The Art of Video Game Criticism
Channel: The Game Overanalyser
Date: 2021-02-19

Video game criticism has often struggled to figure out its purpose, it is trapped between viewing games as a consumer product, and as aesthetic objects worthy of artistic consideration. This video traces the history of video game criticism, how we have talked, written and thought about games, and how this has shaped the medium itself. Is it objective or subjective? Should it invoke a formalism or rely on personal testimony? What does criticism even mean in an interactive artform? To resolve this question, we survey theories of criticism both inside and outside of games to try and find a critical language for games.

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Sources

- How to Talk about Video games , Ian Bogost

- The Last of Part 2, Why we are better than this
https://www.polygon.com/reviews/2020/6/12/21288535/the-last-of-us-part-2-review-ps4-naughty-dog-ellie-joel-violence

- Understanding Ellie's trauma in the last of Us Part 2 , Sofi's Take
https://www.sofistake.com/blogs/understanding-ellies-trauma

- The Last of Us 2 and the Limits of Video Game Violence 
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/07/the-last-of-us-limits-video-game-violence/613696/

- On Criticism, Noel Carroll

- Criticism in 6 parts
https://interactionculture.net/2012/07/22/criticism-in-six-parts-noel-carroll/

- Anatomy of Criticism , Northrope Frye

- Unit Operation, Ian Bogost

- Critique of Judgement, Kant

- Of the standard of taste, David Hume

- I have no words and I must design, Greg Costikyan 
http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/05164.51146.pdf

- MDA 
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=448938452BBD9064A9C003E42AC31533?doi=10.1.1.79.4561&rep=rep1&type=pdf

- A Theory of Fun, Raph Koster

- The Art of Game Design , Jesse Schell

- Game Mechanics, Advanced Game Design , Ernest Adams

- Game Feel , Steve Swink 

- Introduction to Game Analysis , Clara Fernández-Vara

- The Ethics of computer games, Miguel Sicart

- Cybertext, Espen Aarseth

-Across Worlds and Bodies, Brendon Keogh
http://gamescriticism.org/articles/keogh-1-1

- Hills and Lines , Simon Ferrari
https://chungking.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/hills-and-lines-final-fantasy-xiii/

-Ludonrrative dissonance in Bioshock , Clint Hocking
https://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html

- Permanent Death, Ben Abraham
https://drgamelove.blogspot.com/2009/12/permanent-death-complete-saga.html

- The Shape of stories , Kurt Vonnegut 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc

Thanks to New Patron I didn't mention ,  Jaron Saturnino