A Games as Art Reading List

written for the Critical Distance List Jam

This short essay was written after a group crit I took part in towards the end of my third year at art school. I was showing off a WIP twine piece and one of the participants said that it had really changed their opinion on games as art.

Now I’m as self-aggrandizing as anyone but I don’t think that it was because of the quality of my work. Its probably more likely that they’ve not played much outside of games as mass-market entertainment. So, I set out to make a list of relatively accessible games that could introduce fine artists to some work that’s a little more creative than the stuff they see advertised on busses.

While targeted towards artist-gamers there is still some value here for gamer-artists. Each section presents a work of theory and two games  in conversation with it. While the game recommendations might seem at times basic I hope that pairing them with new ideas will provide fresh ground for those already versed in the indie/art games scene.

StatusReleased
CategoryOther
PlatformsHTML5
Rating
Rated 4.9 out of 5 stars
(14 total ratings)
AuthorJuniper-C
Made withTwine
Asset licenseCreative Commons Attribution_NonCommercial v4.0 International
Average sessionA few minutes
LanguagesEnglish
InputsMouse

Comments

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

(+2)

brillant, both for this great list of recommandations than this use of Twine

I played some but didn't know all of them. Need to look if these books are available in my langage. Thanks!

(+2)

Great read and game suggestions. I might pick up a couple of these.

(+3)

I love the way this is laid out, I’ve not seen Twine used this way before. Really excited to checkout The Queer Games Avant Garde (recently played GENDERWRECKED and didn’t expect to see the wolf spirit on a book cover lol).

(+2)

that was quite a sharply-written piece, presented so professionally. i definitely feel compelled to look into the games i haven't played and mayyyyyybe read some of the texts. i tried speedrunning finnegans wake and failed

(+2)

thanks for the artificial hells recommendation : )