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High Culture

Video Games

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2018

VIDEO GAMES, EDUCATION AND HIGH CULTURE

I
Between games and art, as many philosophers and artists have written, there are similarities and differences: in art, the author is entirely responsible for his work, while games (and video games) provide for at least a shared responsibility between author and player, yet both forms provide for a suspension of the rules of everyday reality, to project the art user or the player into another universe of rules. Do you think that video games can aspire, in the present or in the future, to a "noble" statute like that of the arts? Justify your answer (whether positive or negative) by specifying whether this process should include specific transformations of the videogame "product" or whether specific studies and initiatives like ours could assist this process.

II
Some art forms, once considered purely popular and commercial, took the plunge from mere craftsmanship to the world of high culture when a generation of intellectuals committed themselves to practicing them: for example, the French directors of the "Nouvelle vague" “created” auteur cinema. Do you think a similar process could also involve the world of video games?

III
Videogames interest scientific psychology more and more today, also due to the negative effects of pathologies of ludo addiction in the youngest. Do you think a relationship can be traced between videogames and existential anxiety?

IV
The fiction "Westworld" showed a world/game in which killing does not involve specific responsibilities (because it was not humans who were killed, but robots). Do you think there is a link between video games and "experiments" with death like this? Is this link between videogames and death good or bad for you?

V
According to your point of view or your direct experience, can video games support traditional teaching tools in school practice? Is it also possible to introduce game mechanics and dynamics (“gamification”) into the school, such as points or levels or rewards or badges, to involve pupils in a different way? Justify your answer, both affirmative and negative.

YOU
The number and forms of "educational agencies", ie contexts in which the education of the individual takes place, is today growing and metamorphosing. The school, the family and other traditional agencies are joined by "social" communities, the cultural productions of the large entertainment multinationals and by now traditional tools such as cinema and television. In your opinion, what role do video games play in the education of school-age children and young people?

VII
After the collapse of the Berlin wall, politics and geopolitics underwent an exceptional transformation in the times and ways of government, international relations and confrontation. In the famous film "Wargames", made before the wall collapsed, a sophisticated artificial intelligence stopped for a moment before starting the end of the world with an atomic conflict because it "understood" that in a war of that type there could be no winner . Many videogames simulate wars, battles, conquests with historical or fantastic settings, many others are purely entertainment. Simulations in which, say, Nazi Germany can win World War II could be seen as propaganda (or conversely study) of that political model. The diffusion of massive entertainment could be considered a way of controlling popular malcontent as are, for example, the most popular sports. Can video games have, in your opinion, a value (positive or negative) also in the political education of citizens? In what ways?

2020

VIDEO GAMES, APOCALYPSE AND HIGH CULTURE

THE

Perception, interpretation and (ab)use of the Apocalypse, yesterday, today (and tomorrow?). The primary meaning of Apocalypse is "Revelation", but the common sense, particularly in the world of videogames and entertainment, is that Apocalypse means "Catastrophe" and "Destruction". Does playing with the Apocalypse mean "destroying" the complexity of eschatology (read also millenarianism) in the great flow of the history of human societies?

Trivialization of the eschatology of the "Ancients" and new eschatologies of scientific positivism. When the Apocalypse becomes "real": what does Apocalypse mean during a Pandemic? What is the relationship between apocalyptic imaginary and reality perceived as apocalyptic? Does having lived through hundreds of apocalyptic narratives make us numb or less able to face the endless crises of reality?

III

The Charm of the Apocalypse. Art and Aesthetics of the Apocalypse: what unites the past and the present of "apocalyptic" works?

Exorcising death hoping for a collective end of the world in order not to face the apocalypse of individual death. Videogames have always been centered on "rebirth" and the opportunity for "replayability": are they therefore an instrument of strength or weakness for dealing with the great existential theme of death?

2019

VIDEO GAMES, CAPITALISM AND HIGH CULTURE

I
The art-economy-power relationship has marked, albeit in very different ways, the history of art in all historical, ancient and modern economic systems: if, in the past, the aristocracies that held economic power tended to finance the high culture for reasons of prestige, today the big capitals seem more interested in the promotion of "pop" culture, for both profit and consensus management reasons. In your opinion, how does the present of video-game creation fit into the relationship between art, entertainment and capital?

II
The distinction between commercial success and critical acclaim is a recurring theme in the discussion of art genres belonging to the sphere of high culture. What the "experts" like does not always meet the approval of the general public and vice versa. Is it possible, even starting from concrete cases, to decline this distinction for the field of video games?

III
The sale and marketing of entertainment items (cinema, TV series, genre literature, comics, videogames, etc.) have common traits and distinctive features. What distinctively characterizes the video game market? What does it have in common with other entertainment sectors?

IV
State intervention is massively present in the field of "traditional" media, radio and television. Don't you think the public should be explicitly interested in the videogame universe? If yes, in what way? With stable interventions, as in the case of television, or with specific game commissions or targeted interventions for specific projects?

