Gamertell

There is an emerging field in science dedicated to studying video games and their relations with society and modern life that is beginning to gain credibility. This field is called Video Game Studies and it involves specialists from different areas including psychology, computer science, visual arts and pedagogy.

Professionals from several of these disciplines gathered last week, from November 14 to 17, 2007, for the Future Play 2007 conference. Organized by Algoma University College, the con featured lectures on different gaming topics involving video game studies. The subjects of these lectures included avatars, the effects of games on dreams, the behavior of characters in games or the spending of real currency on virtual worlds.

The way in which video games and their culture have permeated into everyday life is one of the aspects that drove the birth of this field.

“It was no longer just the realm of the teenage boy,” said Jennifer Jenson, co-president of the Canadian Game Studies Association. “So we have a really grown-up audience, we have a more sophisticated audience, and then we have academics who are saying, `Look, this is an entertainment medium that’s outpacing Hollywood movies and music and everything else. So why are people devoting this much time and energy, this much cultural (and) economic capital to this medium?’ I think that really sort of started stuff off.”

For many years people saw video games only as a child’s toy or something young people wasted their time on. Some have blamed them for violent crimes and for corrupting minds. Fortunately, there is a group of people starting to view video games in a totally different light.

It’s really amazing to see how things have changed because although this makes me feel like an old guy, I got the, “Isn’t that for little kids?” line a couple of times and now there’s an actual field of science devoted to games. Now that there are people, scientists and gamers, actually making a living out of games we can sit and smile happily at those times when we were told nothing good would turn out of sitting in front of the TV for hours trying to beat that game.

We are used to thinking about learning and games as two different activities, but now we could finally go to school and actually get good grades for discussing games. When a young kid is asked what he wants to study when he grows up now he can confidently answer: “video games.”

Read [TheStar]  Also Read [Gamasutra] Site [Future Play]