Writing about Video Games

[Snickerd00dle]

Over the past two or three years of my career as a student, I often find myself writing many papers on video games. Almost every time I do this, the teacher, and other people that read it have no idea what I am talking about, saying, "thats great you used a ton of examples(of games) but no one knows what they are---in reference to Shadow of the Colossus. The grades are never bad, I just wish that games weren't looked at so oddly that way people would understand what I am saying. I am kind of just venting because I just wrote a paper about why video games are art, and the rest of the class read it and edited it. You can imagine what the art students thought of my approach. Oh well, ha, feel free to say what you want, any one else ever done stuff in school for video games?? Most creative writing stuff I end up doing ends up being about games

[Ack]

Over the years I did multiple papers on video games. Not just the art discussion, but papers on the history of the ESRB, video game censorship around the world, medical uses of video games, the usage of video games in libraries, childhood experiences with video games, the history of Tetris, so on and so forth.

I've gotten to talk to some interesting folks, including Dennis McCauley at GamePolitics.com(he's a pretty cool guy) and a short conversation with Jack Thompson(wanted to talk to him for a project, but due to conflicting schedules I never got a chance to interview him), as well as a myriad of other game journalists and players. I've had some pretty interesting responses. And then again, I had one graduate student give me a B on a paper because I mistakenly believed Tetris was relatively common knowledge. She had never heard of it.

[Jrecee]

I wrote a paper on sonic my freshmen year of highschool. My teacher said I needed to clarify more things. . . she had never heard of sonic.

[vejita]

Well, save the video game writing essays for technical writing classes. It seems like for general "Blarg you must learn English now" assignments they don't want to hear about specific products. Imagine if you had no idea about car models or anything and you read a paper all about how great these cars are, but the paper doesn't really explain much other than the look or the application... You'd be reading a product review, essentially.

Also, as for the "I wonder what art students think of that," question, I'm sure that if you made a good point they would acknowledge your conclusion as valid and worth further discussion. Besides, unless you are a video game artist yourself why do you need to prove so badly that games are art? The industry already does better than a lot of other things...

[Luke]

My wife and brother in law both have masters degrees in English and have taught at an University. When I brought this up, they asked, "What was the assignment?".

[dedalusdedalus]

I attempt to avoid frustrations like this by writing specifically to my audience. Part of good writing is understanding what your audience will and won't get.

[Snickerd00dle]

i just want to be clear in saying that it was a good paper ha, i did well on it, it was more the peer review that irked me, people telling me that video games aren't art because they are produced in mass quantity?? they didn't read the paper because they were not interested in the topic and immediately disregarded my argument, which was what the essay was, a basic argumentative essay, the professor said write about something that interests you, ha, i guess i'm frustrated because the peer reviewers didn't give me a chance because they disagreed with my argument, so I got to hear the whole class tell me how my opinion is wrong, sorry, I should have clarified

[kunoh]

Oh well, ha, feel free to say what you want, any one else ever done stuff in school for video games?? Most creative writing stuff I end up doing ends up being about games

When I was in art school, I did a painting of some Street Fighter characters with acrylic paints. The teacher I had was a staunch traditional illustrator - the kind who had done work for book covers and high profile clients. The grade I got for that piece of art was B-. She pretty much told me that if I had done a painting with a more 'acceptable subject matter' I would have gotten a better grade. Back then (the mid 1990s) video games were kind of shunned as far as commercial art was concerned - at least at the college i was at. Fast-forward 15 years later and I'm working in video games as a game artist. And one of the most popular majors for aspiring commercial artists is now video games (and movies).

[jfrost]

Really, I'm tired of this. My professors are pretty much ignorant of video games, but most of the time I'm required to know bits of cinema or other stuff I don't give a shit about because they're supposed to be part of the culture. And also most of the time they are not. Really, Mario is not just a random character, he is ingrained in Western culture, and if college professors do not acknowledge that, it's their fault, their ignorance.

I can excuse them for not knowing about or appreciating the fine differences between tactical and danmaku shooters, but saying that we need to clarify our subject better when we're talking about fucking Tetris, Mario, or Sonic is outrageous. Next thing they'll say we can't reference sudoku, because no one knows what it is.

[Luke]

Again, what was the assignment?