How Videogames Express Ideas

Authors

  • Matthew Weise

Keywords:

expression, first amendment, speech, communication, ideology, meaning

Abstract

What are the exact aspects of the videogame medium, the precise features or combinations of features that lend themselves to expressing ideas and meaning? To chart this out, I begin with an American legal case that serves as a foundation for the basic issues involved and then move on to show how this relates to some of the broader attitudes the world of videogame discourse. Based on this, I break down the expressive strategies of videogames into three aspects—non-playable sequences, rule-based systems, and the relationship between the two—which I then illustrate with examples proving that videogames can indeed be an expressive medium.

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Published

2003-01-01

Bibtex

@Conference{digra79, title ="How Videogames Express Ideas", year = "2003", author = "Weise, Matthew", publisher = "DiGRA", address = "Tampere", howpublished = "\url{https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/view/79}", booktitle = "Proceedings of DiGRA 2003 Conference: Level Up"}

Proceedings

2003: Proceedings of DiGRA 2003 Conference: Level Up

Section

Papers

License

© Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of this paper is
allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author.