At the beginning of Frasca’s article, he asks some rather conceptual questions:
Is it possible to design videogames that deal with social and political issues? Could videogames be used as a tool for encouraging critical thinking? Do videogames offer an alternative way of understanding reality?
After reading Bogost’s book, we all know that the answers to these questions is yes. As I’ve said before, it’s much harder to find things that you can’t do with videogames. It’s more interesting to ask the quantitative versions of these questions. In other words, how useful are games that deal with political or social issues?
The answer to this question is “not very useful.” I come to this answer by looking at the asymmetry of people who play videogames and people who care about social and political issues. Other than Professor Sample, what cultured, intelligent adult that you know plays videogames? (Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an attack on Prof. Sample; it’d be pretty chill if my Dad liked COD as much as I do.) Furthermore, what 12 to 22-year-olds (outside of the GMU Honors College of course) develop imformed opinions about social and political issues? These questions make it clear that games of a socially critical nature have a very limited audience.
My overall point of this post is this: non-entertaining and non-educating videogames are only made to show that videogames don’t have to entertain or educate. Other than that, they’re pretty useless.
You have not made any kind of convincing claim here. You say you want to ask “quantitative versions” of Frasca’s opening questions. Fair enough. But then you proceed to provide no quantitative data. Instead you base your argument entirely on your own subjective and limited experience.
I’m not attacking your claim that “non-entertaining and non-educating videogames are only made to show that videogames don’t have to entertain or educate” (that’s actually a fairly common complaint). Rather, I’m calling attention to your blithe tone and negligent research.
When I say “quantitative,” I mean that saying games can do something is not enough (that’s the qualitative part), but how well they do that thing and for how many people is also important. The great thing about Bogost’s book is the amount of examples he gives, and the chapter that people found to be weak in class, “kitsch,” was weak because it had limited examples and seemed like a stretch.
Basing my point on my own experience and asking for other’s is all I can do. I don’t know where I can gather data on those who care about both social issues and play videogames. My point hinges on whether or not people have had similar experiences to mine, and I think it’s probably that they have.
Professor, I sincerely apologize for being blithe and sassy, and I mean no disrespect to anyone with this post.