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Full-Text Articles in Critical and Cultural Studies
Society Doesn’T Owe You Anything: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas & Video Games As Speculative Fiction, Marc A. Ouellette
Society Doesn’T Owe You Anything: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas & Video Games As Speculative Fiction, Marc A. Ouellette
English Faculty Publications
Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, popular and scholarly commentators have been looking for speculative and/or dystopic literary works that might provide analogues for the Trump-era. Perhaps the most famous of these was the renewed popularity of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In this regard, though, video games remain an underexplored fictional form. With its exaggerated and parodic satire of an America ruled by the corruption and greed of extreme right-wing populism, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) offers a speculative fiction that players can enact as well as imagine and simulate as well as prepare. Thus, reading the …
The Immersive Medium: Art, Flow, And Video Games, Christopher M. Yalen
The Immersive Medium: Art, Flow, And Video Games, Christopher M. Yalen
Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research
In this article, the question of whether or not video games could be considered art is explored, as well as what this means for video games as cultural products. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I suggest that there are some games we can consider “art”, and that these games are not only different aesthetically speaking, but are also different from a media-effects standpoint. The article consists of three main sections, an aesthetic review, a content analysis, and a pilot study. In the aesthetic review, I employ different perspectives from aesthetic philosophy in order to come up with criteria for what an …
Introduction: A Game's Study Manifesto, Jason C. Thompson, Marc A. Ouellette
Introduction: A Game's Study Manifesto, Jason C. Thompson, Marc A. Ouellette
English Faculty Publications
In the epigraph to this collection, we return to a foundational text of the western literary canon, Homer’s Odyssey, and see in Penelope’s “bow contest” an illustrative moment in the history of game culture. Having fought in the Trojan War and having survived his ten-year trek home, the weary Odysseus cannot simply show up—the returning hero must rout the odious suitors whom Penelope has forestalled. In order to buy more time for vengeance, Odysseus disguises himself as an old beggar; in order to buy more time for deferral, Penelope creates an unwinnable game: she will marry the suitor able …
Gay For Play: Theorizing Lgbtq Characters In Game Studies, Marc A. Ouellette
Gay For Play: Theorizing Lgbtq Characters In Game Studies, Marc A. Ouellette
English Faculty Publications
Despite, and perhaps because of, popular press reactions to stereotypical depictions of beefy boys and busty babes in video games, the realm of gender, sex, and sexuality remains a lacuna in the emerging field of game studies. Of particular interest is the notion of performance and the ways this impacts both on gender and on game play. The combination might be expected to offer a very interesting way of approaching LGBTQ characters in digital games, especially given the recent inclusion of such characters in some popular and well-studied game franchises, including Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar 1997-present), Jade Empire (BioWare 2005-08) …
Gaming Matters: Art, Science Magic And The Computer Game Medium [Book Review], Marc Ouellette
Gaming Matters: Art, Science Magic And The Computer Game Medium [Book Review], Marc Ouellette
English Faculty Publications
The singular—maybe more aptly put as the pre-eminent—image that occurs when reading Gaming Matters is that of duelling dualisms. While this is a tried-and-true method of covering a topic, from the dissoi logoi to “The Owl and the Nightingale” and beyond, it is the site and the subject of these apposites that makes for an intriguing if (intentionally) unsettling read. The very title of the book makes the exercise of reading (and likely of writing) a part of and apart from this process. Gaming Matters stands as both call and catalogue. Gaming matters, most certainly, in terms of its audience, …