The Art of Video Games and Class-Based Discrimination

Contributing to the burgeoning philosophical aesthetics of video games, this paper argues that the medium is capable of a unique form of class-based discrimination. Following C. Thi Nguyen’s framework of agential aesthetics, a central element of video game art is the scenario for practical reasoning set up by the goals, abilities, and obstacles presented to the player. However, when ‘microtransactions’—the opportunity to use of real-world money to effect in-game opportunities—are included, the real world properties of the player—i.e. one’s access to financial resources—determine the kind of practical scenario one is presented. The poor and the rich ‘see’ different artworks, and in ways not easily circumvented because this discrimination is intrinsic to the artwork itself, rather than due to social context. I show that this lack of circumvention makes this discrimination unlike the kinds of classist discrimination seen in traditional artforms like painting, theater, or film.

Duke Scholars

Author Emerson Robert Bodde DKU Faculty