V
The economy influences the video game industry, but is the opposite also true today? Can video-game models be found in the structuring of the contemporary global economy? Is gaming culture transforming the economy between cryptocurrencies and virtual economies ?

2021

VIDEO GAMES, LITERATURE AND HIGH CULTURE

THE

Great literature has always confronted us with the challenge of “playing” with our identity: the characters in novels are possible “I's”, through which we can question our ideas and our behaviour. The "possible worlds" constructed by the authors and by the plots confront us with the problem of possible choices in certain situations. Can poetic, aesthetic and theoretical-literary reflection teach the world of videogames anything from this point of view? What is the relationship between play and literature? Can the video-ludic experience have a positive effect on the construction of our "narrative identity"?

In literary criticism the problem of the author's intention is one of the most debated, but it is certain that Dante, writing the "Divine Comedy", had the intention of writing an important book for all humanity and not just an object of leisure or entertainment. Is the issue of copyright intent also relevant in the complex world of video games? Can the level of "high culture" be reached by videogames only if their authors address the problem of "intentionally" high and complex games or also through other ways?

III

Any great literary work is a text that represents reality together with the specific and unique vision of it that its author has: it gives us, in a contemplative form (in the sense that we cannot intervene to transform the plot or words of the book), reality plus the interpretative power of the intellect and creativity of great writers. The video game, by its nature, reduces the contemplative experience in favor of the interactive one: what does this fundamental difference entail in terms of the production of works that have the ambition to remain over time as products of "high culture"?

One of the many suits that literary science fiction wears is that of a visionary and sometimes cynical scholar capable of predicting the future or one of many possible futures. Therefore narrative of anticipation both from a technological point of view - famous is the "heat ray" by HG Wells in his 'The War of the Worlds', completely similar to a modern laser beam - and from a social point of view - a title above all , 'The Condominium' by Ballard. Can this demanding burden be shared in some way with the world of video games? Is it in the DNA of the gaming world, in the small digital bricks that determine its body and soul, ALSO being able to tell a technological and/or social future as science fiction has done since its inception? And above all, is it an interesting legacy to collect?

2022

VIDEO GAMES, WAR AND HIGH CULTURE

The
(Video)War Games

What are they, beyond common sense, really? For military professionals, these may be field exercise simulations; for strategy lovers, a way to test yourself by leading entire civilizations; for children, toy soldiers and weapons are one of the first ways they take measures of the present. From the sacredness of the Roman games, passing through the autumn of the Middle Ages enclosed in the heavy armor of knightly tournaments, arriving at the multiple virtual representations of the fights, we can glimpse a "pure" playful joy of humanity, or of a part of it, in the act of warfare?

II
Ludo-Narrative Structures of War

Is the story of the war a propaganda tool of the dominant power moved by materialistic objectives? Or is it a complex representation of the intricate psycho-emotional needs of man who has been trying for millennia to exercise a form of control and exorcism on the contradictions of rational awareness of the precarious human condition? What is the War for History and the stories of the world and of our unconscious depths as well as being a representation of a formidable narrative engine that moves, creates and overwhelms passions, characters and meanings?

III
The warrior-hero today

What happened to the archetype of the hero-warrior in the era of narrative identity crisis, increasingly linked to the elusive playful identity? What meaning can the extreme sacrifice of the hero who decides, or even yearns, to die in battle for a "superior" purpose (and community), have today, in a world of frenetic virtual representations of death in war? Is there a relationship, and a clear separation, between the desire for warrior heroism in the real world and the virtual one, as well as the need to exorcise the moloch of death? With our (video) games and ludo-cyber-culture are we demolishing or paradoxically reinforcing (with unprecedented methods and mutations) this ancient archetype, in an apparently individualistic society with little propensity to sacrifice for the community?

IV
The Art of War and (Video)Games

Can (Video)Games help us understand, as well as appease existential anxiety and orient the complexity of the human soul and its destiny, allowing us to virtually navigate the hells of destruction? What is the connection between the weapons of historical kings and their virtual duplicate? Are (Video)Games reflections of another world in which to grow up, in which to face complex paradigms and then try to bring back what has been seen/faced/learned to the present?

V
End of the Games

Have we really reached the end of the equilibrium established after the end of the Second World War by Mutual Assured Destruction? After the collapse of the Berlin wall, history not only didn't end, but in the new century it seems to have accelerated in the ability and methods of modifying not only the physical and operational borders of states at a geopolitical level, but above all the reactions of a humanity increasingly projected into cyber-ludens universes, dominated by powers capable of conquering data and information, no longer to predict history, but to try to direct it on the basis of undeclared and non-evident purposes. history, structure, Can meanings and rules of ludus and war somehow help us to (re)write a balance that avoids the real cancellation of human life from the earth due to an all-out strategic nuclear conflict? Or, conversely, does the habit of virtual conflicts, the mixing on the same digital supports of images of real war with structures of ludic warfare, make us more suitable and perhaps refractory to the scope of existing conflicts?

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