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Games and Politics© lalesh aldarwish

Global Gaming

Games are part of life. People play in order to understand themselves and their environment. Since then, there is computer, it is of course used to play. It gives a new aesthetics and new forms of the game that have evolved. Video games have become an asset that enables a global networked industry gains billions in profit. But video games have long since established themselves as their own art form too. Artists use the medium to release the latter’s functionality for observation and explore the limits of the game. Game designers turn to new topics and audiences. And the major museums are discovering the computer game as a cultural asset to be collected and preserved.


Past EVENTS in India

Global Games: Games and Politics Iranian Parliament nationalizes Oil Industry © Peter Brinson and Kurosh ValaNejad, 2011

Games and Politics

The interactive exhibition Games & Politics, on display at the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata February 5th – 28th, 2019, encourages the visitor to try out sixteen significant politically-ambitious video games and examine how they each unfold their unique political potential. Video games can be seen as pure entertainment, as political statements, or even as art.

Writing for Videogames © Goethe-Institut

Writing for Videogames

Videogames have far outpaced other entertainment media worldwide in terms of their extremely rapid growth-rate. For a time considered ‘recession-proof’, the game industry is doing well and the effect is evident in new geographies for gaming culture such as India. It is necessary to open up the conversation on videogames as a storytelling medium and on how they have a serious impact on culture and society.

Games and Politics: Teaching history and politics via videogames Sunset © Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn (Tale of Tales), 2015

Teaching history and politics via videogames

Videogames are without any doubt very popular across generations and social strata. As games scholars James Gee and Mary Flanagan argue, videogames are not merely tools that can be used for teaching but that they intrinsically teach us to think critically about our society, politics and history. The choices that are made in many of these games prompt us to engage in ‘critical play’, as Flanagan terms it.


Gaming as Career

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