he’s saying here is that we need to spend less time on defining what a game is and more time on its overall quality.
Another great insight in this article was where he was discussing that some scholarship believes you can strip away all the aesthetics of a game and if it is still playable, then it is a quality game. That is a pretty far-fetched concept. The example used is if you took away Pac Man's iconic shape, the ghosts, and the fruit, but somehow the game was still playable then this would represent a high quality game. I’ve played games based on the same exact model and I did not enjoy them what so ever. Pac Man has an aesthetic that is integral to its enjoyment.
The only short coming I had with this article was its analysis of the mobile gaming platform. The article states that the superficial quality of mobile gaming is due to the user being in a multiple reality situation. The player must take into account their physical environment while playing and therefore may not be able to get as involved in the game play. This hypothesis does not take into account the relative viewing aspect of the games involved which I believe is the number one reason for peoples lack of immersion. Even when playing the same games on the larger screen provided by a tablet, the involvement of the player is increased significantly.
Finally, I would like to discuss the closing portion of this article that involves the idea of a “textual network”. The concept of analyzing a game as an integration of the software, hardware, and player is probably the most appropriate format of study. All three of these aspects are integral when considering the quality of a game. The more seamlessly these basic aspects are combined, the resulting quality is significantly increased.
This article should be a fundamental read for anyone involved in video game analysis and I thank Mr. Keogh for his brilliant work.
