Let’s Play: Redefining Games and Scholarship through Research-Creation, Post-Criticism, and Institutionalism

Abstract

This paper proposes that there is value in deploying video games as a form of scholarly critique, particularly in the field of game studies. I adapt the post-critical lens of Greg Ulmer and the institutional theories of Warren Beaty from comics studies to advocate for a shift of how we identify both games and scholarship. The result, hopefully, is not only a new tool for the analysis of games, but a functional definition of video games that allows this new tool a place within the form. This article begins with examples from some of the most popular games in the world that demonstrate that games can and do merge aesthetics and mechanics to convey either implicit learning or an explicit argument in combination with entertainment. Next, I outline a theoretical framework of post-criticism for games, a perspective that helps us to understand the legitimacy of such an approach. A survey of the definitional debate in games studies and a brief outline of some of the problems therein contextualizes the value of an institutional approach to the question of “What is a game?” Finally, I explore how a post-critical framework and institutional definition of games provides a fresh outlook that incorporates a new medium into scholarship and defines games in a way that causes us to ask, “what makes this example interesting?” rather than “does it fit?”