Brendan Keogh Piece

Brendan Keogh believes that in regards to video games, the humanities and cultural studies lack an articulate vocabulary to strongly and critically analyze individual videogame works. He suggests that the solution is to create “a bottom-up conceptual toolkit that particular videogames in the moment of play when videogame and player come together” (1). The significance of this is that it allows more flexibility and freedom to judge the value of a videogame based on that particular videogame itself. He states that there has been pushback to critical analysis of video games as literature because of, “the coming together of the player and the videogame in a cybernetic circuit of embodied pleasures” (1). He then explains in the sentence after that “the circuit flows between the actual world and the virtual world of play in convergence of form and content” (1). Whatever these two sentences are supposed to mean. Is he trying to sound smart by creating an issue that does not exist? I wonder what he is trying to reference to make such absurd statements like those.

People play videogames for the same reasons that people read a book, watch television or movies to escape from reality. People need entertainment to destress from the harshness of the real world. That is why when videogames get political gamers get upset because they do not want to be dragged back into reality when they are trying to escape it. Now this does not mean that stories or videogames cannot be political. The Witcher and Overlord have politics in them, and they are handled extremely well. However, the difference between those two series and a game like Battlefield V, is that when The Witcher and Overlord have politics they make them completely unrelated to the politics of our world. The politics in The Witcher and Overlord are strictly focused on their own respective worlds. The politics in those two series are in no way shape or form one hundred percent relatable to our world.

Brendan Keogh fundamentally believes that his article lays the groundwork for future development of videogame critical analysis and attempts to debunk all the people who are opposed. He gives a Metal Gear Solid reference to relate player immersion in the virtual world. However, he believes that the player immersion is dependent on the body of the player and hardware of the game that is repressed when striving to feel immersion (2). I do not think the word repressed is a good word to use to describe the hardware of a game. In some ways, videogames are ultimately restricted by the platform that they can be played, but that is simply because it is technology. A mortal creation will always have limits, no matter what era they belong. The word repressed seems to imply a kind of oppression which when applied to a videogame is ridiculous because the ultimate goal of any videogame is to liberate oneself from life’s worries. In other words, it is to have fun and relax.