Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game

(Paperback)

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Description

This book analyses video games like Grand Theft Auto and Resident Evil as aesthetic objects. Drawing on philosophical theories of art from Kant to Ranciere, it focuses on what games feel like to players and argues that their appeal can only be adequately understood by relating them to developments in contemporary art and recent cultural history. -- .

Reviews

"An established scholar of the sociology of gaming and computers, Kirkpatrick (Univ. of Manchester, UK) argues video games are autonomous cultural forms that should be considered art."

"Kirkpatrick positions the aesthetics of video games in interactivity, outside the traditional realm of formal or literary representation."

"......adds a distinct, if rather conservative, perspective on video game play to the burgeoning field of game studies."

I have yet to encounter a book as extensive and thought-provoking as Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game.

...Kirkpatricks book is an illuminating exploration of how a players body and a game intertwine, or how, a generation of young men have grown up dancing with their hands.

There is no doubt that this book is important: for the academic theorization of gameplay, aesthetic theory, and cultural studies in its broadest, interdisciplinary or indisiciplined manifestations Rancire is one of a plethora of writers with whom Kirkpatrick artfully weaves propositions and readings of games to accumulate a coherently mapped theory of gaming as an aesthetic cultural practice... I have yet to encounter a book as extensive and thought provoking as Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game.

Youll never look at a controller the same way again after Kirkpatrick explains how weve been conditioned to use carefully designed blobs of plastic to influence an image.

Author Bio

Graeme Kirkpatrick is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester