Lately I have been doing a great deal of reading on literature that could help me better understand digital games from a socio-cultural perspective. I hope that reading more literature in this topic will illuminate the direction of my research design which still remains hazy up till today. I hope to revisit and enhance the theoretical framework for my research design too.
I am quite amazed by the vast amount of literature I stumbled on digital games and how they are placed at the nexus of a large sector of the humanities computing community. Maybe this is due to the astonishing growth of digital games compared to other media technologies and the huge amount of money invested in digital games. There are many theorists out there attempting to theorise digital games by developing a literary theoretical structure. These theoretical tools will surely help us think more critically about digital games for what they are and help us better understand their characteristic effects and applications. In fact, Ian Bogost, the author of the lucid and well-written book "Unit Operations: Approach to Videogame Criticism", points out that the marriage of literary theory and information technology will help technologists better understand software and videogames as rhetorical cultural artifacts suitable for critical study. Digital games should not be treated as play things but instead be taken seriously as cultural objects that are being read, interpreted and interrogated. This is good enough reason why we should take games seriously and not cast them aside as trivial activities.
Read more on Ian Bogost’s work at his homepage is at
http://www.bogost.com/
Another interesting website is “Water Cooler Games” at
http://watercooler.games.org/
a forum for "videogames with an agenda". It covers the uses of video games in education, advertising, politics, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.
Happy Reading, Happy Interrogating!!
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