Is the video game an art? The question is tiring because it is hackneyed, but it exemplifies the mental lack of definition that a large part of the population feels when talking about interactive leisure. Are video games a danger for young people? Are they not the most important cultural form of this century? Are they a foolproof way to fall into addiction? Won’t they be an opportunity to improve subjects such as medicine, education or inclusion? The truth is that the video game is, above all, a medium so evolving that it has burst the seams of the definition given by the Dictionary, or at least its first meaning: “Game electronic that is displayed on a screen. It is evident that the video game deserves a broader description. More current.
To address this issue, to knock on the doors of the RAE but, above all, to organize a public debate around a medium that has overcome the semantic corset it had not so many years ago, a group of restless people has decided precisely that : change the official definition of the word “video game.” The event took place last Monday at the headquarters of the Cotec foundation in Madrid, was officiated by Santiago Bustamante, cultural director of the OXO video game museum in Malaga, and was attended by the employers’ associations of the sector —DEV and AEVI—, ONCE, IndieDevDay , DiGRA, ArsGames and the foundation itself.
The Rae has a big challenge, everyone commented, and it is true: it is difficult to capture in a definition such a multifaceted, plural and integrative character as the one that the video game has today. And although achieving that dreamed definition is complicated, the truth is that the interventions were abounding in a series of words that were repeated: electronics, interactivity, simulation, integration. Surely the shots of the different proposals will go there.
The form that has been chosen is, in turn, stimulating: each of the participating organizations will give a weekly talk at the OXO museum in Malaga; a talk that will conclude with its proposed definition. At the end of the round, with all the ideas on the table, consensus will be sought. By the way, it would be a betrayal of the medium itself not to make the process interactive, so people can participate with their own proposals through the center’s website.
Opinions are diverse and some even point to the name itself. Some believe that the term is weighed down by the particle “game”, which bends the collective imagination towards the playful, towards the unserious. Others say that what fails is “video”, because the interactivity does not end on the screen (there are audio games, without going any further). The current definition (“…displayed on a screen…”), for example, excludes the blind in an ecosystem that has more than 200 million disabled players.
Well, it’s not easy. But if players like something, it is the challenges. The dictionary is sacred, but just; It should not be forgotten that the first meaning of rape It is a “field of violets” and that, as Wittgenstein (referent of referents) said, the limits of language are the limits of the world. Sometimes you have to bend those limits, and sometimes you have to stretch them. Better said, and that’s it: sometimes you have to play with them. Let’s see if we give them the accommodation they deserve.
You can follow BABELIA on Facebook and xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
#Video #games #RAE #final #battle