"Why Games" introduction

1. Why Games?
AnthropologyCon 2017
Anastasia Salter
Assistant Professor of Digital Media
@anasalter
anastasiasalter.net

2. I study narrative games & platforms…

3. Driven by its suspicion of other media studies, the central
question of game studies has, to this point, been: “How are
videogames different?” That they are different from other
forms is without question -- but, again, neither is there any
doubt that novels are different from films. Amidst
understandable concern for the things that made
videogames unique, game studies tends to lump other
media together as “representational” or, more often,
“narrative” media such that the prospect of studying
narrative in games has seemed to threaten the loss of
medium specificity as well.
“A Too-Coherent World:
Game Studies and the Myth of Narrative Media”
Edward Wesp, Game Studies 14.2

4. 10 Best Reviewed Games of 2016, GameSkinny.com
…but I am exhausted by AAA games.

5. It says something darkly profound that at this
moment in our nation, this time of strife, of
disagreement, of disparagement, of conflict, of
insanity and chaos, that the best-selling
interactive digital media product of the last
year was Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. Just let
the words ‘infinite warfare’ roll around in your
head in this Trump filled era of hate and
prejudice.
Andy Phelps, January 31st, 2017

6. AAA games reinforce and magnify social norms

7. Procedural rhetoric affords a new and promising
way to make claims about how things work…video
games do not simply distract or entertain with
empty, meaningless content. Rather, video games
can make claims about the world.
But when they do so, they do it not with oral
speech, nor in writing, nor even with images.
Rather, video games make argument with
processes.
“The Rhetoric of Video Games”
Ian Bogost, 2008

8. In many genres, violence remains the default choice
And thus: violence goes unquestioned and unchallenged

9. games represent

14. games share

16. Green’s idea to make a videogame about Joel came to him in
church, as he reflected on a harrowing evening a couple of
years earlier when Joel was dehydrated and diarrheal, unable
to drink anything without vomiting it back up, feverish,
howling, and inconsolable, no matter how Green tried to
soothe him. He had made a few games since then and had
been thinking about mechanics, the rules that govern how a
player interacts with and influences the action on the screen.
“There’s a process you develop as a parent to keep your child
from crying, and that night I couldn’t calm Joel,” Green says. “It
made me think, ‘This is like a game where the mechanics are
subverted and don’t work.’”
Jason Tanz, Playing for Time, Wired 2016

18. Dream Daddy
Game Grumps

20. games argue

21. We Become What We Behold
Nicky Case

25. Thank you!
Anastasia Salter
@anasalter

26. games teach

29. “Secret Societies of the Avant-garde”
w/ Keri Watson, 2014

30. Russia to English Cultural Exchange Game
w/ Alla Kourova, Rudy McDaniel, and the
UCF Russian Club, 2015

31. …so let’s make some games!
Anastasia Salter
@anasalter
anastasiasalter.net