The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics

Abstract

Recent videogames continue to surprise and impress with their artistic sophistication. Their development, moreover, is credibly seen as something new in art. Games such as the open-world adventure western Red Dead Redemption give the impression of being a kind of interactive cinema where the player imaginatively steps into a fictional world to discover the story of her character, a story that depends on decisions that she makes. The result is a beautiful, complex and meaningful work of art. This increased sophistication and apparent distinctiveness, paired with the rise of videogames as an enormous cultural and commercial phenomenon, has led to increased academic interest in videogames and gaming culture. In recent years there has been a proliferation of philosophical writing about videogames. For the philosophy of the arts the interest in videogames derives from how the new medium raises or even alters certain enduring concerns such as the definition of art, the ontological standing of works of art, the nature of authorship and performance, and of appreciation and criticism. This chapter surveys some of the early steps that have been taken to assess these issues.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source., 2013 · DOI ↗