Getting Ideas Out There...With the Help of Videogames/Anime

Videogame criticism is in the perfect sweet spot culturally right now that it demands both substantial ideas as well as mass-market appeal. This turns into some very interesting videos and presentations crossing back and forth over that line in very interesting ways. Here are some of my favorite:

While not actually about videogames, this first video talks about Roland Barthes and the "death of the author" in relation to an anime series:

This next video gives a great overview of feminism and videogames, then gives some solid theoretical background and thoughts:

This video is great at explaining many of the technological foundations that have led to why so many games are so violent:

And this next one from the same critic does well at explaining how games (and any media) is inherently political even if it's not "supposed" to be:

Clint Hocking, a game designer, gave a great overview of the idea of "games as art" with tons of background on the concept of art itself. This one's a bit longer, but you can zip through the first part of his PowerPoint and get the idea. Links to both video and PowerPoint file are on his blog here.

Finally, this last video does a good job using a real psychological theory to explain in-game behavior in the popular online multiplayer survival game DayZ (skip to 9:23 in the video to get straight to his conclusion. Most of the video is interviews with other players in-game. If you have time and care at all, watch it.)

So there you go. This is actually one of my favorite aspects of videogame criticism--the fact that it has to make sense to everyday people still. Sure, some people go crazy and intellectually over everyone's head, but most of the stuff out there right now is videos like this. I really hope it stays this way for a long time, because I actually think these videos get their points across better than many "scholarly" work out there. Not that scholarly work isn't important, but I do wish scholars would make a video like this every now and then so we don't get lost in their knee-deep verbiage. In the future, I hope both the scholarly and this more popular forms of inquiry stay healthy and active.