Date of Submission

Spring 2013

Academic Program

Philosophy

Project Advisor 1

Daniel Berthold

Project Advisor 2

Ruth Zisman

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Video games continue to grow as a medium. They have gone from arcade distractions to communicative staples. The development of video games has in many ways suffered from the problems of contemporary social life. With their focus on order, video games have replicated many of the more exclusive results of life management. Many demographics are poorly represented in video games and as such have little or no voice in the development of the medium. Studies have shown that video games do in fact have a direct influence on the development of the human mind. If this is in fact the case, then circumstances demand a certain degree of scrutiny be applied to the formation of video game iconographies and the social tendencies regarding them.

Both video games and the community of players experience the results of these forms of management. The messages that video games radiate influence both the public perception of the medium and the ability for people to engage directly with it. This projet seeks to investigate the connection between order in the social space and exclusion in the digital. Utilizing various analyses of video games I seek to unearth a position from which an actively critical video game perspective can gain traction, and begin the attempt to configure the future of the medium.

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