Video games have been a pretty big portion of my life since I was little. I really loved escaping into a world surreal and unlike mine own. Having vested a large amount of money and time into them, I have come to know a whole lot about them and their implications in society. I find them to be a form of art not unlike other texts, books, novels, paintings, or films. Personally, I feel that the element of interactivity makes many video games far more engaging and powerful than films. Obviously various media have their advantages, but for our final paper I would like to argue that certain styles of video games can be remediation of film.
This is such a big step to take, and thus I think appropriate to tackle in a final paper. Remediation and Evolution have a close relationship but both are fundamental on the same idea- something has been developed from, or in direct opposition to a current idea and attemps to expand on it or better it. Saying that video games are related to film and improve or differ from them in certain ways inherently ties them to film. I believe this to be a very rich topic with a lot of possibility for expansion, discussion, and argument to be made. To unfortunately expose a lot of my rather embarrassing childhood, I have been discussing video games with a whole plethora of people in person and on the internet since at least 2003 and have seen a whole range of arguments made. In my memory I've never quite seen a fully-composed argumentative thesis comparing film and video games, their development, relationship, and how video games are essentially a remediated form of film. For this reason I think the topic can be unique, deep, full of different angles to explore, and intriguing.
The general argument is fine; you'd be best served by focusing on one or two specific instances of games-as-remediated films and use those as the basis for your argument. Be very clear if you're arguing for "all games as remediated films" or certain games and certain types of films (hint: you can't make grand claims in a short paper).
ReplyDeleteNote that while blog assignment #12 is due by Thursday, 12/02, 5:00pm, that does NOT mean you can't do it earlier. In fact, in order to get the best comments that would help you do the best work, the earlier you do this, the better (since the paper is due via e-mail by Friday, December 17th at 9pm). Assignment #12, the longer proprosal, should be the short proposal fleshed out, plus a tentative works cited list (with annotations, as described on the assignment sheet).
Yeah, I'm aware of the diverse varieties of films and games, obviously certain genres are far too one-dimensional to be related to film in any way, and that so many games are so linear that they're basically just a film that progresses as fast as you can plow through the levels. These are things I hope to make known and contest in my paper.
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