Research at RMIT - Brendan Keogh

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[Brendan Keogh]

My research project is about video games and video game criticism. The academic study of video games is relatively young. We have a generation for whom video games are, perhaps, just normal and mundane and every day. So, I kind of see myself as one of many academics trying to start video game studies as a kind of talking about these things as cultural artefacts.

So, I guess some of the questions I'm trying to ask myself in this research is how do video games mean? How do they feel? I think a lot of institutions do Game Design under an IT School. Whereas at RMIT, Game Design is under Design. It's a much more kind of integrated critical approach. It kind of gives me a lot more room to kind of breath and talk to people about games as an art form rather than games as a computer software.

To go into it and not thinking video games are special or new or somehow completely different but are really connected to this much broader art history and to really grapple with that challenge of thinking about that.

If the world didn't have video games we would lose thousands of worlds that people can explore. It would lose this amazing ability to learn, feel empathy with other people that with this medium where you can literally step into other people's shoes. There's a lot there to lose.

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