The Aesthetics of Videogames

244 Pages·2017·1.351 MB·English

by  Jon Robson and Grant Tavinor

The Aesthetics of Videogames
This collection of essays is devoted to the philosophical examination of the
aesthetics of videogames. Videogames represent one of the most significant
developments in the modern popular arts, and they have recently attracted
much attention among philosophers of art and aestheticians. As a burgeoning
medium of artistic expression, videogames raise entirely new aesthetic
concerns, particularly concerning their ontology, interactivity, and aesthetic
value. The essays in this volume address a number of pressing theoretical
issues related to these areas, including but not limited to: the nature of
performance and identity in videogames; their status as an interactive
form of art; the ethical problems raised by violence in videogames; and the
representation of women in videogames and the gaming community. T he
Aesthetics of Videogames is an important contribution to analytic aesthetics
that deals with an important and growing art form.
Jon Robson is Teaching Associate at the University of Nottingham, UK. He
is the co-editor of A esthetics and the Sciences of the Mind and co-author of
A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Time. He has contributed to
the Routledge Companion to Comics .
Grant Tavinor is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Lincoln University, New
Zealand. He is the author of T he Art of Videogames and has contributed
essays to The Routledge Companion to Games Studies and The Routledge
Companion to Aesthetics .
Routledge Research in Aesthetics
1 Michael Fried and Philosophy
Modernism, Intention, and Theatricality
Edited by Mathew Abbott
2 The Aesthetics of Videogames
Edited by Jon Robson and Grant Tavinor
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com
The Aesthetics of
Videogames
Edited by
Jon Robson and Grant Tavinor
First published 2018
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Robson, Jon, editor. | Tavinor, Grant, editor.
Title: The aesthetics of videogames / edited by Jon Robson and Grant
Tavinor.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Routledge
research in aesthetics ; 2 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017061297 | ISBN 9781138629585 (hardback :
alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Video games—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC GV1469.3 .A29 2018 | DDC 794.8—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017061297
ISBN: 978-1-138-62958-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-21037-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction 1
JON ROBSON AND GRANT TAVINOR
2 Ontology and Transmedial Games 9
CHRISTOPHER BARTEL
3 Videogames as Neither Video nor Games:
A Negative Ontology 24
BROCK ROUGH
4 Videogame Ontology, Constitutive Rules, and Algorithms 42
SHELBY MOSER
5 Appreciating Videogames 60
ZACH JURGENSEN
6 The Beautiful Gamer? On the Aesthetics of Videogame
Performances 78
JON ROBSON
7 Videogames and Creativity 95
AARON MESKIN
8 Interactivity, Fictionality, and Incompleteness 112
NATHAN WILDMAN AND RICHARD WOODWARD
9 Why Gamers Are Not Narrators 128
ANDREW KANIA
vi Contents
10 Videogames and Virtual Media 146
GRANT TAVINOR
11 Videogames and Gendered Invisibility 161
STEPHANIE PATRIDGE
12 Games and the Moral Transformation of Violence 181
C. THI NGUYEN
13 Videogames and the “Theater of Love” 198
MARK SILCOX
14 Pornographic Videogames: A Feminist Examination 212
MARI MIKKOLA
List of Contributors 228
Index 231
Acknowledgments
As a topic, videogames have a relatively short history within the philosophy
of the arts, but during that time a number of philosophers have fostered
its inclusion in the discipline, whether by themselves working on the topic
or by encouraging others to do so. In addition to the individual authors
of the chapters that appear in this volume, we would like to thank Luke
Cuddy, Stephen Davies, Jeff Dean, Berys Gaut, Dominic McIver Lopes,
Derek Matravers, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Aaron Smuts, and Kendall
Walton for their contribution to or support of the study of the aesthetics
of videogames. No doubt there are others who also deserve thanks. Sorry
if we forgot you! We would also like to thank Andrew Weckenmann and
Alexandra Simmons at Routledge for first seeing the merit in the current
project and also for their support during the preparation of the volume.
Jon would like to thank Grant for the initial idea for this project (and for
boundless enthusiasm in seeing it through to completion). He’d also like to
thank Aaron Meskin for first igniting his interest in philosophical aesthetics.
Grant would like to thank Jon, who has been an enormously able, helpful,
diligent (and polite) co-editor. Grant would like to offer special thanks to
his brother, Lance Tavinor, who through the donation of a kidney in 2014
provided him with the sine qua non of further academic activity (or any
activity for that matter!).
Jon Robson and Grant Tavinor
2018

1 Introduction

Jon Robson and Grant Tavinor
Videogames are perhaps the most significant development in the modern
popular arts, and they provide a fertile field of study for philosophers of
the arts (and philosophers more generally). This volume presents the reader
with the first anthology exclusively devoted to the philosophical examina-
tion of the aesthetics of videogames. Not only do videogames have bearing
on a range of standard aesthetic issues, they also raise entirely new topics of
concern for philosophically inclined aestheticians. These topics range from
the ontology of videogames, the nature of videogame interactivity, the eth-
ics of videogame violence, and the aesthetics of game design and gameplay.
While the papers in this volume offer a wide and even conflicting range of
perspectives on these issues, their authors are united in the belief that there
are important philosophical lessons to be learned from the in-depth study of
videogames, and that philosophical aesthetics can make important contri-
butions to the understanding of videogames.
It will hardly surprise the reader to learn that serious philosophical inter-
est in videogames is a recent phenomenon. Videogames themselves are, after
all, a very new art form. There is no uncontroversial date for the earliest
videogame, but estimates typically vary from the mid-1940s to the early
1960s. By contrast, philosophers of art working in areas such as theatre,
music, dance, and poetry have several millennia’s worth of material to focus
on. And even other relative newcomers on the art scene—such as films and
comics—have existed for well over a century. Further, there has been a long-
standing tendency amongst philosophical aestheticians to be somewhat con-
servative in their choice of subject matter—a conservatism that manifested
itself both in the choice of art forms studied and the particular instances
of those art forms discussed (until recently, for example, philosophers of
music had focused almost exclusively on works within the Western clas-
sical canon). Fortunately, though, this tendency has become considerably
less pronounced in recent years, and an increasing number of philosophers
of videogames have shown that they are keen to make up for lost time. In
recent years such philosophers have investigated, as the chapters in this vol-
ume will illustrate, a truly remarkable range of topics.