href="#ulink_7223fabc-802f-5de4-bdd1-feed00bd9f1e">43 Beil, Benjamin/Freyermuth, Gundolf S./Gotto, Lisa: “Vorwort,” in: Beil, Benjamin/ Freyermuth, Gundolf S./Gotto, Lisa (ed.), New Game Plus: Perspektiven der Game Studies. Genres – Künste – Diskurse, Bielefeld: transcript 2015, pp. 7-24, here p. 8; the Cologne University of Applied Sciences has since been renamed TH Köln—University of Applied Sciences. (All quotes from German language sources have been translated for this edition.)
44 See Lämmert, Eberhard: “Germanistik – eine deutsche Wissenschaft,” in: Lämmert, Eberhard, et al. (ed.), Germanistik – eine deutsche Wissenschaft, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 1967, pp. 7-41.
45 See Benjamin, Walter: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility” (3rd version), in: Benjamin, Walter, et al. Selected Writings. 4 vols, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press 1996, vol. 3, pp. 251-283, here p. 281, note 42: “Film is the art form corresponding to the increased threat to life that faces people today.”
46 See, Arnold: The Social History of Art, 4 vols., London, New York: Routledge 1999 (*1951), p. 159.
47 See, for example, Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon/Smith, Jonas Heide/Tosca, Susana Pajares: Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction, New York: Routledge 2008; Mäyrä, Frans: An Introduction to Game Studies, London: SAGE (Kindle edition) 2008.
48 The Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries’ head start continues. In Germany the first university-level educational offerings are starting to arise. For German-language research, three more recent publications are: Beil, Benjamin: Game Studies: Eine Einführung, Red guide, Berlin: Lit 2013; Michael Hagner and Games Coop: Theorien des Computerspiels zur Einführung, Hamburg: Junius 2012; Freyermuth, Gundolf S./Gotto, Lisa/Wallenfels, Fabian (ed.): Serious Games, Exergames, Exerlearning: Zur Transmedialisierung und Gamification des Wissenstransfers, Bild und Bit (Bielefeld: transcript, 2013).
49 Butler, Mark: Would you like to play a game? Die Kultur des Computerspielens, Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos 2007, p. 8.
50 Mäyrä, Frans: An Introduction to Game Studies, loc. 2333.
51 Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al.: Understanding Video Games, loc. 351 und loc. 360.
52 Freyermuth, Gundolf S.: “Spiel // Film. Prolegomena zu einer Theorie digitaler Audiovisualität,” in: Kaminski, Winfred/Lorber, Martin (ed.), Clash of Realities 2010: Computerspiele: Medien und mehr…, Munich: kopaed 2010, pp. 27-46; Freyermuth, Gundolf S.: “Movies and Games: Audiovisual Storytelling in the Digital Age,” in: Enyedi, Ildiko (ed.), New Skills for New Jobs / New Skills for Old Jobs: Film and Media Schools in the Digital Revolution, Budapest: University of Theatre and Film Art 2012, pp. 21-39; Freyermuth, Gundolf S.: “Ursprünge der Indie-Praxis. Zur Prähistorie unabhängigen Game Designs,” in: Kaminski, Winfred/Lorber, Martin (ed.), Gamebased Learning. Clash of Realities 2012, Munich: kopaed Verlag 2012, pp. 313-326; Freyermuth: “Der Big Bang digitaler Bildlichkeit”; Freyermuth, Gundolf S.: “Angewandte Medienwissenschaften. Integration künstlerischer und wissenschaftlicher Perspektiven in Lehre und Forschung,” in: Ottersbach, Beatrice/Schadt, Thomas (ed.), Filmlehren. Ein undogmatischer Leitfaden für Studierende, Berlin: Bertz + Fischer 2013, pp. 263-278; Freyermuth, Gundolf S.: “Serious Game(s) Studies. Schismen und Desiderate,” in: Freyermuth, Gundolf S./Gotto, Lisa/Wallenfels, Fabian (ed.), Serious Games, Exergames, Exerlearning: Zur Transmedialisierung und Gamification des Wissenstransfers, Bielefeld: transcript 2013, pp. 421-464; Freyermuth, Gundolf S.: “Vom Drama zum Game. Elemente einer historischen Theorie audiovisuellen Erzählens,” in: Kaminski, Winfred/Lorber, Martin (ed.), Clash of Realities 2014: Computerspiele: Spielwelt-Weltspiel: Narration, Interaktion und Kooperation im Computerspiel, Munich: kopaed 2014, pp. 29-37; Freyermuth, Gundolf S.: “Der Weg in die Alterität. Skizze einer historischen Theorie digitaler Spiele,” in: Beil, Benjamin/Freyermuth, Gundolf S./Gotto, Lisa (ed.), New Game Plus: Perspektiven der Game Studies. Genres – Künste – Diskurse, Bielefeld: transcript 2015, pp. 303-355; Freyermuth, Gundolf S.: “Game Studies und Game Design,” in: Sachs-Hombach, Klaus/Thon, Jan-Noël: Game Studies. Aktuelle Anstäze der Computerspielforschung, Cologne: Herbert von Halem 2015, pp. 67-100.
I Games
Introduction
Game Studies cannot seem to find an adequate definition for its central object of analysis. Of course Game Studies shares this problem with more than a few academic disciplines and fields of study. Both these facts have been observed before, as seen in Understanding Games, one of the few existing introductions to Game Studies: Just as sociology cannot quite arrive at a term for society and media studies fail to fully define what a medium is, so Game Studies have been incapable of coming to a consensus on what a game is.1 There has been no shortage of attempts to arrive at such a definition. On the contrary, this number continues to grow, its proliferation driven mainly by three forces: practical and theoretical media interests, as well as academic policy debates.
Game designer and game design theoretician Jesse Schell, for example, has expressed the ambivalent position taken by media practitioners in face of the unavoidable theoretical challenge of formulating an exact description of “game.” On the one hand, those who most vocally complain about the lack of “standardized definitions” are “mostly academics” and “farthest removed from the actual design and development of games.”2 On the other hand, the work of many practitioners would suffer from a lack of insight into their own actions and requirements: “[G]ame designers follow their gut instincts and feelings about what makes a good or a bad game, and sometimes have difficulty articulating what exactly it is about a certain design that is good or bad.”3 Only the attempt to clearly define what games are would force practitioners “to think about them clearly, concisely, and analytically.”4
This game design-oriented perspective is similar to those approaches in Game Studies that attempt to systematically conceive of and describe “both the necessary and sufficient features of games and play,” as Frans Mäyrä remarks: “Such careful formulations are particularly instrumental to any formalist study of games.”5 These theoretical efforts are also not always free from practical and, in this case, academic and cultural policy interests. For, depending on how the definitions are approached—as games are described as aesthetic artifacts or social phenomena—, they connect themselves either with different existing disciplines or cultural practices:
“Defining anything is a highly political project. Define games as narrative and the research grants are likely to end up with departments devoted to film or literature studies. Define games as a subcultural teenage phenomenon and studies of games are less likely to be funded by ministries of culture, to reach the pages of the ‘serious’ press, or to be available in public or research libraries.”6
Overview
The
