Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game

Graeme Kirkpatrick is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. The Aesthetic ApproachWhy an aesthetic approach?Play and formForm, taste and societyArt and politicsCulture industry revisited2. Ludology, Space and TimeFrom ergodicity to ludologyGameness and its limitsAbstraction, virtual space and simulacraThe rhythm of suspended timeLudology, narratology and aesthetics3. Controller, Hand, ScreenForm, vision and matterHands and touchThe controllerVideo game imageEmbodied activity and culture4. Games, Dance and GenderDance and artHabitus and embodied playChoreography in ‘Mirror’s Edge’A dance aesthetic Choreography and discourseAesthetics and gender5. Meaning and Virtual WorldsFictional worldnessNeo-baroque entertainment cultureForm and fictional contentDeath and allegoryPlay and mourning6. Political AestheticsUnit operationsRhetoric and persuasionBadiou’s inaestheticsThe ludological truth-eventDancing our way to where?Index

"An established scholar of the sociology of gaming and computers, Kirkpatrick (Univ. of Manchester, UK) argues video games are autonomous cultural forms that should be considered art.""Kirkpatrick positions the aesthetics of video games in interactivity, outside the traditional realm of formal or literary representation.""......adds a distinct, if rather conservative, perspective on video game play to the burgeoning field of game studies."I have yet to encounter a book as extensive and thought-provoking as Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game....Kirkpatrick’s book is an illuminating exploration of how a players body and a game intertwine, or how, “a generation of young men have grown up dancing with their hands.”There is no doubt that this book is important: for the academic theorization of gameplay, aesthetic theory, and cultural studies in its broadest, interdisciplinary or ‘indisiciplined’ manifestations… Rancière is one of a plethora of writers with whom Kirkpatrick artfully weaves propositions and readings of games to accumulate a coherently mapped theory of gaming as an aesthetic cultural practice... I have yet to encounter a book as extensive and thought provoking as Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game.You’ll never look at a controller the same way again after Kirkpatrick explains how we’ve been conditioned to use carefully designed blobs of plastic to influence an image.