In Ian Bogost’s “How To Do Things With Videogames,” Bogost discusses the idea of analyzing videogames using “media microecology.” “Media microecology” focuses not only the medium and its message, but also the specific functions and properties that make the medium what it is. In the case of videogames, Bogost looks at different uses for videogames and how they affect the medium of videogames, as a whole.
One use mentioned for videogames is that they can be a form of art, or an artgame. Since art really doesn’t have any real boundaries or definitive meaning in modern times, this means that videogames can also be considered a form of art. While there is game art, which is art that has elements of videogames but isn’t intended for play, artgames are meant to be played first and have an artistic meaning second. A form of art that seems to be especially prevalent in artgames is Dada, which attempts to disrupt traditional notions of social and artistic conventions. What’s interesting about Dada artgames is that by the pure absurdness that tends to be associated with this form, Dada sometimes combines two uses for videogames: art and pranks. An example Ian Bogost give of this odd combination of videogame uses is “Cat-Mario,” also known as “Mario from Hell.” This game defies all conventional knowledge of videogames, especially Super Mario Bros. Hitting “?” blocks sometimes causes a monster to attack you, spikes will randomly pop up and kill your character, and eating mushrooms will sometimes turn you into a robot and plunge you to your death. Basically, the game makes you take the least conventional routes in order to win the game. While this is very much an exercise in disrupting the notions of how a videogame should be played, the game is also pranking the player by luring him/her into a sense of safety before Mario meets an odd and untimely death. Similarly, you could also say that any use of pranking in a videogame could contain elements of the Dada art form, since the action of pranking in itself is disrupting your expectations of the game and how it should be played. An example of pranking in a videogame that disrupts the normal conventions of gameplay is where the Eternal Darkness game’s insanity effect makes the player think that their saved game has been deleted.