Poll: Should video games be studied in schools as texts?

[Yopaz]

I lack the poll option maybe to some degree.

Media isn't studied a whole lot in school, but video games are an increasing part of it. As it is we could maybe include it to a small degree, but there are still ways to go before it should be studied as texts.

Anything can be analysed for a deeper meaning, but the question is if we should or not. Have video games come far enough to be taken beyond a source for entertainment?

In addition there are problems with teaching using a game because a lot of games don't play the same way twice. Teacher asks "did you hear the conversation between so-and-so?" and the student says "nope, I got into a firefight and with all the sound of guns I missed it.".

This is actually a problem with all kinds of media. Which details we pay attention to and how we look at them. Now I read a short story in high school and our teacher started talking about how the main character was pregnant. It didn't say anything about that in the text itself, but she thought it was clear. However I noticed that at some point the main character went completely out of character which my teacher did not notice even though that was written out. Because I looked at the story at surface level I missed the deeper meaning, but she looked at the deeper parts thus missed what was going on at the surface.

 

[Scorpid]

I think it would depend on the class. When films are studied or fiction books are studied they're studied in a class that's related to them, like a AV class in high school might study three or four movies to see how film editing and camera work has changed. Like wise fiction material will be studied in english classes, creative writing, american lit., that sort of thing. I can't think of class except for a class related to video games that would need that. Perhaps a Sociology or psychology class. You can discover some tendencies of people by how they play a game... but it would still be a novelty (and probably a college course), instead of something that had to be used to best make students understand whatever they're learning. You could do an interesting subject on the podium americans put their military on by comparing the most popular american developed video games compared to games that come from other countries. I found that extra credits episode on the the comparison of Japanese vs American video game portrayal of weapons in video games fascinating.

 

[Daget Sparrow]

I can imagine Bioshock being studied as an English text, but otherwise there's very few games that could qualify for this.

God forbid anyone trying to use Assassin's Creed as a history text.

 

[Baron_Rouge]

I dunno...it wouldn't hurt to look at some of the better video game stories in school I suppose Bioshock immediately springs to mind. It'd work as a nice supplement to learning about objectivist philosophy, I think.

 

[Matt King]

for my english as level coursework i can write a game review as my non-fiction text, so that's a start
and for my media i'm going to be writing on the evolution of games as a medium

 

[Joccaren]

Yes.
Not every game should be elligable, just like not every book or film is, but there is nothing that intrinsically makes games incompatible with being studied as texts. While the games that could be are few and far between, they do exist and my English teacher even based part of one of his essays around Bioshock [He is young and still in university]. Personally, I doubt it will happen for another 5-10 years at least, however. People are too biased against videogames and enjoy using them as convenient scapegoats. One day though it will likely happen, as a videogame is mostly just an interactive text for its story side.

 

[Boggelz]

Some games that are actually meant to use it as a medium to form a message could and should be. Games like Spec Ops: The Line is a very good way to pass a message through a video game medium (but maybe not school appropriate). But games like Bastion and Journey can easily be adapted to an art or english class. Even some indie games like To The Moon (have never played it yet) could also be studied. Perhaps it might need a different subject though. Maybe a media arts class could incorporate it as a new medium.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

I'm thinking of games like Bioshock, filled with objectionist philosophies,the Witcher 2, based on a series of novels and featuring incredible political intrigue, Deus Ex, building on real-life conspiracy mythos tied together, Half Life 2 dealing with symbols of authority and control or even something like Morrowind, with an incredibly deep and complex world filled with dozens of characters with their own philosophies, motives and beliefs.

While there are indeed a lot of "boom boom bang bang" games out there, there are a few interesting ones around.
The problem is that many gamers would rather play something exciting and face-paced like Black Ops 2, and so developers and publishers are more likely to focus on those sorts of games.

Thing is that there's already other non-game works that deal with that sort of stuff a lot better than those games do, much as I love 'em. The merit of these games from a storytelling perspective stems from their interactivity, that very important thing that games can offer to a viewer which other mediums can't. If someone wrote a retelling of Bioshock, Deus Ex, The Witcher or Half-Life 2 in book form down to the last detail, the interactivity is lost, which would make those stories very hollow.
Great literary adaptations of games have been made of course, but that's because they add to whatever the game's setting in some way rather than essentially just retelling the whole story in text form.

I do think that in the future games should be focused on a bit more in some fields, though not based on their literary matter. I don't like the idea of kids studing say, Dragon Age, alongside Animal Farm and Blade Runner in English class. I reckon that instead they should be looked at in moreso social subjects. Get students to look at the impact games have on modern society in Social Studies or something like that, and analyse the pros and cons of it, where it's going, that sort of thing.

However since games are a relatively new-ish thing there's bound to be some games with absolutely mind-blowing and extremely well executed story concepts, narratives and such in the future, worthy of being considered for study alongside film and text-based classics.
I just don't feel that any game has made it there yet.

 

[FalloutJack]

It is a fact that V For Vendetta was used in colleges for English classes, so a game involved in classes isn't so bad an idea...provided that it doesn't become the proving ground for a bunch of wannabe-anarchist hackers with too much free time and free space between their ears.

That business aside, I can think of a place where video games have a place in college...NOW. At my university, one of the courses I took just prior to graduation was Media Psychology, the study of media's effects upon the human brain and the human brain's effects on media. Long before this, I had come across and well-expressed my feelings on video game violence not being caused by video games, and here I had come to the heart of the matter and found for certain that they had nothing on it and still don't. You can tell be the way they haven't been banned for health reasons.

But yes, they have a place in this as an example study. We covered shows and indeed some effects of the internet, so why not games, books, and otherwise? Perhaps then, we can finally get a case study to instead prove the opposite of what they try. That is, we could prove that violence - our own - created violent video games as an outlet, a response to a need, and is no more unhealthy than punching a punching bag vigorously.