Video Games

by Arthur Asa Berger

Book Overview

From their inception, video games quickly became a major new arena of popular entertainment This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765801027
• ISBN13: 9780765801029
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Transaction Publishers
• Length: 119 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

... universal communication and digital lifestyle

In my mind's eye, while walking the wooded hills of southern Indiana on any sunny day, I can viscerally imagine being immersed in a natural cathedral-like theatre of abruptly changing Light and Shadows with senses like phototropic sensations common to video games. Perhaps there are mnemonic roots present in the human experience responding to various "natural theatres" of luminous immersion, such as illustrated in traditional media by the atmospheric landscapes of the Hudson River School (and the Hoosier Group) of painters. As a young research assistant at the Army's Human Engineering Laboratories in 1960, I briefly sampled a prototype trial for training of human interaction control of missile guidance with a souped-up oscilloscope/CRT visualizing system. The accelerating feedback on the screen of joystick control, produced the "wow effect" very much like the rush consumers would experience in the primitive video games of the '70s and later [alas, my eye doctor soon after suggested I had been "working too close to microwave transmission"].From repose to the wandering mind and through its disconnects, the subject can feel as though navigating through a metadata atmosphere not unlike a video game interface for the 9 year-old player. Video games are not just a fantasy theater, as some fear, for the furious expression of male adolescent rage fueling new ideologies of terror, misogyny and brutalization throughout the modern world. In our "modern times", some groundbreaking museum venues are beginning to provide a quiet, safe harbor for contemplating and celebrating the best of this new American media, even while acknowledging the fears emanating from among its dark shadows that can be millions of times more [exponentially] powerful than the limitations we've known of the Gutenberg effect. For example, Rochelle Slovin, the Director of the American Museum of the Moving Image (ammi.org), has pointed us along an insightful path beginning with "Hot Circuits: A Video Arcade" 1989, then continuing through "Expanded Entertainment" 1996, "Computer Space" 1998, and " Digital Media" 2002, (see elsewhere "The Medium of the Video Game" by Mark Wolf, 2002). Ms. Slovin's new path markers extend an historic trail of kinetic luminism tracing back through recent television and 100-year old movies to the magic lantern Phantasmagoria of the Renaissance and to the Shadow Puppetry Theatre in Bali 1000 years earlier.This slim volume by Arthur Asa Berger, a prolific writer, is a serious look at biological, psychological and social significance ands provides a social perspective of sexuality not usually found. For instance, his comments "Lara Croft, scopophilia and the male gaze..." frames a valuable context of sexuality. Let me suggest that Berger in this essay, like too many reporting scholars, doesn't always clearly distinguish between anecdotal references and more organized research statistics. "A neurologist ... has suggested that video games may affect [not effect?] ch

Games as a literary, artistic, and entertainment genre

Video Games: A Popular Culture Phenomenon is a scholarly and critical look at video and computer games as a literary, artistic, and entertainment genre, with the same potentials for classic storytelling and educational use as books, films, and other media. Of course, video and computer games also have notorious potential for cliches, sensationalized violence, or possibly even pornography, just as books, magazines, and movies do. Video Games is a most carefully researched and critical essay, not looking to pass judgement but rather to inform, disseminate and theorize about the relationship of video games to narratives, to culture as a whole, and to biology, psychology and sociology. The individual video games of Myst, Riven, Tomb Raider, and Half-Life in particular are scrutinized in this compelling, sensible, and fascinating treatise on a subject rarely given proper academic scrutiny. Video Games is highly recommended students of American popular culture, as well as for all non-specialist general readers who are video game lovers with an interest in learning and thinking a bit more about the true nature of their passion.