Ludicidal Tendencies

This is an excellent article, one of the most thoughtful I've read on the academic pursuit of video game literacy to date! Definitely one for the scrapbook, and congratulations!

Nice article.

Maybe it all began with Pac-Man and the need to exercise the intellect in order to create a great game. It's wasn't just about technical achievements, it was about making a game which could also be relished by other sensibilities, namely women’s. Nishikado's Space Invaders was a great success and a major triumph in videogame designing, but Toru Iwatani's masterwork was deliberately created for humankind. It was the first time that a game was mainly based on a basic and universal action: to eat. Not shooting, not driving, not playing sports. Chase pellets and elude your inner fears in the form of cute coloured ghosts.

flOw, curiously, is much like the new century's chill out version Pac-Man, with high-def graphics and a staggering ambience. But the very instinct of survival - eat or be eaten - is common to all people who play it.

I couldn't agree more with Tracy Fullerton; show me the game and I'll tell you of the erudition of its creators. The public for video games has become too disperse, too… large, perhaps. Like all the mass-media, it is driven by sales and public feedback, not the pursuit of a higher object of art. It is so simple to forget about their artistic potential when designing them. And that makes all these attempts to intellectualize videogames quite rare and precious. We, who love art in its plurality, should feel grateful for these games and endorse them.

Nice article.

Maybe it all began with Pac-Man and the need to exercise the intellect in order to create a great game. It's wasn't just about technical achievements, it was about making a game which could also be relished by other sensibilities, namely women’s. Nishikado's Space Invaders was a great success and a major triumph in videogame designing, but Toru Iwatani's masterwork was deliberately created for humankind. It was the first time that a game was mainly based on a basic and universal action: to eat. Not shooting, not driving, not playing sports. Chase pellets and elude your inner fears in the form of cute coloured ghosts.

flOw, curiously, is much like the new century's chill out version Pac-Man, with high-def graphics and a staggering ambience. But the very instinct of survival - eat or be eaten - is common to all people who play it.

I couldn't agree more with Tracy Fullerton; show me the game and I'll tell you of the erudition of its creators. The public for video games has become too disperse, too… large, perhaps. Like all the mass-media, it is driven by sales and public feedback, not the pursuit of a higher object of art. It is so simple to forget about their artistic potential when designing them. And that makes all these attempts to intellectualize videogames quite rare and precious. We, who love art in its plurality, should feel grateful for these games and endorse them.