CIRCA:Are Video Games a Form of Scholarship?
From CIRCA
In our presentation we responded to James Coltrain and Stephen Ramsay's article "Can Video Games be Humanities Scholarship?" In it, they tackle the issue of how video games have become a cultural object of study in humanities, but has not yet become a format in which to present scholarly findings. We argue that video games can be used as a form of scholarship by arguing that scholarship has always changed the formats in which it presents itself over time and that video games have clear constraints, rules, and goals scholars can utilize to argue and present their findings in ways both similar and unique to other formats such as theses, essays, and research projects.
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"Can Video Games be Humanities Scholarship?"
A Brief History of Traditional Scholarship
What we call scholarship in the West can said to have started in Ancient Greece. Educated men would publicly debate about a variety of topics including plays and poetry, government policy and law, the human mind, the natural world, and more. These debates were written down and, along with their Ancient Roman successors, became the Classics. The Classics formed the basis of Western academic disciplines, but also formed the basis of how we present arguments and critical examinations; namely, we take an object or area of study, ask questions about it, and then present what answers we've found to these questions in a compelling argument.
Digital Scholarship
Digital scholarship is being defined here as a form of scholarship that makes use of digital tools and/or digital formats in its research and presentation. Video games, as born-digital documents created with digital tools, are related to this academic area.
