GameZone Talks: Playful Art – Games & Aesthetics

The panel “Playful Art” looks at the question of the special aesthetics of computer games. As part of a globally active entertainment industry, digital games are economically important products that compete with Hollywood films in terms of popularity and both aesthetically influence and are influenced by these films’ images and sounds. Today we can see that even commercial games are testing out the characteristics and conventions of the medium and starting to ask questions.Computer games are currently in a phase of self-observation and self-reflection and are starting to open up to all kinds of experiments. Designing computer games is a highly complex process since games are one of the must multifaceted media in existence. In part, that is because games unite all other forms of media on one platform. In computer games we find texts, images of all kinds, videos and – not to be forgotten -– sound. Game designers use the entire spectrum of artistic forms, which is why games can be formally viewed as something like an all-encompassing work of art. That explains the great diversity of game design and its rules