I Game, Therefore I Think

I love reading, and I love games, so it’s always fun when the two come together, whether that’s in visual-novel/text-based games, or reading Ready Up and other gaming sites. In the Ready Up forum ‘Book Thread’ someone suggested Steven Poole’s Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Video Games. It’s up for free download so it was saved to my desktop where it lived unopened for many months before I got a Kindle for my birthday and therefore an easy way of reading it on the move.

According to Poole’s own description, Trigger Happy is ‘a book about the aesthetics of videogames – what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics’. It’s a good read, very well written and very interesting to everyone, especially if you play games. It runs through a history of video games, but also looks at games critically, doing a run-through of a few questions and concepts that you may not have thought about.

Although the book was written in 2000 and has some amusing mentions about the future of online gaming and movement technology that have come true as it were, it still opened my eyes to something I hadn’t really considered before. I’ve been buried in critical analysis of literature for a while now, even more so since my first MA deadline is looming. Returning to an academic environment, I find in each of the pieces of secondary literature I read that I’m presented with critical opinion, research, analysis and an invitation to question, examine and debate. Why not do the same with games, as Poole and others have? Video games can be subjected to the same level of critical analysis as paintings, music, film and literature.

In the wake of the unsubtle Panorama documentary about video game addiction (I’m not saying such a thing does not and cannot exist, but you cannot ‘examine’ extreme cases and take them as indicative of the whole), it’s nice to think that there is actual clever thinking happening about our beloved video games. We do this sort of thing on Ready Up all the time when we discuss video games. Poole makes references to other video game texts in his work which tempt the researcher, and his website also has various other articles that contribute food for thought. The Guardian Games Blog also contributes with a recent, enjoyable review of the recent Panorama episode along with other articles. It’s good to see that big bad video games are actually being discussed and engaged with in a thoughtful manner on a respected national newspaper site. Other websites such as Gamasutra also have articles that provide the critical perspectives that I’m really enjoying at the moment, for example this piece on horror games. If you’re more of an audio/visual person, you might want to listen to/look at The Game Overthinker. While his tone can be somewhat offputting, I love his character analysis of Bayonetta, which can also be viewed elsewhere.

Just because video games are a form of entertainment, of fun, doesn’t mean that they can’t be thought about critically or intellectually. Indeed, I think that they should be, because engaging in debate with something is much more productive than either letting it wash right past you, or being so scared of it you don’t want to investigate it at all. For every browbeating, narrow-minded documentary, television interview etc, there is an intelligent article, an interesting debate and strong thinking that challenges and develops. It’s the smart way to game, and in my case as the procrastinating postgrad student, a great way to combine my two favourite hobbies with my intellectual development.